Ha-Trempist

Plot synopsis:
Young American hippie and war veteran, Mike (Asher Tzarfati), travels to Israel shortly after his involvement in Vietnam. Hitchhiking and "bumming around" Hippie Mike meets up with three Israelis along his journey — stage actress Elizabeth (Lily Avidan), another female hippie friend (Tzila Karney), and her Hebrew-speaking boyfriend Komo (Shmuel Wolf). They join a larger group of hippies and decide to form an isolated community on a deserted island, where they can live in peace "without clothes, without government, and without borders."
The hippies are not without their foils, and find them in two gun-toting, top-hat-clad, mime-like enforcers (who regularly appear out of nowhere) and who are out to make Mike's life miserable. Reviewer Brian Orndorf notes that, “Sefer doesn't explain who these guys are or what they're ultimately after, hinting that the duo might be the personification of "The Man" out to silence the hippie uproar.”
Led by American Mike, the quartet of hippies manages to survive a gun attack by the mad mimes and the group flees to the uninhabited island. On the road trip to the island, the hippies quickly forget their worries, tossing their clothes in the wind and enjoying the ride in Elizabeth’s chic convertible car. As they drive down the Israeli coast, they stop along the way to make love and to pick up the supplies they'll need on their island - including the purchase of groceries and a live lamb.
They finally arrive at their intended destination and park their car on shore, using a small dingy boat to row their way out to the island. Upon reaching the tiny isolated land mass, the elated hippies do a free form dance, skinny dip and, when dusk hits, settle in for some delicious canned food by the fireside. That night, the hippies pronounce their love for freedom and for each other as well as proclaiming how, “full of shit” the world is. They wake up the following morning however to discover that both their boat and lamb have mysteriously vanished overnight.
Although Mike makes a valiant effort, shark-infested waters make it impossible to swim back to the mainland where the car sits on shore. As the women get hungry and tempers begin to flare, the men forage for food, winding up with little more than a handful of barnacles Mike managed to scrub off some rocks. The discovery of the still very much alive lamb leads to the final apocalyptic scene. Much like the then recent events surrounding the Manson Family hippie clan, along with a healthy dose of inspiration from The Lord of the Flies, the idyllic situation quickly descends into paradise lost as the dark true nature of unregenerate man, hippie rhetoric notwithstanding, is laid bare.

Tags: brainwashing, psychedelic, cult, murder, anti war

Review:
Awful movie, but a blast to watch with friends.
This bizarre movie was made by a former lifeguard turned short film maker, stars fairly good actors (some of whom were stars on the Tel Aviv theater stages for years to come) hamming it up or just given odd direction, has an alright but VERY repetitive score by one of Israel's greatest composers, and contains such unforgettable scenes as the "STOP PUSHING BUTTONS" speech, a psychedelic dream sequence involving smashing giant tape recorder things with a sledgehammer, a hippie-palooza in an abandoned warehouse, random toplessness, cardboard sharks, loooooooooong wandering across desert islands, and the main cast screaming out "Wonderful Feeling!" over and over.
If you can get your hands on this film (or if that DVD ever comes out), get some friends over and get ready to riff the hell out of it: this film is plan 9 quality stuff, and I love every minute of it..
Very little has been written in English (including on IMDb) about this film that had apparently fallen off the map.
HIPPIE has also gone on to become a midnight movie hit in Israel: http://israelity.com/2011/01/09/hippie-sighting-in-israel/ Note: Because the film is so obscure, I have included a much more detailed synopsis of the plot than I normally do.
If you want to preserve your innocence about the story, I suggest you skip to the headline - "End of Spoilers" below.
But, believe me, the plot synopsis doesn't compare to the experience of watching the film!
************** PLOT SYNOPSIS - SPOILERS **********AN American HIPPIE IN ISRAEL (aka THE HITCH-HIKER aka RIGHT ON!).
A bearded dude named Mike (Asher Tzarfati) from NYC arrives in Israel without any real plans or friends to stay with.
He hitches a ride with a free-spirited Israeli theater actress (Lily Avidan).
