Main Cast: Peter Fonda, Susan Strasberg, Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper, Salli Sachse
Release Year: 1967
Country: US
Run Time: 85 minutes
Plot
Roger Corman directed this psychedelic odyssey concerning the curative properties of LSD, with a surrealistic screenplay written by Jack Nicholson. Peter Fonda is Paul Groves, a television commercial director whose estranged wife Sally (Susan Strasberg) is pressuring him to sign their divorce papers. Feeling strain in both his professional and his personal life, Paul talks to a guru named John (Bruce Dern), who suggests that an acid trip will cure what ails him. Paul goes to John's pad and his trip begins -- at first calm and sedate, but when Sally and a sexy blonde hippie enter his hallucinations, it's every man for himself. Paul experiences crazed sexual couplings, paranoiac visions, and even gets to attend his own funeral. After imagining he's seeing John's head bashed in, he runs from the apartment in terror and takes to the streets. He is finally rescued and brought to a beach house, where he completes his trip while making love to a beautiful woman. After the trip subsides, Paul is convinced he has been reborn and is prepared to face the new day. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Review
According to his autobiography, Roger Corman took LSD while preparing to make this film, which claims to show what an acid trip is like. Hallucinogenic accuracy aside, The Trip is an entertaining period piece and perhaps the ultimate late 1960s hippie exploitation flick. The final shot, tacked on against Corman's wishes by American International Pictures, awkwardly suggests that Paul Groves (Peter Fonda) has destroyed his mind on the drug, but The Trip is neither clearly pro-drug nor clearly anti-drug; Paul is visited by visions both beautiful and horrifying while under the influence, and the film seems to argue that drug use should be an individual matter. Corman was always a cannier visual stylist than his low-budget brethren, and most of The Trip plays like an excuse to throw interesting images on the screen; it might not look quite like an acid trip, but it is better to look at than the glut of "youth on drugs" films that followed it. And the participation of Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, and Bruce Dern gives it all the hipster credibility you could ask for. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Richard Bruno - Costume Designer, Roger Corman - Director, Ronald Sinclair - Editor, Barry Goldberg - Composer (Music Score), Ted Coodley - Makeup, Arch R. Dalzell - Cinematographer, Roger Corman - Producer, Roger George - Special Effects, Jack Nicholson - Screenwriter
