Trip, The (1967)

Although Roger Corman has a reputation as a exploitation film director this film, an account of an acid trip scripted by Jack Nicholson and starring Peter Fonda with a support from Dennis Hopper, a trio that would go on to make one of the definitive movies of the 1960s flower power era, Easy Rider (1969) has a good deal of sincerity lurking beneath its psychedelic day-glo surface. Not that it is in any way a good movie.

Fonda plays a young TV commercial director going through a divorce and in search of some kind of meaning in, or revelation about, his life and so he opts to drop an LSD tablet under the (sometimes) watchful eye of a bearded Bruce Dern. The movie is a chronicle of his acid trip. The result is hardly one of the great drug films but it does actually try to depict the kinds of experiences that people had whilst on acid. This often results in some very naff imagery particularly when it comes to some pointless dream-like sequence of people on horses and some really bad dialogue (Hopper excels with the groovy lingo) but it also produces some captivating imagery, notably a love-making scene with psychedelic lighting that could have been an off-cut from Midnight Cowboy (1969). If The Trip lurches all over the place it has some appeal as a glimpse into those heady times although one has to say that the eclectic, often MOR, jazz-tinged soundtrack often lets it down.

DVD Extras: Director’s Commentary; Tune In, Trip Out featurette; two featurettes on the psychedelic effects; American Cinematographer article; original theatrical trailer.

Available from: Shock Entertainment

 

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