The Big Cube (1969)

Great Film overall

good back-story, and good acting

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A potential treasure trove for MST3000, "The Big Cube" is a hideously flawed film from the year man first walked on the moon. One (the moonwalk) was a technological mile stone; the other represents the nadir of filmmaking.Still, there are laughs to be had by viewing this flop that features Lana Turner as a retired actress who marries a man with a spoiled daughter who resents her new stepmother. The daughter meets a fortune-hunting medical student (played by George Chakiris) who dabbles with the manufacture and ingestion of LSD. He manipulates the daughter into a deadly scheme, hoping to pocket some of the family coin.George and the other young actors get to speak lines that might come from a "Laugh-In" skit. It's all very groovy yet heavy, man. Expect go-go boots and psychedelic nonsensical graffiti. Meanwhile, the "adults" exist in a soap-opera world. The horrendous dialogue is complemented by bad acting, insipid and annoying music, amateurish camera work and lighting, a pointless and meandering plot, confusing editing, and laughable characterizations.The end result is a film that feels like a compilation of freshman year film students' projects edited into one incongruous and inferior mess.

***SPOILERS*** Not so unintentional funny film -the filmmakers had to know what they were doing-about the 1960's drug generation with 1940's sexy blond swather girl Lana Turner as washed up actress Adriana Roman who in her 40's who gets stoned on LSD and driven to almost kill herself by her bird brain step-daughter Lisa Winthrop, Karin Mossberg, and her drug pushing boyfriend Johnny Allen, George Chakiris. Marrying multi millionaire businessman Charles Winthrop, Daniel O'Herlihy, Adriana finds that her step-daughter Lisa is anything but happy with her getting between her and poppa. That in Lisa feeling that she's a gold digger only after her father's money and nothing else.As it soon turns out it's Lisa boyfriend medical student Johnny Allen who after her dad's money and is using her to get his greedy hands on it. Johnny is also mixing up LSD in the collage lab and selling it to students on campus that on one case cause a student to overdose on it. Kicked out of collage Jonny now goes full tilt as a both drug pusher as well as lover-boy in getting a very naive-in not seeing through him- Lisa to marry the bum. It's later that poppa Winthrop is lost at sea in a Caribbean storm when Lisa as well as Johnny find out that he left all his millions to his wife of about a week Adriana to do with what she pleases!Johnny soon concocts this plan to drive Adriana insane by slipping-or spiking- LSD into her sleeping pills and-after her freaking out- have her declared unable to run the family affairs. Johnny goes even farther in trying to drive the by now out of her skull Adraina to commit suicide which finally wakes up Lis to what he's really up to and that being in love with her, which turned out to be a joke, has nothing at all to do with it.****SPOILERS**** It's Adraina's good friend and playwright Frederick Lonsdale, Richard Egan, who smells a rat in what Johnny Allen and Lisa are up to and plans to expose them by having Adriana return to the theater in one last play that he wrote for her that's to snap her out of her forced amnesia, she still doesn't know that her husband Charles was lost at sea, and have her realized that she's been victimized by both her step-daughter Lisa and her boyfriend Johnny Allen. Depressing ending for Johnny who ends up freaking out on LSD and competing, in his roach and rat infested dive, with an ant for a sugar cube, thus the title of the film, laced with his last drop of LSD. As for Adriana she overcame her drug or LSD addiction by marrying Frederick Lonsdale and as for her daughter Lisa she's now a volunteer at a local drug clinic helping out those that her former boyfriend Johnny Allen got addicted. P.S Among the wild and crazy drug or LSD scenes in the film it also had one of the first openly and shocking nude sense that really titillated it's audience who up until then, 1969, was almost never seen in US made movies.

"The Big Cube" came out at the height of the counter-culture movement in 1969. It's a groovy, sometimes campy melodrama about a teenager (Karin Mossberg) who is negatively influenced by the wicked medical student she's dating (George Chakiris). They implement "gaslighting" techniques on her sweet stepmother (Lana Turner) to acquire inheritance. Dan O'Herlihy plays the husband of Lana's character and Richard Egan her good friend. Carlos East plays a "right on" artist and Pamela Rodgers the teen's swinging best friend.Despite some roll-your-eyes campiness, mainly by Pamela Rodgers, the first half is entertaining as it tries to depict the hip late 60's scene, at least as far as Hollywood producers imagined it. Speaking of Rodgers, she's absolutely perky and likable and has a cute face, but her topless dance routine shows that she really wasn't very sexy, unless you're into thin, non-curvy women. In any case, the movie's amusing in a "far out" kind of way. Unfortunately, it takes a decidedly dull turn as soon as the youths start freaking out the stepmother with LSD. It's so bad it's tempting to tune-out. However, I like the comeuppance and redemption of the conclusion.Lana was 47 during filming and looked good. The film runs 98 minutes and was shot in Acapulco and Mexico City, Mexico. GRADE: C (or 4.5/10)

Lawdy, I just now finally got to see the infamous "Lana Turner trips out on LSD" 1969 freakout flick The Big Cube - nothing I've heard about it could have prepared me! Cross Riot on Sunset Strip with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the Trip, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, and an episode of Laugh In, and that's The Big Cube! Hippie orgy, LSD club called the Trip with psychedelic bands and acid-soaked sugar cubes, a ton of hysterical hallucinations, and the most UNhip dialogue ever to come out of the mouths of purported hippies! And Lana, wow, just...wow.Real gone, baby. Like, wildsville. Gotta cube those squares, man, cube 'em up big time...