Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Summer in Nebraska, 1919 and a group of bikers on vintage motorcycles ride across the prairies on their way to California. On their journey they find themselves being pursued by a town posse. They decide to lay low, and invite themselves onto an isolated farmed owned by two sisters. Daughters of an Indian medicine man. The younger sister is welcoming, while the older is weary as she uses sorcery to defuse any sort of threat. Trippy rural, low- budget horror-comedy-romance-drama... I don't know how to categorise this one. I mainly sorted this one out for Scott Glenn. A bizarre, laid-back atmosphere with a touch of airy mysticism and a bunch of familiar faces giving animated performances (Keith Carradine, Scott Glenn & Gary Busey playing hillbilly cousins). While atypical (just look at the death scenes and ominous underlining), it was rather annoying to sit through (mainly the performances - Christina Raines taking top honors, music and its erratic mood swings) and its plot is threadbare with very little happening throughout. "Hex" is a neurotic story of love, acceptance and horror. But it doesn't completely come together, as there's not much to hold it there.

When it really comes down to it, this is not a sophisticated movie. There's this soundtrack, see, and it's pretty goofy with lots of jaw harp boing boing and fiddle-de-doo tunes and that certain barnyard pig chase type music that often accompanies country/co boys falling in the dirt with that "aww, shucks" look upon their faces. But, like with all sorts of movies, there's just something about this (the copy I have of it is called "The Shrieking") movie that I adore. I'm not sure if it's the audacity of the movie for being as weird and unruly as it is yet still holding together, not sure if it's the way the actors all bounce off each other in a nice way or what...I think mostly it's just the unexpectedness of the script, truly one of the strangest stories I've ever seen on film and by the end we can look back at all the oddities and know that whoever wrote it must have had a very healthy supply of something that was probably illegal in the early seventies, because this is a drug movie. I GUESS it could be called "horror" but it isn't that exactly, and it is a "teen movie" more or less, but not like any other "teen horror movie" I've ever seen, and it does have a serious propensity for the incredibly goofy, but that goofiness makes the horror (when it actually does happen) quite horrific (the scene with the frog comes to mind)...I notice that this film has a very low rating on IMDb, and that's a shame because it's funny and kinda scary at times, and altogether interesting and entertaining, not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but worth watching. Anyone else notice this one "feels" very similar to "Dead Birds"?

WWI vet Whizzer (Keith Carradine) leads his ragtag motorcycle gang (including Scott Glenn and Gary Busey) into the tiny town of Bingo, Nebraska. They quickly get into it with another gang (led by Dan Haggerty) and hide out on the farm of half-breed sisters Oriole (Cristina Raines, billed as Tina Herazo) and Acacia (Hilarie Thompson). When the gang begins to offend Oriole (either via rape or bad manners), she starts to use her deceased father's shaman tricks to off them. Man, what a totally odd film. The Prism VHS (as THE SHRIEKING) tries to sell it as straight up horror, but this could easily fit on the cult board due to the mixing of genres. Within its horror trappings, it is also a period piece, an art flick, a road movie, a comedy, a drug flick, a romance, and a revenge thriller. I suspect it was greenlit in a post- EASY RIDER haze (20th Century Fox produced it). The story is from Vernon Zimmerman (director of UNHOLY ROLLERS) and Doran William Cannon (writer of SKIDOO and BREWSTER MCCLOUD), so you can guess when the oddness comes from. Director Leo Garen and Stephen Katz receive the screenplay credit. Everyone in the cast is good with Raines/Herazo being the stand out as the sister with the darker edge. Also worth seeing for the bit where Busey refuses to smoke some pot. Gorgeous locales in South Dakota stand in for Nebraska. The film also ends with one of the most baffling shots I've seen it a long time as Whiz and Oriole head off on his motorbike and see modern era jet fighters zoom over their heads.

Nebraska in the early 1900's: Dour, serious Oriole (flinty Christina Raines) and sweet, flighty Acacia (the adorable Hilarie Thompson) are a couple of strange half-breed sisters who live on a remote farm in the middle of nowhere. They give food and shelter to a gang of scruffy, but basically decent bikers: cocky leader Whizzer (amiable Keith Carradine), excitable yahoo Jimbang (Scott Glenn), rowdy good ol' boy Giblets (the ever-wacky Gary Busey), gawky, bespectacled nerd Golly (the likable Mike Combs), mute Chupo (Robert Walker), and feisty motorcycle mama China (sexy, spunky spitfire Doria Cook). Oriole puts a hex on the bikers after Giblets attempts to rape Acacia. Director/co-writer Leo Garen concocts a genuinely bizarre and compelling handy dandy multi-genre period biker Gothic horror-Western combo that emphasizes a spooky and ambiguous atmosphere over snappy pacing and cheap scare scenes. This gloriously gaga feature perfectly epitomizes the anything-goes screwball experimental sensibility of the early 70's; this in turn gives the movie a certain peculiar appeal. Charles Rosher, Jr.'s pretty, picturesque cinematography makes snazzy use of fades, dissolves and freeze frames. Charles Bernstein's eerie, offbeat, flavorsome hillbilly bluegrass score likewise hits the spot. Dan "Grizzly Adams" Haggerty pops up in a small role as macho hot rodder Brother Billy. An engaging and interesting only-in-the-70's cinematic curio.