Mike says that he is traveling the world after having served in the evil Vietnam war with all of it's "Button pushers!" They immediately make love and then set out to find other free spirits.
In the course of an afternoon they pick up another hippie couple (Tzila Karney and Shmuel Wolf) who, in turn, hook them up with a larger band of free spirits (the male, Wolf, speaks only Hebrew).
They go to an abandoned building to sing some folk songs, smoke weed, drink a lot and start screwing - in other words, an idyllic hippie gathering!
Now, it must be noted here that a pair of mysterious white-faced mimes with machine guns are following Mike around.
Now, they show up in the abandoned building and gun down and kill everybody except for Mike, the actress and the first couple they hooked up with.Bummer.
But, this little massacre isn't going to stop Mike.
The quartet are now off to a desolate island where they will show the world that you can just be free and happy all day in a commune-like atmosphere.
Along the way to the coast-line they pick up a goat at a market and Mike drifts off to nap and daydream (he calls it a "flake out").
Only, the camera director Amos Sefer uses was apparently not able to properly achieve the slow motion effect he wanted so Mike "acts" in slow motion as well!
Wait until they get to the island!After stopping to pick up an inflatable raft and some food and booze, the quartet (and the goat!) paddle out to the island, leaving their car on the shore.
That night it's a grand party of food, drink, sex and loud proclamations to the world that they are "FREE!
Mike says he can swim well, so he'll just swim to shore and get help.
The two big plastic sharks are amusing as they re-appear a few times and always at the same depth in the water and the same distance from each other.Trapped!
The island has no vegetation and apparently the water has no fish save for a few crustaceans (and the sharks), so the quartet immediately switches from idyllic heaven mode to outright panic.
Meanwhile, back at the shore, the two Mimes show up, jump into the quartet's car and drive away.The End.******** END OF SPOILERS ********************Now, if all of that seems like a fairly orderly and scripted film, let me assure you it's not.
Save for the last 10 or 15 minutes on the island, everything in the film seems only vaguely written.
Still, I kind of enjoyed the hippie vibe to a certain extent.
It plays out somewhat realistically like it would in life with Mike drifting from place to place (he mentions he had been in Europe, including Rome just before coming to Israel).
Of course, nobody really enjoys watching someone else's home movies!
The movie doesn't make Mike a very sympathetic character, but, it does seem to be in accord with his Anti-Vietnam and free spirit attitudes.
It's not really a surprise that even in a movie with a somewhat moralistic 'warning' against the hippie ideal, that the movie itself indulges in nudity, sex and drug use, for many a film going back to Cecil B.
DeMille's biblical tales have done so (DeMille always got away with more sinful stuff from the censors because of his biblical themes).Mike's daydream about raging against the machine ("Button-Pushers!") is also echoed in the two Mimes (Robots, perhaps?), who could be interpreted as representing "The Man".
If you enjoy laughing AT a tedious film with stoned friends, this might just be for you..
I believe that Markastzm's review gets everything right, except one very thing.
Indeed, he is correct that the mimes and the sharks both represent "The Man", and also that the film does not refute hippie ideals, but rather shows the unrelenting glee "The Man" takes in squashing those embracing those ideals.
Markastzm is wrong, however, when he states that "Neither the characters, the actors, nor the director take themselves too seriously".
Flying to Israel from New York City, American hippie and Vietnam War veteran Asher Tzarfati (as Mike) is picked up while hitchhiking, by attractive actress Lily Avidan (as Elizabeth).
After copulating at her place, the twosome enjoy a fun hippie lifestyle.
The foursome end up on a deserted island paradise where they either go naked or wear tight bikinis...The island is supposed to be a paradise, with plenty of freedom.
Apparently, the outside world isn't going to let Amos Sefer's hippies obtain freedom without a fight.
This is an allegorical story hampered by the fact that the characters we're supposed to like are so annoying, we're often rooting for them to get shot or run over.
The location footage is most appealing.*** An American Hippie in Israel/ Ha-Trempist (1972) Amos Sefer ~ Asher Tzarfati, Lily Avidan, Shmuel Wolf, Tzila Karney.
This feels like the people who made it actually believed in it, in the Hippie credo.
