The Tripper (2006)

Memorable, crazy movie

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

After seeing his father and lumberjack foreman being hit by a protester and arrested by the police, Gus kills the protester with a chainsaw. Jump forward a few years, and we meet Samantha, after being abused by her former boyfriend, travels with her friends to the American Free Love Festival. Mayor Hal Burton and Deputy Buzz Hall try to organise the event, but a deranged psychopath wearing a mask of Ronald Reagan uses an axe to kill the stoned hippies......Fair dues to Arquette for trying to make a fresh spin on the slasher movie, but, he fails miserably from the very beginning.He succeeds in capturing the feel and essence of those really poor horror films of the early eighties that tried to rip off Friday, Halloween, and Nightmare, but those films were generally really cheap and nasty, and fell off the radar without a trace.So why bother here?Even though you have quite a prolific cast, the script and the story are just so poor, you wouldn't really care if all of the Hollywood A-Listers turning up for a massive party at the end, it wouldn't lift the nasty feeling the film gives you come the end.With a pointless cameo from Courtney Cox, The Tripper will be known as another poor vanity project from someone who is in the 'where are they now' hall of fame.Sorry David, keep praying for Scream 5

You might think a horror-comedy about Ronald Reagan killing hippies that ends with an environmental speech by Robert Kennedy Jr. won't be much fun. But with The Tripper, you'd be wrong.Set during President George W. Bush's first term in office, The Tripper concerns a group of faux hippies. By faux hippies, I mean they dress and act and take drugs like it was the early 1970s and not the early 21st century. The trio of young couples - Sam and Ivan (Jaime King and Lukas Haas), Joey and Linda (Jason Mewes and Marsha Thomason) and Jack and Jade (Stephen Heath and Paz de la Huerta) - have all piled into a van and are heading to a music festival in the woods. Sam hooked up with this crew after a bad drug trip, trying to get away from her possessive and violent boyfriend Jimmy (Balthazar Getty). After a run in with a fairly generic group of rednecks, Sam and company make it to the festival. But before long, people start turning up dead, pushing local cop Buzz (Thomas Jane) to try and close the festival down. The spirit of freedom and the desire to get high won't be denied, however, and the concert goes on…right up until an orgy of murder perpetrated by a crazy guy who thinks he's Ronald Reagan. The murderer also has a pig named George W. to eat the remains of his victims.When you hear the politically tinged details of the story, you might think this is a strident, overwrought piece of liberal propaganda…but you couldn't be more wrong. This is a fun little film that has no actual agenda than trying hard to entertain you. It may cast Reagan as an ax murderer but it's almost as hard on its faux hippie main characters, who, except for Sam, are all huge losers. I don't know if David Arquette thought he was making a political film, but The Tripper is as serious about politics as Groundhog Day is about meteorology.What Arquette did make is a movie that's constantly working to please you. Whether it's flashes of gore, a couple of nudists walking by, wisecracks from Thomas Jane or a concert promoter who really, really loves the F-word, there's always something coming at you. A lot of films can start out strong but hit a wall. They reach a point where the story just starts killing time until it gets to the end. That never happens with The Tripper. There's no dead spot where it runs out of plot or has the characters lapse into a stretch of pointless screaming and running. Some scenes are shot in a very pedestrian style and no one involved in this movie had any clue how to film a fight scene, but there's a lot of interesting things splashed on the screen. This movie has its own look and its own sensibility, which is fairly impressive for a novice filmmaker working in a somewhat difficult genre. Horror-comedies can go very wrong, very easily, but Arquette strikes a nice balance between humor and slaughter.He also gets some decent performances out of his cast. Thomas Jane looks like he's having a great time as the cop with a Fu Manchu mustache who has to deal with these faux hippies. Jaime King, as the only character with anything like a real backstory, manages to play a traditional horror heroine without lapsing into self-parody. Jason Mewes, however, is the standout performer of the film. Best known as Jay from Jay and Silent Bob in Kevin Smith's movies, Mewes shows off genuine charisma and screen presence. I'm not sure if he can actually, you know, act. But there are many skilled actors who would kill for Mewes' natural appeal.This is exactly the sort of movie I'm always hoping for when I grab a DVD off the shelf. It's a film not that many folks have seen or even heard of, but it's still a good piece of entertainment that you'll be glad you saw. The next time you're looking for something to watch, take a ride with The Tripper.

