Premonition
Premonition
| 01 November 1972 (USA)
Premonition Trailers

A hippie student and his friends share deadly premonitions.

Reviews
SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie
Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.
Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
HumanoidOfFlesh I know that Alan Rudolph disowns his first two low-budget horror movies "Premonition" and "Barn of the Naked Dead",but the premise of "Premonition" is certainly fresh and interesting.Red flowers cause three hippie musicians to have premonitions when they see their own deaths.They then start dying in the manner of their earlier premonitions.Virtually forgotten "Premonition" offers some eerie hallucinations and visions.The storyline is often disjointed and the hippie culture of early 70's is well-captured.Very eerie electro score is another highlight of trippy "Premonition".So if you enjoyed "Barn of the Naked Dead" like I did don't hesitate to check out Alan Rudolph's psychedelic debut.7 red flowers out of 10.
hplus A music band shacks up in a cabin to practice for an audition at a hippie gathering of some sort -- all the while smoking weed from a mysterious red flower that gives them hallucinations and nightmares. The acting was both bad and good; at points it was natural, at points terrible. The film was well shot, the locations real dirty and gritty and there we're some beautiful shots of landscapes and women, along with some wonderfully freaky imagery. Other highlights include the music; you have folksy guitar rhythms, charming b-movie pulsating synths, and a wonderful dancing hippie sequence towards the end. If you're into rare b movies, and can tolerate bad editing, incomprehensible story lines, and characters narrating the story directly into the camera, it's worth seeking out for the hippies alone.
InjunNose I last saw this movie about ten years ago, so my review will probably come off as a bit sketchy. Briefly, "Premonition" centers around a group of hippie musicians who discover some unusual red flowers, smoke them, and experience terrifying hallucinations. Or ARE they just hallucinations? As a horror film, "Premonition" is very understated--almost too much so. (Much of the script is preoccupied with character development but the characters are dull, so you never really feel involved with them.) But what it lacks in excitement, it more than makes up for in terms of atmosphere and mood. The "hallucination" scenes are quite disturbing and, as the members of the hippie troupe start to become obsessed with what they see under the influence of the red flowers (and with what it all could mean), the viewer is overtaken by a flesh-crawling sensation of slow, certain doom. This is precisely what I look for, but find so rarely, in a horror movie. "Premonition" was never easy to find, and will be even less so in the post-VHS age. But if you ever run across a copy, snatch it up. The soundtrack is terrific (even the corny, ersatz-folk theme song is used to chilling effect) and perfectly complements the general theme of the film...i.e., the nature of reality and what lies beyond the limits of our normal, everyday perception. Congratulations to Alan Rudolph for putting together a creepy, effective, one-of-a-kind genre picture!
EyeAskance A sidestepped horror film mostly noted as an early effort from Alan Rudolph, PREMONITION is a hazy, mystical horror outing which involves a hippie music group taking residence in the pastoral outlands of the San Francisco Bay Area. Various interpersonal hostilities are vented, and numerous doobies passed around before they begin experiencing collective nightmares/hallucinations of impending doom. It's implied that this is a paranormal brain response triggered by exposure to strange red wildflowers, though there may be some nebulous connection to a malformed skeleton unearthed by one of the band members during an archaeological excavation some years earlier.PREMONITION is a distinctly early-70s product, alight with post-psychedelic artistic pushiness and intermittent brushes of electronic music by pre-famed Harold Budd. It's an ambling, occasionally intriguing work of psychotomimetic vagary, and probably too experimental and ambiguous for mainstream audience appreciation. While the film has definite handicaps, primarily with pacing and concatenation, it does possess a gauzy "will-o'-the-wisp" eeriness which is unique and variably effective.Possibly the most tranquil horror film you'll ever see...it's a peculiar one, to be sure. 4.5/10