Jay Shaw’s ‘Blue Sunshine’ from Mondo

Illustrator Jay Shaw tackles some of the most bizarre and insanely wonderful films in his design work. His recent task for Mondo was the 1978 cult film ‘Blue Sunshine,‘ the film finds itself at home in Shaw’s oeuvre of challenging and slightly damaged properties.

‘Blue Sunshine’ is the type of film you’d watch in the studio apartment of a friend you barely know, all stumbled and drunk on the couch and floor, sweaty from a night of drinking in a strange city. It’s a film designed to be a drunken college blur.

Here’s the film as explained by Wikipedia —

‘In the midst of a party a reveler croons to the rest of the room and has his hair suddenly pulled off by a curious friend. The bald crooner then has a psychotic break and starts killing everyone.

Jerry Zipkin (Zalman King), is wrongly accused of the murders, and tries to gather evidence to prove his innocence with the help of Alicia Sweeney (Deborah Winters).

He discovers that 10 years prior, a group of college kids had taken a new form of LSD called “Blue Sunshine,” which causes its users to lose their hair and become homicidal maniacs many years after their trip is over.

Zipkin manages to defeat the crazed bodyguard of a local politician, and save the shopping mall discothèque by carefully remembering the advice of the gun shop employee.’

The synopsis is a buffet of strange and manic storytelling, the hallmark of a ’70s cult horror film. Jay’s work is always fun to look at and his design for the vinyl soundtrack and the VHS re-release from Mondo Video is no different.

With Jay Shaw’s name attached to the project, I ordered the vinyl soundtrack, bought the movie, and read up on the film’s director Jeff Lieberman. He’s that kind of artist.

Here’s the information on the releases from Mondo —

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