Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Ronnie
“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.” – Ronald Reagan
So begins the directorial debut of David Arquette’s psychedelic slasher film. Does he live up to a decent entry to the sub-genre? Follow me and we shall see!
Starting with a flashback to 1967, the Summer of Love, we’re bombarded with unflinching horrible images from the Vietnam War. After this, we’re thrown into the teaser sequence that will set the guidelines for the film.
A young boy, watching Ronald Reagan on the television, is dragged along with his father to a site where hippies are protesting the chopping down of redwoods. The father, who goes a bit nutty and pulls a pistol, is taken down by the local cops. This does little good, though, as the son picks up a chainsaw and goes to town on one of the hippies.
We now cut to the present. The same woods are now home to a “Free Love Festival”. Paul Reubens, best known as Pee Wee Herman, plays the foul-mouthed manager of the event.
The festival, which is known to draw hippies from across the country (but, due to a low budget, only shows around 20 “hippies” showing up), is plagued by previous events where revelers have disappeared. The town’s mayor is quick to shove these episodes under the rug. And teamed with the sheriff, who is played by Thomas Jane, who is positive the events will go off without a hitch, the mayor is more than happy while courting dollar signs in his eyes.
Now our cannon fodder shows up in a Scooby Doo van. They’ve had a run-in with some local rednecks that leaves one of the hippies with a nasty head wound after being tagged with a beer bottle. There’s also a confrontation at the local diner (which harkens back to the events in FRIDAY THE 13TH Part 3) where we just know it’s going to end up hippies versus rednecks.
Back at the festival, a naked young man (who is covered in disgusting ginger hair) takes off into the woods. Following a bunny rabbit deeper into the forest, he runs across one of the traps set to keep trespassers away from the marijuana fields growing in the area. Needless to say, our ginger stripper is victim to one of the traps and ends up with his guts outside his body for the trouble.
This sets the sheriff to questioning the old man whose son ended up in the mental institution back in 1967. There’s a bit of a confrontation, but the old geezer says he’ll remove his traps from the woods. Does he? Is he our resident slasher, or could it be his son who was possibly released from the hospital due to Reagan’s 1980s budget cuts? dum dum dum
The slasher, garbed in a Ronald Reagan mask that resembles the president about as much as the boil on my butt, picks up an axe and starts to do the hippies in. He also makes mincemeat of the forest’s local Crazy Ralph wannabe, and the rednecks who have taken paint guns to even the score with their hippie adversaries.
This all leads to a scene where “Ronald Reagan” axes his way through the festival. There’s also a gross scene where Pee Wee Herman hides himself in the toilet of a Port-A-Potty. Not to mention that our final girl, who has it bad enough she’s running from an axe-wielding killer, has to do so while on acid.
David Arquette, who has been through the slasher mill three previous times in the SCREAM series as Deputy Dewey, serves up a one-dimensional entry to the sub-genre. He does his best by delivering kaleidoscope images from the stoners, and black humor that is rather flat (I did get a giggle from one victim who tries to prolong his death by stating: “But I’m a republican!”).
One also has to get a chuckle from a Republican slasher. Back in the early 1980s, when Jason Voorhees was hacking his way through nubile teens, the Republicans did everything they could to curb the gory sub-genre. This went on while the ultra-Conservatives saw the slashers as some holy symbols for doing away with sex-starved, dope smoking teens.
This all brings to mind the hippies of THE TRIPPER. Where you would think they’d be all for peace and happiness (“Make love, not war,” says Arquette in his role as one of the rednecks), they’re instead narrow-minded screw-ups who are violent and self-obsessed. Even while victims are piling up around them, they continue to party as if it’s 1999.
I also have a barb with Arquette himself. In plenty of interviews, not only reviews of the film, it’s been said that replacing Jason Voorhees with a president slasher was a no-brainer; that it’d never been done before. Here’s where I have to slasher nitpick because the same thing was done with Richard Nixon in HORROR HOUSE ON HIGHWAY 5.
So, where does this leave us?
THE TRIPPER is a rather pedestrian slasher. It’s not going to give you anything you haven’t seen before or done better.
To be totally honest, I went in with low expectations and the film still didn’t deliver on a level that I was pleased with. As I’ve mentioned, the black humor totally falls flat and our slasher comes across as more comedic than as a threat. It was pleasing that he wasn’t a one-liner machine like Freddy, though.
And here’s where I’ll mention the gore:
There’s a bit of the red stuff thrown around. The opening chainsaw kill has to be my favorite. The way the thing holds onto the man’s neck, the teeth grinding into him as his lifeblood spurts onto the forest floor, has to be the best. The rest of the kills, minus one, are your typical hack ‘n’ slash. There’s a bloodless decapitation of our Crazy Ralph wannabe, and a “split” kill that WRONG TURN 2 aped.
