THE TRIP
US, 1967, 85 minutes, Colour.
Peter Fonda, Susan Strasberg, Bruce Dern, Salli Sachse, Dennis Hopper.
Directed by Roger Corman.
The Trip is a curio movie. Filmed in 1967, it was made at the time of the drug revolution, drug experimentation, the use of LSD and the psychedelic era. A warning caption has been tacked onto the beginning of the film - a bit of mixed moralising.
The film was produced and directed by Roger Corman who had made his mark in the '50s with very small-budget thrillers and genre pictures. In the early '60s he merged with his series of Poe adaptations with Vincent Price and Ray Milland as well as a number of more ambitious features including The St Valentine's Day Massacre. The Trip was written by one of his collaborators in writing and acting in the 60s, Jack Nicholson. Nicholson was soon to appear in Easy Rider - the beginning of a career of top acting. Peter Fonda is the hero of this film (as of Easy Rider) and acts as a director of TV commercials who wants to experiment with LSD. The film is his trip - both in reality and in fantasy. Dennis Hopper (who would collaborate with Nicholson and Fonda in Easy Rider) appears in the drug culture. (Both Fonda and Hopper eventually cleaned up their lives and had successful film careers, especially Hopper in the late '80s.) Susan Strasberg appears as Fonda's
wife.
The film is very dated in its approach to life, to drugs. Audiences of later decades laugh at the 'hip' phrases and dialogue. Great reliance is put on psychedelic special effects. The film is an interesting example of film-making immersed in its time and eventually stuck in its time.
1. The impact of this film in the mid-'60s? Production attitudes towards drug-taking and experimentation? The visualising of trips - with a permissive tone? The moralising prologue? Seen in the perspective of later decades and the experience of drugs?
2. The work of Roger Corman: his being interested in film trends, small budget and quick film work? His friends and associates and their collaboration in film-making? Jack Nicholson's script? The cast and their work for Corman? The quality of the films produced?
3. The Los Angeles settings, the ordinariness of Los Angeles life, drugs and middle-class suburbia, the psychedelic effects for communicating the LSD trip? The blend of special effects and realistic flashbacks and fantasies? Musical score?
4. The film's attitudes towards drug-taking, the drug culture, experimentation, heightened consciousness, the effects for helping people, the damaging effects? The consequences for relationships? The situating of the drug culture in the mid and late '60s? Changing times and manners and moral perspectives (as indicated by the subsequent careers of the stars)?
5. Paul and his work as a commercial director, his relationship with his wife, tenderness yet the divorce? The signing of the papers? His decision to take the LSD? His friendship with John? John setting the scene and administering the drug? The previous visit to Max with the pot-smoking? The pot-smoking friends? The effect on Paul, his having to relax, the psychedelic visions and colours and patterns? His imagination - with the attractive girl, with his wife, argumentation, sexual relationship, the bedroom sequences with the psychedelic patterns? His fear of death, the hanging? The chase and the mediaeval monks? The dwarf in the countryside and offering the brew? The accumulation of these fantasies and their happening in the house, on the street, in the restaurant? The counter-balance with what was happening when he was stoned: in John's house, talking to him, the hip language to express the experience, the fear of death and the swim in the pool, his getting dressed, imagining John dead, out in the streets, in the house with the little girl and her parents, watching the television? In the restaurant and the encounter with the waitress? The going to Max's place? Meeting John again? The end of the trip? How well did the film communicate an LSD experience via cinema?
6. John and his friendship with Paul, having the drugs, being free himself, monitoring Paul's experience, apprehension about his fears of death, encouraging him, searching for him?
7. Max and his home, pot-smoking friends, hip language, concern about Paul?
8. The people that Paul met in his reality and in his fantasy: the blonde, the drug-taking women, the sexual attraction and encounters? The little girl and her friendship, her parents? The police chase? The bartender and the waitress in the restaurant? People on the street?
9. The glimpse of the perspectives and behaviour of the mid~'60s? Capturing an essence of that period? Judged in the perspectives of the '70s and '80s?
