Hex

Largely a mess, but an engaging one. A horror film/Western/World War I biker movie, it exudes an improbable degree of charm precisely because of a freewheeling script that refuses to be tied to any one genre. Very obviously made in the shadow of Corman's Gas-s-s-s, it traces the consequences of the accidental meeting between two Lawrentian sisters - living alone on the Nebraskan farm left to them by their Indian father - and a gang of oddly innocent bikers in the early years of the century. While the expected thuggery and rape almost come about, mayhem of another kind is introduced when one of the sisters begins to conjure her dead father's familiars to do their worst, resulting in a string of psychedelic sequences. Although the girls' motivations remain consistently traditional (well, almost), on the whole the film exudes the feeling of being, almost subliminally, a nostalgic valediction to the counter-culture.