The Mike Douglas Show with John Lennon & Yoko Ono; Timothy Leary's Dead

Remember the Hammer Famine? Those days back in the mid-to-late '60s when troubled troubadours sat around the protest campfire singing "If I Had a Hammer"? Baby boomers with a hankering to re-visit the days of their flower children youth will appreciate a pair of "trips" down memory lane with two key figures of the counterculture: John Lennon and Timothy Leary.From February 14th-18th, 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-hosted The Mike Douglas Show. We watched "Day 3" of Rhino's five-video set, The Mike Douglas Show with John Lennon & Yoko Ono, a day when rock 'n' roll history was made, as John Lennon and Chuck Berry teamed up for the first time to perform a duet of "Memphis." Unfortunately, they were accompanied by Yoko Ono, who, intermittently--and I'm being charitable here--'screeches' into the microphone for no apparent reason. Aside from the music--and keep in mind that includes two (2!) complete songs by Mike Douglas--viewers will see Hilary Redleaf talking about macrobiotics, Joseph Blatchford pontificating on the Peace Corps for about 10 minutes (roughly, 9 minutes and 30 seconds longer than he would be allowed on Oprah! today), and David Rosenboom hooking up Lennon and Douglas to a biofeedback/synthesizer contraption. The four other programs in the video/book set include such varied guests as Ralph Nader, Bobby Seale, Jerry Rubin, Louie Nye, and Vivian Reed. I suppose nostalgia buffs will appreciate this, though the set has far more value for archival collections than as a reason to pop some corn. Optional. Aud: P.One popular counterculture figure who did not appear on The Mike Douglas Show with John Lennon & Yoko Ono in 1972 was Dr. Timothy Leary, who--at the time of taping--was hiding out from U.S. authorities in Switzerland (having moved there, we're told in Paul Davids' fawning documentary Timothy Leary's Dead, after a run-in with Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers--Cleaver apparently having briefly kidnapped Leary's then-wife). Chronicling the life, times and death of the famed psychedelics guru (whose mantra "turn on, tune in and drop out" galvanized a generation into experimenting with LSD), Davids' film is--as cinema--an utter mess. Although title cards such as "Prison, 1970-1976" suggest some form of chronological order, the movie never seems to light long enough on any one period of Leary's life to offer a coherent let alone rounded portrait (you'll hear almost no negative commentary in this fan's tribute.) Instead, highlights emerge: Harvard professor Leary leaving academia (by request) to continue experiments with LSD in the early 1960s, an amazing prison escape in 1970, hitting the college lecture circuit during the "Me Decade," becoming a cyberspace advocate during the '90s, and, of course, having his head removed and cryogenically frozen at the end of the movie (viewers should be forewarned that this is a graphic and rather shocking scene which many believe to be a stunt; see for yourself, and tell me if that "cryogenics" head chamber doesn't look a lot like an old prop from an Ed Wood film).Despite the fact that it's a grossly self-indulgent film (on Leary's and the filmmaker's part), pointlessly filled with naked interviewees, bad street musicians and juvenile psychedelic montages, Timothy Leary's Dead almost succeeds. Why? For the simple reason that the elfin Leary is--for most of the movie, anyway--most vibrantly alive, occasionally insightful, and consistently defying the establishment with puckish glee. At $19.95, this faltering biography of "the most dangerous man alive"--according to Richard Nixon--is a strong, optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)