Premonition (also known as Head or The Impure) is a 1972 horror film written and directed by Alan Rudolph. The film was Rudolph's first after being an assistant director of 11 episodes of the 1960s sitcom The Brady Bunch, as well as the films The Big Bounce (1969) and Riot (1969). Originally titled Head, the distributors first changed the title to Premonition and later for a time to Impure.
Red flowers cause three druggie college students to have premonitions when they see their own deaths. They then start dying in the manner of their earlier premonitions.
Rudolph based the film on a local rock group Sweetwater. He raised $25,000 from various people and made a film over ten days. "The challenge of translating this small amount into a finished movie overwhelmed my interests in the story," he recalled. Cast member Tim Ray was son of director Nicholas Ray. Part of the film was shot in the studios of Robert Aldrich who was a friend of Rudolph's father.
Rudolph later recalled, "My guess is that it wasnâÂÂt ambiguous enough. I believe the last time I saw Premonition was after it was done and I drove the only print to Arizona where it was second-billed at a drive-in for one weekend only. I remember watching it from my car being intrigued by the ending and cringing at everything else. I was hooked and humbled by the whole experience; encouraged that I knew enough to make a film and depressed I didnâÂÂt know what to put in it."
Shock Cinema wrote "Like so many young filmmakers of his era, his [Rudolph's] first feature as writer-director was an overwrought mess packed with tacky hallucinations, amateur performances and tripped-out. self-important melodrama... I'm usually a pretty easy mark for dippy, counterculture claptrap, but this crude, self-important, 79-minute bummer bored the bejesus out of me. The acting reeks, the production values are threadbare, itâÂÂs loaded with irritating sound effects, and (with the exception of low-key Baker) youâÂÂll want to mow down all of these annoying characters with a speeding Buick, ItâÂÂs hard to believe that anyone involved in this cinematic sludge went onto an actual career in film."