The Trip
Directed by Rodger corman, The Trip stars Peter Fonda as advertising director Paul Groves who decides to go on an LSD trip. Supervised by his friend John, Played by Bruce Dern. Things start out well enough but then the Trip begins to take Paul to places in his mind that offer some more disturbing visions and into the bad trip he escapes into the night life of LA.
Its pretty difficult to summarise the film based on plot alone, its fairly straightforward in that respect. In regards to it depicting the Timothy leary influenced subculture of 60's America and the actual experience of going on a Trip its actually very well realised and surprisingly experimental. Rodger Corman is well known as a producer of exploitation pictures but the Trip and its sister film X:Man with the x ray eyes prove that as a director he was extremely gifted. The editing (apparantly also supervised by corman) is also incredibly creative and really manages to create a deliberately disjointed and at times dreamlike atmosphere. Once again Signal one deliver a terrific Blu-ray release of the directors cut that avoids the moralising of the AIP enforced chages.
GASSSsss!
Full title Gas! -Or- It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It, is a tale of the world destroyed through chemical warfare leaving the counter culture youth movement to re-build. Thankfully its cynical enough to be worthwhile but not as well realised to rank as a classic unlike the previous film. Its watched best as satire, with the teens moving into different cliques and the depiction of the whitebread jocks as alpha male rapists is actually pretty funny however its a film that was probably best watched best as the counter culture was at its high tide mark. Now it plays better as a time capsual of another era.
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