It also feels like they kind of made it up as they went along and don't really know how to make a movie.The best scene is a silent nightmare sequence both in a funny way and in an inspired way--too bad the whole film can't live up to this level.
And the basic idea of a hippie Lord of the Flies is good too.
But the action and violence is all laugh out loud poorly done and the long scenes of hippie talk need better actors or an actual script.The music is quite good at times but gets repeated as do the nice travel shots out into the barren wilds.The surreal nature of the two "Mine" figures and much of the rest of it feels like a stage troop decided to film a half rehearsed stage show and that's what we have.
Others make you glad you can fast forward.It's well worth a look if you either like and or like to laugh at hippies at their pure core.
They just needed some real actors and a real filmmaker to put it over, though the lead isn't bad and looks the part.
Oh yes there are naked hippie chicks.A fun, if pokey, movie that you have to see just to say you've seen it all.
I can't believe I wasted an hour on this movie.
Hippies obviously wrote(?) this, shot it, directed it, all while stoned.
I haven't been stoned in a good 35 years, so maybe state-dependent learning would come into play, and I'd truly be able to appreciate this ever-loving mess of a movie.
I have to write ten lines of review, which is about seven lines more than the script had, or for that matter, the emesis-inducing 1970's rock song that keeps playing through the entire movie..
I supposed that the few hippies who bothered to see "An American Hippie In Israel" during its theatrical release probably reacted with a "far out!" at the time.
For a long time, there seems to be no real plot, just people going place to place and occasionally taking off their clothes.
Then it turns into a weird story of people stuck on a desert island.
I don't have a good idea what the point of this movie was supposed to be.
There is some nice Israeli scenery, but a good look only goes a little way in a movie - you need a good story and well-written characters as well, and this movie simply doesn't have those two important things..
An American Hippie in Israel (1972)** (out of 4)American hippie Mike (Asher Tzarfati), angered from what he saw in Vietnam, heads off to form a civilization where love and peace is everywhere.
He ends up in Israel where he meets three fellow hippies and they head off to an island for fun times.Here's another film that was pretty much forgotten to time but Grindhouse Releasing managed to save it and turn it into a surprising hit in the midnight circles.
AN American HIPPIE IN ISRAEL isn't as crazy as some of the others film that the company has rescued but it's certainly a weird little film that's hard to explain.
I'm going to guess that writer-director-producer Amos Sefer had big ideas about peace and happiness but the film manages to be a laugh riot at times with its silly dialogue before turning into a downright bizarre nightmare.The biggest flaw with the film is certainly the screenplay, which doesn't seem to know what it wants to do because the majority of the running time just seems to be dialogue- free while the four characters walk around, smile, laugh, get naked and just wonder around without any purpose.
Some of the scenes drag on to a point where you'll want to scream at the director to yell cut or for a producer to walk on camera and ask what the hell is going on.
Just take a look at the sequence where the American, speaking English, and the Israeli, speaking Hebrew, argue because they can't understand one another.
Several scenes just drag on to the point where they become annoying and aggravating.The performances are pretty much what they are but I must say that Tzarfati was "good" to the point where he keeps you entertained.
Shmuel Wolf, Lily Avidan and Tzila Karney play the three other hippies and all of them are at least interesting enough to keep you involved in their story.
The dialogue gets some of the biggest laughs because it basically sounds like a non-hippie trying to write hippie dialogue.
It's quite laughable at times and perhaps this is why so much of the film is dialogue-free; because what dialogue there is is pretty bad.I'm not going to ruin the final fifteen-or-so minutes of the film but they're certainly crazy and makes very little sense.
A lot of the laughs from midnight crowds probably happens to what the four "turn into" and there's no doubt that you could really rip the film a new one because of it but at the same time it's a pretty bleak vision.
AN American HIPPIE IN ISRAEL isn't a masterpiece or a complete disaster.
It's an interesting little film to say the least..
I did like this movie however I wouldn't want to see it again.
There are a lot of long scenes of nothing which I remedied by going to you tube and listening to a review while the movie was playing, sort of a commentary kind of thing you see in DVDs. That did work and when they would start talking again, I paused the review.This movie kept my interest until the end and that was something.
