Kill it with fire: ‘Skidoo’ (1968) on TCM this weekend

I’ve written about Skidoo before.

I was convinced it was a hoax until I saw it with my own now-permanently-damaged eyes…

Older audiences found its celebration of drugs offensive and younger viewers thought it was akin to your grandfather asking to borrow your records. The film was contrived and overbearing. The hippies seem stilted and forced while the older cast members overact and ham it up, often resorting to broad slapstick. The film moved from scene to scene without any real sense of direction and sometimes relied on weird, sped-up flashback sequences. At the end of the day the critics and the cinema-going public scoffed at this sixty-three year old man’s pathetic acid trip. It was in theaters a week before it was pulled, and then Skidoo was buried in film history as a bad mistake; To this day, the film has not been released on home video.