The excellent documentary WOODSTOCK showed us fine musical performances onstage, and an innocent, funloving audience offstage. GIMME SHELTER is the flip side. This is certainly no concert film; all the acts, especially the Rolling Stones, sound atrocious on the poorly-mixed, near-monaural sountrack. The camera spends almost no time on any of the Stones other than Mick Jagger, and nearly all of the Altamont footage is shot from behind the band to feature the audience, which, as it turns out, is the stroke of genius that makes this movie so special.
The audience is the true "star" of the film. As opposed to the high-but-joyous Woodstock crowd, those who attended Altamont are wasted beyond comprehension, stressed to the max, and abjectly miserable. Forget the corny "this is your brain on drugs" shtick. GIMME SHELTER shows you what really happens when drug usage gets totally out of control--an onscreen textbook on poor judgement. If you really want to make an intelligent personal decision about the use of recreational drugs, just watch WOODSTOCK and GIMME SHELTER back-to-back.
The audience is the true "star" of the film. As opposed to the high-but-joyous Woodstock crowd, those who attended Altamont are wasted beyond comprehension, stressed to the max, and abjectly miserable. Forget the corny "this is your brain on drugs" shtick. GIMME SHELTER shows you what really happens when drug usage gets totally out of control--an onscreen textbook on poor judgement. If you really want to make an intelligent personal decision about the use of recreational drugs, just watch WOODSTOCK and GIMME SHELTER back-to-back.
