Frag's Ass

SYNOPSIS: FRAG’S ASS The year, 1982, San Diego. The plot turns around Balboa Naval Hospital near the park and zoo. Here, a decade before, in a closed annex of the psych ward, horrible medical experiments were performed on incoming Vietnam vets during Reagan’s tenure as governor, these initiated by a shadowy high ranking now ex-military man who presently has an important stake in Reagan’s presidency. Three of the script’s characters, who played different roles at Balboa, live at the Juniper Manor near the park--a halfway house for a colorful gaggle of loonies, Nam burnouts and alkie/druggies (most two out of three). It is presided over by Chancey Jones, the manager, a tyrant with the most to hide from Balboa days. The movie opens with another Balboa grad flipping out and being disappeared quickly to the VA Hospital psych ward in La Jolla. Enter John, a cynical 60s survivor with a dark past, soon after. He meets Tom, an affable but bitter Viking, whose anger exceeds John’s. When two of their friends are committed, John and Tom begin a series of black comedic pranks against the psychiatric community. John uses these to cover his agenda--one he’s been hired for by a mystery man who figures highly in the events years ago. Mark, the third Balboa alumni--(as psych tech, patient thwarted whistle-blower)–-colludes with John early to get the CO at Balboa. Mark, too, has an agenda. Enter Carol, a disillusioned Yuppie shrink, whom John sees in therapy for cover, and with whom he falls in star-crossed love (she’s unhappily married to a violent man, Edward). Meanwhile throughout, in the background Senate Confirmation hearings are airing on TV on C-span for a new Reagan appointee. Many twists: a suicide at the VA; John and Chancey’s deadly chess game is complicated by murder; a violent confrontation between Carol and Edward in the bay Area; a cop friend of John’s involvement and inadvertent complicity. A comedic/tragic Christmas Party at the end when Tom, John and Chancey meet their respective ends, while the residents celebrate a John-tooled windfall. Along the bumpy road: two riots (at the beach and the S.D. zoo), a hilarious string of messy arrests, psych commitments of bonafide shrinks in out-of-county wards, and a graphic orgy in the conference room at University Hospital, all made possible by a secret psychedelic (60s Dow-developed chemical warfare drug). Black humor, total irreverence, good dialogue, good action, some insight, broad appeal. Most especially. a well-placed pall over the flowers and love of the Sixties.