Scratch Harry

Described in a pre-credit disclaimer as an amphetamine 'fantasy", Cannon released this arty, confusing, absurdist pseudo-underground feature made in the wake of Warhol's film factory explosion, and turned by proxy ad campaign hatchetry into a skin flick. Which it ain't. The main character Harry, a penniless rake with expensive tastes, believes he is abandoned in his empty mansion by his rich wife Erica. Together with the omnipresent narrator, a weird beatnik in sunglasses (imagine Peter Fonda playing Lou Reed) known only as 'Shadow', Harry picks up a freewheeler called Christine in the city and takes her back to the mansion. Erica returns home and the two women turn on him, further fuelling his paranoia. Wordplay, parlour games, mindf*cking and blackmail prove to be a lethal cocktail in a very strange ending. Is it all a dream? An hallucination? Do wide angle lenses, sped-up footage and bogus surrealism pass as true psychedelia? Does anybody still care?