# Trap, The (1966)

### reviewed by
George Selinsky

    THE TRIP (1967)
    AIP
    dir/prod. Roger Corman
    written by Jack Nicholson
    With Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Susan Strausberg, Dennis Hopper.

Summary: Has aged rather poorly, but nonetheless may be interesting as a period piece. Decent no-brainer party film for it's era (if there were VCR's back then), but don't expect to find anything deep or moving (the director himself even confessed he's not into that sorta thing).

Roger Corman, director of over 50 low budget films, most of them being exploitation films for American International Pictures, decided to take on a contemporary topic of the day with "The Trip". An appropriate project for such a risque director, who had just one year earlier made a very revealing and gruesome film about motorcycle gangs called "The Wild Angels". This is a classic exploitation film that inspired a ton of imitation "acid films", most of them having no plot and lots of the same imagery you see here (complete with naked females and zooms). "The Trip" definitely has more direction and structure than it's spinoffs, yet one would still hope for more story development in the early half of the film. Clearly, Corman was able to get away with putting lots of cheap effects on the screen, thus stretching a 30 minute short into an 85 minute feature.

Much of the film is full of various imagery of Peter Fonda running around in different costumes, and very little is told about his background. He is a rather passive character in this film, and doesn't elicit much sympathy from the audience, even though his performances were satisfactory. The cinematography is quite uninspired, though adequate from a techical POV, though it has some fine point gaffes (like double shadows). One of the most frustrating aspects of this film is that the potential it had for visual treatment was not used to nearly it's full potential, even on the budget it was made for.

With the exception of the editing, stylistically this film bears a more conservative filmmaking approach that might have not been as appropriate as a more "new wave" approach. Indeed, two years later, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper were to take elements of "The Trip", and the earlier "Wild Angels", combining them with the 'new wave' style of filmmaking to produce the masterpiece "Easy Rider". For all it's shortcomings, "The Trip" did very well at the box office, something that would not have happened today without much more expensive effects, and more known cast members (even though Fonda, Strassberg and Dern were known faces at the time).

Corman himself, together with a few of his production team, went out one day and tried a hit of acid as "research". His trip was more pleasant than the ones in this film, but he nonetheless felt it important to talk about all ends of an acid experience, including the "bummers". AIP changed the ending of the film to include a fractured image of Fonda, making the suggestion that his next trip would be a disaster. AIP's increased control over Corman's films were to eventually lead to his almost permanent retirement from directing three years later.

The film begins with a rather stern announcer warning about the dangers of LSD, describing the sorts of mishaps that can occur under the influence, scrolling them by in white letters. The film begins with a couple making out on the beach.

Peter plays Paul, a commercial director, shooting a commercial for perfume on a California beach. He decides to wrap the final take, and then notices his wife peeking at him. She is reminding him to file for the divorce, though it seems both of them are a bit reluctant to go through with it as they kiss before departing. The credits flash "The Trip" on a kaleidascope background, and we're off...

Paul's good but somewhat restrained friend Bruce Dern, takes him into his psychedelic colored house, and shares a quick joint with all of his buddies on the first floor. Here he meets the pusher Dennis Hopper (in hippy regalia, though still clean shaven and trimmed), who describes his last unpleasant acid trip to all of his surrounding hippy friends.As Paul ascends the steps to the second floor of the psycho-colored mansion, he meets with Susan Strausberg, who desires to join Paul on his upcoming trip. Paul declines, but says "we'll meet later". Indeed they do.

Bruce Dern relaxes Paul and tells him to stay calm and be secure no matter what. He looks at some of the reel to reel tapes that Paul has bought with him to take on his "trip" (including a recording of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl"), but is a bit humored at the Super 8 camera, though he says in his restrained, doctor like calm "If you want me to take something later, just let me know". Paul takes his 250 micrograms of acid, and gets anxious for a few seconds. Dern reassures him the trip takes a while to begin, although for some reason Paul has just had a flash of Susan Strausberg's visage. He lies down and closes his eyes with a blinder. The trip has begun.

Oodles of psychedelic flashes of kaleidascopes and various 60's patterns flash before his eyes. He sees himself with Ms. Strausberg, and his wife alternately. This motif is played out throughout the rest of his trips, the battle between the two women - his divided love for his soon to be ex-wife, and his stunning new psychedelic fave. The pleasurable trip soon becomes a bummer when medeval horsemen start chasing our hero all around the forest, and the desert. The trip then moves into a Poe like setting where the protagonist is tortured by images of his death, and is carried out to burial, Bergman style, to the beach.

The Trip moves in and out of pleasant and dangerous phases, and Bruce Dern looks after the tripper to make sure he doesn't trip too far, reassuring him when necessary. Roger Corman appears briefly in the mirror as a mysterious man with psychedelic kaleidascope patterns emenating from his face. Paul continually shares with his cautious friend the visions of his trip, while his friend tries to relax and explain to Paul how everything is normal, when in fact it is not.

The film manages to become interesting for a change, when Bruce Dern leaves to get some "Apple juice", which for some reason unbeknownst to young screenwriter Jack Nicholson, has managed to get used up very quickly. Paul suddenly sees Bruce Dern dead, with a bullet hole in his head, and decides to quickly snap a picture, then run for his life. Meanwhile, Bruce returns and notices that his tripper has gone astray.

Paul runs into a quiet LA home, by rushing up the balcony steps and into an open door. He begins watching the TV (Corman tries one of his trademark optical zooms here). A little girl pops up in her nightgown and starts questioning Paul (meawhile, we notice all this time that nothing has been playing on the TV, despite the reports of Vietnam casualties we've been hearing). She then asks him to pour her a glass of milk, which Paul obligingly does by going to the kitchen. Then, the father of the girl pops up, and the trippy Paul runs outside into the streets of LA, brains all fried.

He walks into a laundromat, and begins flirting with this wierd character who's decided to do her laundry there. He ends up freaking her out when he pulls her laundry out of the drier prematurely, and catches the attention of the police as he runs away. He dashes into a nightclub, where he sits idle at a table while a waitress impatiently asks him for his order. She realizes that he's stoned, and leaves him alone. Meanwhile, Paul's trip is enhanced by all the dancing and strobe lights around him, including the few naked babes all painted in body paint with psychedelic patterns, and the band playing a funky psychedelic organ n' sax jam.

Suddenly, Susan shows up in the club for a brief moment, and Paul is drawn to her. He starts chasing after her then notices the cops. He runs away, and ends up landing in Dennis Hopper's pusher pad. Dennis is eager to welcome Paul until he reveals he's being chased by the police, and almost hooks up with Dennis' girlfriend. Thus, Paul ends up leaving and running away to a cafe, where he meets his trip's main attraction, Susan. Susan takes our tripped out hero, into her apartment, where they make love like crazy, all in the midst of flashing imagery of the same sorts we've seen the whole film round (including superimposed crucifixes and bronze snakes over the seashore).

Finally, Paul's trip seems over when he wakes up beside her, and walks over to the window. In post dubbed dialogue, Susan asks if Paul has been trying to say he's in love with her. Paul walks outside in the balcony and says he'll know by his "next time". An optical zoom moves in on a still of Paul, and a bunch of black cracks show up all over, as if a window was shattered. The image fades out, and our trip is over, for better or worse.

    - G.

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