History Main / HorrorHippies

* In ''Series/GhostsUS'', Flower, a hippy in the 60's, wandered over to the mansion property from a local music festival. She was high at the time and tried to give a bear a hug. Seems bear-hugs with real bears aren't as much fun.
* In the ''Series/JonathanCreek'' episode "No Trace of Tracy," a ridiculous but friendly NewAgeRetroHippie group turns out to [[spoiler:have kidnapped and imprisoned a teenage girl and framed an innocent man for her disappearance, with money as the motive]].

* As noted above, the TropeMaker that cemented public distrust in hippies was UsefulNotes/CharlesManson, leader of a {{cult}} known as the Manson Family. The Manson Family was composed primarily of young women from middle-class backgrounds, many of whom were radicalized by Manson's teachings, hippie culture, communal living, and a hefty diet of narcotics like LSD. According to group member Susan Atkins, the Family believed that Manson was a manifestation of UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} and that he had prophesied an imminent, apocalyptic race war -- a conflict he named "Helter Skelter", after a song by Music/TheBeatles. They gained international attention after the murder of actress Creator/SharonTate and four others on August 9, 1969. Ironically, most of his fans nowadays aren't hippies, [[MisaimedFandom but people on the far-''right'' end of the political spectrum]], specifically neo-Nazis of an "accelerationist" bent who believe in overthrowing the system in order to establish their white supremacist utopia, and see Manson's plan as [[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alt-right-charles-manson-atomwaffen_n_5a146921e4b03dec824892e6 a blueprint for their own.]]

Compare AnimalWrongsGroup, FolkHorror and HillbillyHorrors. Contrast HippieTeacher and NewAgeRetroHippie. Often involves SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll.

* In ''Series/Series/GhostsUS'', Flower, a hippy in the 60's, wandered over to the mansion property from a local music festival. She was high at the time and tried to give a bear a hug. Seems bear-hugs with real bears aren't as much fun.

* Franchise/TheDCU: [[Characters/JusticeLeagueOfAmericaAntagonist Prometheus]]' parents were serial killer hippies, whose gunning down by cops were his StartOfDarkness.

* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' story "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy" involves a circus run by intergalactic hippies who have fallen under the control of ancient eldritch horrors.

* While [[DownplayedTrope not a serial killer or a cult leader]], Creator/HunterSThompson ''was'' a revolutionary and instigator, often causing so much trouble in his life that associating him with the free-loving stereotypes of TheSixties would be an exercise in futility. Such antics include pranking religious fanatics that lived next door to him in Big Sur by nailing a wild boar's head to their door and decorating its entrails on their car, sending a deer heart and a recording of animal noises to Creator/JackNicholson as a prank birthday gift (causing Jack -- who had a stalker at the time -- to hide in his basement until the police arrived), spending over a year with the Hells Angels to write the tell-all book about them that [[BreakthroughHit launched his career]], being very vocal about his gun collection, and writing many, many colorful soliloquies to describe how much he hated UsefulNotes/RichardNixon. The exact number of alleged things on his list of accomplishments that actually happened is still vague to this day.

* ''ComicBook/ThePunisher'': The ''Punisher: P.O.V.'' miniseries involves "Deke" Wainscroft and "Zonkers" Powell, a pair of former 1960s radicals and WesternTerrorists who use clumsily assembled homemade explosives to hold banks for ransom, blowing them up if their demands aren't met (and sometimes even when they are). While the duo claim to be all about power to the people and bringing down The Man, it's clear that they're just a pair of lazy idiot stoners who never spend any of their ill-gotten gains on anything other than booze, drugs, and women. Unfortunately for them, one of Zonkers' bombs blows up in his hands, killing Zonkers and badly burning Deke, who shortly thereafter is exposed to [[PsychoSerum an experimental super-soldier serum]]. The chemical transforms Deke into a deranged, disfigured superhuman with a [[{{Bloodlust}} thirst for blood]] and Zonkers' decapitated head [[BodyHorror melded to his chest]] -- one particularly disturbing scene features Deke mumbling '60s counterculture slogans while feeding blood to Zonkers' head.

* Thulsa Doom's ReligionOfEvil in ''Film/ConanTheBarbarian1982'' bears some resemblance to the People's Temple, with his acolytes carrying flowers and preaching about love (and also having orgies before sacrificing some of the sexy damsels who partake in such pleasures).

* The killers in the ''Series/PokerFace'' episode "Time of the Monkey" are two elderly hippies who [[spoiler:planned to bomb a high-school Model UN meeting back in the 1970s. In the present, when the informant who exposed the plan back then is transferred to their retirement community, they poison him. Then they murder a fellow resident who witnessed part of their plan (even though she didn't fully understand what she saw). They also repeatedly try to kill the heroine; even as they're being arrested, she realizes that they rigged her golf cart to explode.]]

