The Trip

1967 drug movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A guy takes acid.

Hey, it's Angelo Rossitto again! There's another little fellow on a merry-go-round who, in one very important scene, screams "Bay of Pigs!" for no reason at all.

That might sound silly, but most of this is earnest. It's not a cautionary tale like Reefer Madness exactly, but wide-eyed Peter Fonda's trip isn't a laughing matter. This slice of psychedelicsploitation (word?) is very much a product of its time, but it's a fascinating one. There's some great kaleidoscopic sex, some visual non-sequiturs, and a terrific scene where Fonda is enjoying a washing machine.

Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and screenwriter Jack Nicholson took LSD in preparation for this thing, and director Roger Corman (who also--surprise!--used the drug) uses every trick in the book to try to mimic the effects of that particular hallucinogenic. I've not tried any hallucinogenic at all and can't verify the accuracy of the imagery. It looked trippy enough to me.

I enjoyed the score, mostly provided by Mike Bloomfield's group, The Electric Flag. Gram Parsons is seen playing music early in this movie, but I believe those sounds were replaced with something more psychedelic.

Another music tidbit: Bruce Dern's character quotes the Beatles with "Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream."