High (film)
1967 Canadian film by Larry Kent
High is a film released in 1967, directed by Larry Kent and starring Lanny Beckman, Astri Thorvik, Peter Mathews, Joyce Cay, and Denis Payne. The film was banned by the censors of Quebec immediately before its scheduled premiere at the Montreal International Film Festival for its use of drugs, nudity, and explicit sex scenes.
Filmmakers Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang, and Warren Beatty defended High as a film of art, rather than gratuity.
Plot
High is the story of dope-dealing university dropout Tom, and his strait-laced girlfriend Vicky whom he corrupts and leads down a path of petty crime and uninhibited sex.
Cast
Lanny Beckman as Tom (as Lanning Beckman)
Astri Thorvik as Vicky (as Astri Torvik)
Peter Mathews
Joyce Cay
Denis Payne
Laurie Wynn Kent
Doris Cowan
Mortie Golub
Carol Epstein
Al Mayoff
Melinda McCracken
Gary Eisenkraft
Jack Esbein
Reception
High is described in Peter Morris's 1984 Film Companion as Larry Kent's best film. It had a wide theatrical release in the U.S., however its sex scenes and dope smoking led to and a ban by the censor boards in Ontario and British Columbia.
Legacy
The film was screened at the 18th Berlin Film Festival in 1968 as part of Young Canadian Film, a lineup of films by emerging Canadian filmmakers. It was later screened at the 1984 Festival of Festivals as part of Front & Centre, a special retrospective program of artistically and culturally significant films from throughout the history of Canadian cinema. Kent considered High on of his crowning achievements.
It was part of a retrospective screening of Kent's films, alongside The Bitter Ash, Sweet Substitute, and When Tomorrow Dies.
“High (film)” enters the record as 1967 Canadian film by Larry Kent. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what High, film and Canadian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“High (film)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, High, film and Canadian provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5754840. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967, 1984 and 1968.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “High (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.