Woodyanders Review of Pick-up

Pick-up (1975)

A totally groovy one-of-a-kind 70's exploitation cinematic head trip

[10/10 · 29 June 2007]

Flighty, easygoing Carol (yummy Jill Senter) and her intense, brooding friend Maureen (the equally tasty Gini Eastwood) hitch a ride from groovy hippie dude Chuck (affable, shaggy-haired Alan Long) in his nifty mobile home bus. The trio find themselves lost in the Florida Everglades following a fierce rainstorm and embark on a startling spiritual journey of self-discovery in which they have bizarre encounters with a rowdy bunch of whooping rednecks in a pick-up truck, a black woman wearing a flowing white robe, a smarmy politician, and a creepy clown clutching a handful of balloons. Director/editor/producer/cinematographer Bernie Hirschenson (who also shot and directed countless TV commercials in the 70's), working from a brilliantly weird script by John Winter, relates the arrestingly loosey-goosey free-form narrative at a rambling, yet steady pace and does an expert job of creating a marvelously trippy and surreal hallucinatory vibe. Moreover, Hirschenson certainly doesn't skimp on either the steamy nudity or hot soft-core sex scenes. The attractive brunette female leads deliver appealingly natural performances and look absolutely spectacular in their birthday suits. Hirschenson's bright, dewy, sunny cinematography, the spooky flashbacks into the characters' troubled pasts (Maureen does the dirty deed with a lecherous pervert priest!), lots of heavy mystical astrological mumbo jumbo, the mellow, harmonic score by Patrick Adams and Michael Rod, and the breathtaking swampland scenery further enhance the fabulously far-out strangeness of this gloriously idiosyncratic one-of-a-kind 70's exploitation movie head trip.