Some people look at Ronald Regan as a hero, an all-American cowboy made of awesome who rode in and brought our country into the "Regan-80's", and some look at him as one of the worst things that has happened to our country in the 20th century, with de-regulation and corruption and "Reganomics". David Arquette is after something a little more simple and direct in his film: what if he inspired a serial killer? And not just any serial killer, but the kind that traipse through the woods and goes after drug-addled and sex-crazed hippies in modern times? His debut feature as director, The Tripper, goes to wild and awesome lengths to explain that.The film isn't always particularly great, not in the sense that your really 'great' horror movie will go. This isn't John Carpenter's Halloween, and it doesn't pretend to be. It's a slasher of a 'HELL YEAH' order, where it's just a lot of fun seeing Arquette have fun with his cast of young people (one of those a weirdly pro-Bush fiend played by Jason Mewes) and more recognizable folks in their 30's and 40's (Thomas Jane and Paul Reubens as a sheriff and a sleazy party promoter). It's not original either in its story of an insane mental patient who escapes and dons a Ronald Regan mask to hunt after his prey, all attending a rock music festival in the woods... well, maybe the Ronald Regan part. Perhaps it's one of a handful of horror-comedies to use politics in such a grab-bag of references and quotes (one victim says, pleadingly, "But, I'm a republican!"), and sometimes just as fodder for "damn you hippies!" jokes.But there is invention and surprise in the film-making here, and even some impressive cinematography and shots out in the woods. Sometimes there's even just a weird line that is totally hilarious (when Thomas Jane as the officer is facing the audience of hippies at the concert, "Leave or you will all die!" in an official's capacity!), and when the Ronald Regan killer gets on a roll with his shtick, quoting himself like a fiend ("Good Morning, America!"), you might wonder why this concept hasn't really been done outside of Point Break. It's not too in-your-face as a satire, and Arquette doesn't mean for this to be taken too seriously- albeit some references to Bush in 2003 and 9/11 are a little blatant- but just enough as a farce of slasher movies with a gimmick. It's a self-conscious parody that works on its own as a decent horror movie, and better as a comedy, and combined it makes for a fun night of viewing.

The Tripper is set in Northern California where six doped up tree loving hippie friends make their way to the Free Love Festival in the middle of some woods just outside a small town. There they intend to dance, smoke some weed, make love & generally have some fun. However their plans are slightly thrown out of kilter when a Ronald Reagan mask wearing psycho killer turns up & starts killing all the hippies & guests. Personally I would give the guy a medal but you can't just go around killing people no matter how annoying they are so local cop's & surviving hippies team up to put an end to the Ronald Reagan killer once & for all...Co-written, co-produced, directed by & starring David Arquette I am yet again amazed by all the positive comments this piece of crap film has, where has people's taste in films gone where they can rave about a piece of turgid crap such as The Tripper which offers zero entertainment value as far as I am concerned? I keep reading & hearing about how clever The Tripper is, how relevant it is, the fact that it's a knowing satire of American culture & has something socially relevant to say & get across. Did I just see the same film? Where is all this social commentary & satire then? There's a conversation between the hippies talking about George W. Bush but the most intelligent thing said is that he 'has Texan sized balls' which just about sums up how clever & thoughtful The Tripper is. There seems to be a quick anti war message thing going on at the start but then is completely forgotten about as none of it's ideas or themes are carried through with an conviction. Even the hippies are shown as stereotypical tree huggers who are always stoned, boring & it's been done to death plenty of times before. There is nothing thought provoking, clever or relevant in The Tripper & I found it one long bore. So the social commentary sucks & doesn't work what about the horror & slasher content? Well that sucks too, the pace is mind numbingly slow, the kills are tame & few & far between, the killers motives are again meant to be clever but they don't work & I don't really see why he dresses up as Ronald Reagan, maybe it's an American thing & being British I don't get it but I got it enough to know it sucks. So as a horror film it sucks, as a comedy it's not funny in the slightest & as a film that tries to be meaningful it fails completely on all fronts. One to avoid I think.I must admit that The Tripper does seem to have a budget & it actually has good production values but the film still sucks balls though. The gore levels are disappointing, there's an off screen decapitation, there are a few dead bodies seen, someones hand is chopped off (to which the stoned one handed kid says 'what's your f%^&ing problem?), the killer stabs a couple of people, he uses an axe at the end to kill hippies in a rather bloodless way, someone is sliced in half with a chainsaw & a guy is seen with a chainsaw stuck in his neck but it's all pretty tame actually. There's no build-up to any of the kills, there's no tension & while the woods provides a decent yet clichéd location there's not too much of an atmosphere either. I am really struggling to find one single positive thing to say about The Tripper, I just thought it was moronic & unfunny rubbish of the highest order that doesn't satisfy on any level whether your looking for horror or comedy or satire.To give The Tripper some credit it does look quite nice with above average production values but as I said the film is still terrible. Apparently shot in the Big Basin Redwoods State Park in California. I found the entire cast grated on my nerves, David Arquette's wife Courtney Cox appears although I didn't recognise her.The Tripper is a truly terrible film that I hated, I keep seeing & reading about how good this is but I just didn't see it at all & I really do wonder if I saw the same film. Absolute total & utter crap from start to finish & that's my opinion.