The 1973 film Bummer tells the story of a California rock band known as The Group.
The Group plays groovy music with a mellow feel. The music they play doesn’t sound so much like actual 70s California rock as much as it sounds like what someone from the big band era would have assumed mellow 70s California rock sounded like. The Group is led by the charismatic Duke (Kipp Whitman). The lead guitarist and the drummer look like groovy dudes as well. But then there’s Butts (played by the great character actor, Dennis Burkley), the bass player. Butts is a big fat slop with a beard, unwashed hair, and a genuine aura of grime. Duke’s girlfriend tells Duke that he really should kick Butts out of the band. The problem is that Duke owns the van that the Group travels around in. It’s the type of 70s van that was probably nicknamed “The Second Base Mobile.”
Well, Duke really should have considered kicking Butts out of the band because it turns out that Butts is crazy. He’s a sociopath with a mother fixation and, when he realizes that he’s the only member of the band who isn’t getting laid on a regular basis, he goes crazy and starts assaulting and murdering groupies.
It’s a bummer!
This film was produced by David Friedman, the genial sexploitation producer who is best-known for his collaborations with Herschell Gordon Lewis. Lewis did not direct Bummer and I have to say that I was a little bit surprised to discover that because there’s a scene at a strip club that goes on for so long and which features so many pointless close-ups of pervy men staring up at the dancers that I immediately assumed that Lewis must have, at the very least, snuck onto the set and supervised it. Instead, the film was directed by William Allen Castleman, who also did directed Johnny Firecloud and The Erotic Adventures of Zorro. So be it. I’m still convinced that Lewis has something to do with this movie.
Bummer is one of those films about how wasteful the younger generation is, with their mellow rock music and their bongs and their groupies. The film’s main message seems to be that anyone under the age of 30 is intellectually vapid and spiritually empty but at least they look good without their clothes on. It’s a mix of exploitation and nostalgia. “You know who didn’t murder groupies?” the film seems to be saying, “Glenn Miller, that’s who.”
The film is pretty dull. Scenes drag. It takes forever for any sort of plot to develop. Most of the cast is forgettable but Dennis Burkley makes an impression as the unhinged bass player and watching him in this, it’s easy to understand why be became such a busy character actor. There’s an authentic edge to Burkley, one that comes through even in this film. One of the groupies is played by Carol Speed, who would later appear in Disco Godfather and warn people about the dangers of “whack attack.” Oddly enough, the film looks surprisingly good. Cinematographer Gary Graver worked on films like this in between working on Orson Welles’s The Other Side Of The Wind.
In the end, Bummer lives up to its title.
Through the Shattered Lens 