This enigma has heart. Humble start, following a folk minstrel, who then breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the audience. A truly astounding desert expedition sequence, mainly due to the eerie soundtrack. Strange dreams. Touching moments. A ridiculous post-Woodstock music rave. The only complaints I have are (1) it's padded, and (2) the ending simply trails off, notwithstanding a standard double-ending.Re padding, a bit much repetitive squabbling. Re the ending, this is where I took away points. I really believed the end of the world was nigh throughout, so I was taken aback when Andy was so easily dispatched and that was that. But then comes the double-ending, an announcer building up some tension about further deaths, and finally we find the flowers proliferating, as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and so forth. That part seemed tacked on as a nod to propriety, but without that ending there would be a dull thud.

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.

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!

I found a VHS copy of this film for the equivalent of 50c when I was a kid at a junk sale with the title "Tales of Terror - The Impure - Wild Rider" and it became a mystery to be unravelled for this particular small town boy from England. It seemed so strange and other-worldy. The film itself is a hippie-fied self indulgent psychedelic mess but is entertaining all the same, especialy the freak out festival scene. This got played in the background at more than a few parties of my youth. I always wondered who would make and appear in such a film and now thanks to imdb I know. It was sad to hear Carl Crow drowned in 1978.But I'm interested to find out more about what the rest of the cast went on to. Be warned the electronic music which starts up when the deadly flower comes into view and that accompanies a lot of the dream sequences is very annoying to 21st century ears. That said your chances of finding a copy of this film and seeing it or of reading this review are pretty slim.