"The Love-ins" is a hysterical and fictionalised take on the story of hippy guru Timothy Leary that sees Professor Barnett (Richard Todd) resigning from his university post in support of students expelled for publishing an underground newspaper. He becomes a cause célèbre with aspiring hippies taking up his half-formed peace and love slogans - his "Be more! Sense more! Love more!" being an obvious take on Leary's "Turn On! Tune In! Drop Out!". He heads to the Haight, gets caught up in a happening and moves into a crash pad with six hippies. With all the adulation, however, it isn't long until Barrett is taking himself way too seriously and is soon the speechifying head of an LSD cult. Director Arthur Dreifuss moves all this dopey plotting along at a rattling pace making great narrative leaps between scenes, leaving the audience with plenty of blanks to fill in. Writer Hal Collins tries to deliver a balanced take between the hippies and the squares and make a reasonable job at proselytizing for both sides. Every character and motivation is hugely stereotypical with every possible cliché thrown into the mix. In many ways "The Love-Ins" was hugely wide of the mark, but in other ways it was (accidentally) right on the zeitgeist - its theme of commercialisation of the hippy message being released just as the bright, beautiful dawn of hippy was beginning to muddy and darken and its downbeat climax presaging the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. ( )