Bummer vibes abound in Cop Killers (Shriek Show), a grimy slice of drugsploitation circa 1973 about a pair of wooly-headed coke dealers who develop a taste of offing the fuzz. Ray (Jason Williams) may look like a foxy dude with his blond curls and denim duds, but he’s got a mile-wide hate streak for the law and anyone else who stands in his way of delivering a shipment of five kilos; his partner Alex (producer Bill Osco) is turned off by Ray’s blood lust, but is in too deep to do anything about it. The ugliness spreads like a fungus as they cross the blazing Arizona desert, with Ray’s murder jones upping the body count at every pit stop, until things reach a white heat head at the home of their weirdbeard connection. Anyone assuming that things turn out well for Ray and Alex by the film’s conclusion is hereby requested to get it together but quick.

Cobbled together by Osco and co-producer Howard Ziehm, two veteran Los Angeles adult filmmakers, to raise some quick cash to complete their cornball softcore sci-fi comedy Flesh Gordon (which starred Williams), Cop Killers taps the bummer irony and casual violence of freak-era downer films like Easy Rider and Vanishing Point, but the end result is no mournful coda to the Summer of Love. It’s just a mean, raw-boned junkfilm, designed solely to give grindhouse and drive-in patrons a vicarious thrill from seeing the Man catch a bad one. The pace feels a bit draggy in the second half, and the performances (save Williams) are across-the-board awful, but Cop Killers serves up lean and bloody bargain nihilism for retro-minded sleaze beasts with a taste for jaded kicks.

Shriek Show’s DVD includes a 16-minute interview with Williams, who discusses the film’s conception (as well as a lengthy treatise on the legalization of drugs); he also kicks in a commentary track that’s long on reminiscences about the amateur cast (mostly culled from strip joints and local acting schools). Trailers for other Shriek Show DVD releases, including 1983’s nuclear waste monster movie The Being (another Bill Osco production, and a real lulu to boot), round out the extras. Dig it.