* The killers in the ''Series/PokerFace'' episode "Time of the Monkey" are two elderly hippies who [[spoiler:planned to bomb a high school back in the 1970s. In the present, when the informant who exposed the plan back then is transferred to their retirement community, they poison him. Then they murder a fellow resident who witnessed part of their plan (even though she didn't fully understand what she saw). They also repeatedly try to kill the heroine; even as they're being arrested, she realizes that they rigged her golf cart to explode.]]

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneeshpuram Rajneeshpuram]], a commune built near the small town of Antelope, UsefulNotes/{{Oregon}}, was founded by the eastern spirituality/New Age guru Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh (aka "Osho") and his followers looking to build their own society. They quickly came into conflict with the residents of Antelope, which culminated in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Rajneeshee_bioterror_attack a mass food poisoning attack in 1984,]] meant to incapacitate voters in the nearby city of The Dalles before an election so that Rajneesh's followers could take over the Wasco County Circuit Court and the sheriff's office. To this day, it is the worst bioterrorist attack in US history. They are the subject of a Creator/{{Netflix}} original documentary series titled ''Wild Wild Country''. These days, the Rajneeshees' former compound has been converted to a Christian summer camp.

* ''Series/{{Quatermass}}'' presents a hippie-like movement called the Planet People, who are being mind-controlled by a malevolent alien force. Luckily, old people's brains are unaffected by the mind control, so are able to save the Earth from the pernicious influence of hippiedom. This was made in ''1979''.

* Thulsa Doom's ReligionOfEvil in ''Film/ConanTheBarbarian1982'' bears some resemblance to this trope, with his acolytes carrying flowers and preaching about love (and also having orgies before sacrificing some of the sexy damsels who partake in such pleasures).

* It's unclear if Krug and his gang from ''Film/TheLastHouseOnTheLeft'' identify as hippies or if they're just shaggy from the road, but they definitely have a Manson family vibe.

* UsefulNotes/JimJones was another infamous figure from the hippie movement, a self-appointed minister and Marxist activist who recruited peace-and-love types to join his {{cult}}, the Peoples Temple, eventually establishing the "Jonestown" compound in Guyana. Their [[KillEmAll horrifying end]] in a [[SuicidePact mass murder-suicide]] -- but not before assassinating US Congressman Leo Ryan when he went down there to investigate rumors of a cult -- cemented Jonestown as the TropeCodifier for the ApocalypseCult, not to mention DrinkingTheKoolAid.

Horror Hippies often spawn from {{commune}}s, many of their bad ideas swimming in a petri-dish of [[DrugsAreBad brain-cooking narcotics]] until they turn from quaint little clubs to horrifying {{cult}}s, all under the service of a charismatic [[TheSociopath sociopath]] that would lead them to revolution. This "revolution" usually involves kidnapping innocent people, [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil rape]], [[SerialKiller murder]], [[ColdBloodedTorture torture]], and InsaneTrollLogic brought to boil by a [[Creator/AndyWarhol Warhol Factory]]'s worth of mind-bending drugs.

* And, sticking with the rock theme, what has been identified as "the end of the Summer of Love" is the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert Altamont Free Concert.]] What was to be the "Woodstock of the West" ended with considerable violence, damage, four deaths, and the end of the days when Americans treated hippies as harmless. And what was to be a straightforward tour documentary of Music/TheRollingStones turned into the primary evidence of the whole sordid affair, ''Film/GimmeShelter1970''. [[HarsherInHindsight "It's just a shot away,"]] indeed.

* The protagonist of ''Film/LastShift'' is terrorized by a group of ghostly hippie cultists (obviously inspired by the Manson family) who killed themselves in the jail where she's been stationed for the night.

* ''Film/{{Joe}}'' is a deconstruction: while there are low-lives among the hippies (like the ones who steal Joe and Bill Compton's wallets), the real brutality is all from the "straights" Joe and Bill, who commit multiple murder.

* ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'': In "[[Recap/DarkwingDuckS1E35HeavyMental Heavy Mental]]", the F.O.W.L. psychic division consists of a disgraced major and two hippies, none of whom have powers. While the hippies aren't aggressive on their own, they're willing to do whatever Major Synapse wants (as long as it lets them avoid latrine duty). After gaining psychic powers from a stolen SHUSH device, they help abduct Darkwing and almost crush him under a block of ice.

Many examples of the trope borrow heavily from UsefulNotes/CharlesManson and the Manson Family's involvement in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tate%E2%80%93LaBianca_murders Tate-LaBianca Murders]], the various characters being [[{{Expy}} Expies]] and StockParodies of them and the event that made them so infamous.

* And, sticking with the rock theme, what has been identified as "the end of the Summer of Love" is the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert Altamont Free Concert.]] What was to be the "Woodstock of the West" ended with considerable violence, damage, four deaths, and the end of the days when Americans treated hippies as harmless. And what was to be a straightforward tour documentary of Music/TheRollingStones turned into the primary evidence of the whole sordid affair, ''Film/GimmeShelter''. [[HarsherInHindsight "It's just a shot away,"]] indeed.