Michael Flores was a teenage hippie in Atlanta working for an underground newspaper when Otto Preminger’s pro-LSD film Skidoo came out in 1968. The bizarre musical satire, inspired by Preminger’s experience with the drug, pits the square establishment, represented by former hit man Jackie Gleason and his boss, a character named God (Groucho Marx in his last screen role), against a bevy of peaceful, fun-loving hippies. Other cast members include fading stars like Carol Channing, Burgess Meredith, Mickey Rooney, Frankie Avalon, Frank Gorshin, Peter Lawford, “and a lot of people who should have known better,” says Flores.
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Flores searched for the film on and off for years. In the mid-1970s he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute and became a filmmaker himself, working with Stan Brakhage on an experimental Super-8 film called Philosophy of Light as well as making his own stuff. In 1984 he and Del Close helped found the Psychotronic Film Society–named after Chicago filmmaker Jack Sell’s 1980 flop The Psychotronic Man, which Flores calls “one of the worst films ever made”–to celebrate the weirdest movies known to man. Besides sponsoring screenings the society put out a zine called It’s Only a Movie, now available on Psychotronic’s Web site, www.psychotronic.com. Flores is still the head of the society, which he runs with his wife, Mistress of Mayhem Kat (aka Katherine Southerland), and comic-book artist Brian Thomas in between writing, producing, and directing plays.
A year and a half ago he put a notice on Psychotronic’s Web site asking for help obtaining a copy of Skidoo. In August someone E-mailed him the address of a German film company. Flores sent off a letter (“They weren’t even on the Internet”) and received the video around Halloween–right before he and Southerland left for Las Vegas for a garage rock festival and to get married. Flores watched the tape upon their return.
The Psychotronic Film Society will screen Skidoo Monday at 8 at Liar’s Club, 1665 W. Fullerton. The film, originally shot in the wide-screen format Panavision, will be shown on video. Admission is free; you must be 21. Call 773-665-1110.
