Chappaqua

Recut for video release in 1994, this rich kid's vanity project remains one of the more embarrassing artyfacts from the '60s. Rooks (born in Chappaqua, a sacred burial site for Native Americans) was a teenage alcoholic who turned to stimulants, downers, narcotics and hallucinogens; he spent a month at a Swiss detox clinic in 1962, and uses memories of that attempted cure as the framework for a gibbering mix of 'drama', documentary and fantasy. Counter-culture icons lend misguided support (Barrault as the doctor, Burroughs as the addictive tendency personified) and Rooks gets to cavort with assorted dolly-bird friends in crass 'psychedelic' sequences. Most alarming, it looks as if it could have been a seminal influence on Oliver Stone.