Do I recommend this film? No. My best words for it could only be: Turn on, tune in, and definitely drop out…
“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.” – Ronald Reagan So begins the directorial debut of David Arquette’s psychedelic slasher film. Does he live up to a decent entry to the sub-genre? Follow me and we shall see!
Starting with a flashback to 1967, the Summer of Love, we’re bombarded with unflinching horrible images from the Vietnam War. After this, we’re thrown into the teaser sequence that will set the guidelines for the film.
A young boy, watching Ronald Reagan on the television, is dragged along with his father to a site where hippies are protesting the chopping down of redwoods. The father, who goes a bit nutty and pulls a pistol, is taken down by the local cops. This does little good, though, as the son picks up a chainsaw and goes to town on one of the hippies.
We now cut to the present. The same woods are now home to a “Free Love Festival”. Paul Reubens, best known as Pee Wee Herman, plays the foul-mouthed manager of the event.
The festival, which is known to draw hippies from across the country (but, due to a low budget, only shows around 20 “hippies” showing up), is plagued by previous events where revelers have disappeared. The town’s mayor is quick to shove these episodes under the rug. And teamed with the sheriff, who is played by Thomas Jane, who is positive the events will go off without a hitch, the mayor is more than happy while courting dollar signs in his eyes.
Now our cannon fodder shows up in a Scooby Doo van. They’ve had a run-in with some local rednecks that leaves one of the hippies with a nasty head wound after being tagged with a beer bottle. There’s also a confrontation at the local diner (which harkens back to the events in FRIDAY THE 13TH Part 3) where we just know it’s going to end up hippies versus rednecks.
Back at the festival, a naked young man (who is covered in disgusting ginger hair) takes off into the woods. Following a bunny rabbit deeper into the forest, he runs across one of the traps set to keep trespassers away from the marijuana fields growing in the area. Needless to say, our ginger stripper is victim to one of the traps and ends up with his guts outside his body for the trouble.
This sets the sheriff to questioning the old man whose son ended up in the mental institution back in 1967. There’s a bit of a confrontation, but the old geezer says he’ll remove his traps from the woods. Does he? Is he our resident slasher, or could it be his son who was possibly released from the hospital due to Reagan’s 1980s budget cuts? dum dum dum
The slasher, garbed in a Ronald Reagan mask that resembles the president about as much as the boil on my butt, picks up an axe and starts to do the hippies in. He also makes mincemeat of the forest’s local Crazy Ralph wannabe, and the rednecks who have taken paint guns to even the score with their hippie adversaries.
This all leads to a scene where “Ronald Reagan” axes his way through the festival. There’s also a gross scene where Pee Wee Herman hides himself in the toilet of a Port-A-Potty. Not to mention that our final girl, who has it bad enough she’s running from an axe-wielding killer, has to do so while on acid.
David Arquette, who has been through the slasher mill three previous times in the SCREAM series as Deputy Dewey, serves up a one-dimensional entry to the sub-genre. He does his best by delivering kaleidoscope images from the stoners, and black humor that is rather flat (I did get a giggle from one victim who tries to prolong his death by stating: “But I’m a republican!”).
One also has to get a chuckle from a Republican slasher. Back in the early 1980s, when Jason Voorhees was hacking his way through nubile teens, the Republicans did everything they could to curb the gory sub-genre. This went on while the ultra-Conservatives saw the slashers as some holy symbols for doing away with sex-starved, dope smoking teens.
This all brings to mind the hippies of THE TRIPPER. Where you would think they’d be all for peace and happiness (“Make love, not war,” says Arquette in his role as one of the rednecks), they’re instead narrow-minded screw-ups who are violent and self-obsessed. Even while victims are piling up around them, they continue to party as if it’s 1999.
I also have a barb with Arquette himself. In plenty of interviews, not only reviews of the film, it’s been said that replacing Jason Voorhees with a president slasher was a no-brainer; that it’d never been done before. Here’s where I have to slasher nitpick because the same thing was done with Richard Nixon in HORROR HOUSE ON HIGHWAY 5.
So, where does this leave us?
THE TRIPPER is a rather pedestrian slasher. It’s not going to give you anything you haven’t seen before or done better.
To be totally honest, I went in with low expectations and the film still didn’t deliver on a level that I was pleased with. As I’ve mentioned, the black humor totally falls flat and our slasher comes across as more comedic than as a threat. It was pleasing that he wasn’t a one-liner machine like Freddy, though.
And here’s where I’ll mention the gore:
There’s a bit of the red stuff thrown around. The opening chainsaw kill has to be my favorite. The way the thing holds onto the man’s neck, the teeth grinding into him as his lifeblood spurts onto the forest floor, has to be the best. The rest of the kills, minus one, are your typical hack ‘n’ slash. There’s a bloodless decapitation of our Crazy Ralph wannabe, and a “split” kill that WRONG TURN 2 aped.
Do I recommend this film? No. My best words for it could only be: Turn on, tune in, and definitely drop out…
The author does not allow comments to this entry
No comments