The Trip

Paul Groves (Peter Fonda), a television commercial director, is in the midst of a personality crisis. His wife Sally (Susan Strasberg) has left him and he seeks the help of his friend John (Bruce Dern), a self-styled guru who's an advocate of LSD.

The film was directed by Corman, written by Jack Nicholson, starring Bruce Dern with a beard, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. How can that be bad? The biggest problem is that the plot is relatively weak and relies heavily on some wild kaleidoscopic visuals. That may not be a problem -- I mean, there are still great actors and a dwarf -- but it is a noticeable flaw.

Once again, like many films of the same time, The Trip is often misunderstood for a campy, cheap exploitation of a once vibrant time 'too often reduced to nostalgic simplicities.' The Plot goes as follows: Peter Fonda plays a film director that is bummed out by his wife (Susan Strasberg) and pending divorce. So to cool out, he takes LSD from a psychologist-type who is making records of 'controlled' LSD experiments (played by Bruce Dern). The film seems to hold it together during the first 30 minutes or so, but loses it's place when the weird acid trips happen (note the creepy scene where Fonda dies and goes to some kind of hell inhabited by horsemen, knights, and dwarfs). Overall, this is an entertaining little time capsule filled with twists and old film techniques. But I still cannot stress enough the arrogance of a man who tries to capture an LSD trip on camera for the silver screen. Even though the film did do moderately well at the box-office (for 1967, that is), mind expansion enthusiasts, like myself, might find the LSD depictions to be a bit funny at times, and the dialogue to be typical for a film of its kind. But for all personal shortcomings, I recommend this film because it is a true original.

This is an interesting film that will entertain. 'The Trip' has a 'Reefer Madness' quality to it, with a strange message about acid and it's effects.

Sets for this film have an expressionist imagery to them. The art direction is an explosion of patterns and colors. You get a psychedelic fun house feel all through the film. The use of lighting/shadows and old film techniques give a dreamy quality to the scenes that you will not forget.

Although dated by today's standards, the film is easy to watch and quite creative. And 'The Trip' does have a message: "I'll deal with it tomorrow."

This virtually plotless film is about an advertising executive, going through a divorce, who decides to experiment with LSD.

Most of the film, and obviously the whole reason behind making it, are the psychedelic "trip" sequences. That is the main problem with this film. While the hallucinations initially look impressive and quite enjoyably surreal, they lose their impact quickly and soon become quite dull.

However, the film can be quite enjoyable as a snapshot of late sixties Californian psychedelia (all the weird, colourful paintings on walls, and almost every second sentence ending in "man").

Peter Fonda is quiet bland as the executive, but Dennis Hopper is worth watching in his role as a drug dealer.

It is worth watching if you're interested in late-sixties psychedelia, LSD, Peter Fonda or drug movies, others may want to pass.

To be honest, I thought I would grow quickly bored with this movie since I heard that all it was is a bunch of cool psychedelic effects and not much else. Well, I actually found it interesting. After an opening five minutes with some bad acting I rolled my eyes but the movie got better....and Peter Fonda's performance got better. Fonda plays Paul, a TV commercial director who goes on his first LSD trip. He thinks he might learn something from it and does. You start to lose track of what reality is just like Paul does. Dennis Hopper has some interesting scenes and Bruce Dern is good as well. Having never touched acid, I can't tell you how realistic the effects are but found them interesting to watch. In order to do research, director Roger Corman took LSD and had a pleasant experience. Bruce Dern however has never taken it so found his role as someone who was kind of an expert on the matter, a challenging acting job. However, Jack Nicolson wrote the script and I expect he did plenty of research...he-he. Surprisingly, a pretty cool movie, dude!