Turned into a cave man movie where they all stopped talking and grunted and growled.
They didn't like war but they sure had a cat fight battle at the end.I liked the meanings of the 2 mimes as maybe the government and when they were on the island became the sharks.
And the speech about "pushing buttons" reminded me a little of the "I'm as mad hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore" speech.Maybe a better movie to watch if you are doped up..
Watch this film!
I am dumbfounded by the wholesale inability of any of the other 21 user and critic reviewers to comprehend the message of this heavy handed & straight forward allegorical film.
Do yourself a favor and just watch the film.
Do not read any of the other reviews before doing so as they all miss the main points in a big way.
Don't even read the rest of this review until after you watch the film.
Okay, I'll assume the reader is back now after watching the film, or has disregarded my warnings and has read at least some of the other reviews and has a basic knowledge of the plot.
This is an anti-war, pro-hippie anti-establishment movie.
The ultimate descent into barbarism in the end is not the condemnation of the hippie ethic that other simple minded reviewers seem to believe it is.
It is simply an examination of the the human condition and our predisposition to return to our primitive nature in the face of resource scarcity, communication difficulties, and deliberate pressures put upon us by those who seek to profit from our misery.
The "mimes" are not just characters to drive the plot.
The sharks and the mimes are the same characters.
If not for the presence of the sharks, the four would not be squeezed into the resource limited confines of the island.
The sharks were deliberately conceived to be surreal so that the viewer would immediately recognized them as simply a new incarnation of the mimes.
It simply demonstrates that under difficult conditions of high stress which can arise quickly even the most kind and good natured individuals with the best of intentions can be pushed to the basest levels of human behavior.
I think that it is incorrect to interpret this as a flaw in the hippie ethic.
In the end, it is the final scene, not addressed by a single other reviewer that truly tells the tale regarding the message intended by this film.
The two mimes, with smug smiles on their faces get into the car and prepare to drive away in the stolen automobile of their victims, satisfied in accomplishing their work of turning loving caring beings into a pile of bloodied slaughtered lambs.
In the final shot of the island Mike even grabs the dead lamb and pulls it onto the pile of their bodies making them as one sacrificial mass.
This movie is symbolic and allegorical, but come on people, it is not nearly as hard to understand as every review I have read makes it out to be.
This is a fun movie.
Neither the characters, the actors, nor the director take themselves too seriously.
There is a definite impression that they had a great time making this movie and meant to inject a bit of over the top campiness into it.
It is not the greatest movie of all time, but it is definitely worth a watch and is definitely a period piece that was worth the restoration and reissue done by Grindhouse.
If you try to enjoy this movie on it's face, without an interest in trying to understand it's message, I think you will be disappointed and perhaps walk away with only a mild and mistaken appreciation of it as a B movie cult novelty at best.
This movie can be much more than that to one who views it as a light-hearted, zany, counter-culture alternative look at both the beauty and frailties of the human condition and as an explanatory tale which cautions against falling prey to the powers that be who seek to divide and conquer in their pursuit of power and profit..
Mike is Dead.
The only saving grace of this movie is the symbolism that keeps popping up.
Originally titled, the Hitchhiker, this movie has been defined as a metaphorical counter-culture film.
The central character of the story is Mike, who is introduced wearing goat fur.
Among being a veteran, Mike identifies to the audience as being a "Hippie".
Throughout the entire movie, Mike walks around without shoes or sandals.
Bare feet have come to symbolize innocence or childhood in a glorifying perception of freedom from real-life requirements.
Others see Mike's shoe less character as one that is dead.
Meaning, Mike may be a ghost if not dead inside.
After all, Mike is being chase by two Mimes that look like Undertakers.
Returning from the War, he has given up on the world and is constantly trying to find beauty and love.
Mike's dream is completely silent.
The movie is flawed in many ways, but throughout the movie, you can see symbolism in the innocence in the white car they drive, the ruins on the island, the biblical way they dance for joy on the edge of the beach, and most of all, symbolism in the lamb.
The ending is powerful and delivers the most obvious message for its audience.
And that is the biggest shame about the movie.