Blue Sunshine (film)

Blue Sunshine is a 1977 American horror film written and directed by Jeff Lieberman, and starring Zalman King, Deborah Winters, and Mark Goddard.

The plot focuses on a series of random murders in Los Angeles, in which the only common link between the perpetrators is a mysterious batch of LSD that they had all taken years prior.

Jerry is wrongly accused of the murders and goes on the lam, trying to gather evidence to prove his innocence, helped by his friends Alicia Sweeney and surgeon David Blume.

An on-screen epilogue states that Wayne was tested, found to have "extensive chromosomic aberrations", and confined to a sanitarium, and that 255 doses of Blue Sunshine are still unaccounted for.

Lieberman devised the story for Blue Sunshine after his brother, a physician, told him of accounts of people suffering nervous breakdowns associated with LSD they had taken years prior.

[7] Tom Hutchinson of The Sunday Telegraph praised Blue Sunshine, deeming it "the kind of terror tale guaranteed to put you into a state of shock for ages afterwards, besides acquainting us with director, Jeff Lieberman, who has an undeniable, if wilful, talent.

[5]Budd Wilkins of Slant Magazine gave the film two and a half stars out of five and called it "an unjustly neglected genre classic that delivers a deft fusion of horror-movie tropes, social satire, and cult-film weirdness.

"[12] In the Village Voice, Simon Abrams wrote:Shot at the end of 1976 and into early 1977, the influential film gradually amassed an eclectic but hardcore following over the years.

Its champions include Gremlins filmmaker Joe Dante and even the late critic Andrew Sarris, who praised “Lieberman’s directional talent” and the film’s “intriguing premise” when Blue Sunshine screened on TV in 1982.