Growing up, I never drank alcohol or took drugs, mostly because of an unwavering superiority complex that tended to rub people the wrong way, alienating them and leading me to a lifetime of hardship, strife and loneliness.
But if I had to do an addictive substance, I probably would do acid.
I mean, from what I’ve heard from classroom film strips, after-school specials and related docudramas, it’s a total carnival freakshow where the sights, smells and other sensory factors create a real horror vibe, drudging up the demons of your mind so you can, typically, cast yourself out a fifth-story window. That sounds kind of fun …
Even though I’m far too old now for drug-fueled shenanigans, 1967’s The Trip is supposedly a based-on-real-life excursion to the hallucinogenic world, but with the MPAA on hand to regulate everything we’re about to see … or not see. Written by pre-Chinatown Jack Nicholson, directed by pre-New World Pictures Roger Corman and starring a pre-Easy Rider Peter Fonda, it’s automatically a cinematic exploitation beatdown of low-budget proportions.
The Trip finds the somewhat tanned Fonda as successful commercial director Paul. He’s in the doldrums of ’60s depression from a somewhat-bitter Hollywood divorce, so friend-with-weed-is-a-friend-indeed John (Bruce Dern) takes him to a swingin’ bachelor pad — or, if you’re so inclined, a psychedelic drug den to take some primo stuff, man.
As some trippy sitars begin to play, Paul takes some blotter-paper LSD and slowly starts to float downstream. Here, the movie takes on the approximation of what a trip “actually” feels like, starting from the blending of colors, shapes and strobing dots, man, to on-location shots of rock-climbing, cliff-diving and love-making to buxom women on said rocks.
On his journey, Paul encounters hooded figures, spooky witches, go-go dancers and, of course, the occasional midget. There’s a haunted house, peeling faces, burial shroud, a big-haired woman and campy Mexican music on the soundtrack. And don’t forget the old-time carousel, paranoid delusions about chairs and Dennis Hopper doing his comedic (?) Church of Satan routine with bloodstained pictures on LBJ on the wall.
As his trip comes down — and as the audience loses patience — Paul goes on a rampage though the Sunset Strip, meeting various dancers at a “happening,” laundromat patrons just trying to do their laundry and a real menacing tiger on black velvet that somehow terrorizes him into sobriety.
Hmmm … maybe I don’t want to try acid?
Sure, Fonda, Dern and Hopper are/were great actors after — and in spite of — The Trip, but it’s on par with a Reefer Madness scare film: great to take a toke, a hit or a dose to, but after 30 minutes, you’ll be reaching for the remote and down a box of Ding-Dongs. Or, if you’re really tripping balls, a tentacle will come out your slimy sternum to change the mellow groove-box, man, and take you to the other side.
In the end, the movie is a bum Trip. —Louis Fowler