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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Coquette Productions
Salesrank: 31133
Released: October 23, 2007 |
| Our Price: $6.19 |
| Used Price: $1.50 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Directed by, co-written by and starring David Arquette, this classic horror movie revolves around a group of friends who escape to a modern-day Woodstock concert for a weekend of debauchery, only to be stalked by a homicidal maniac determined to finish what he started years earlier.
Description of The Tripper:
A crazed homage to 1960s and '70s drug and slasher exploitation flicks, The Tripper has "future cult movie" written all over it. A van full of neo-hippies (including Lukas Haas, Brick, Jason Mewes, Clerks, and Jaime King, Sin City) head into the California woods to attend a retro-60s rock concert (featuring the not-very-60s sounds of Fishbone)--only to find themselves harassed by backwoods rednecks and hunted by a Ronald-Reagan-infatuated serial killer. Along for the ride are a blunt but fair sheriff (Thomas Jane, The Punisher, sporting a seriously 70s 'stache), a jealous young Republican (Balthazar Getty, Lost Highway, and a venal music promoter (Paul Reubens, better known as Pee Wee Herman). The Tripper vacillates wildly between trippy visual effects and spewing gore, reflecting writer/director David Arquette's clear appreciation of such lurid b-movies as The Trip, Psych-Out, Deranged, and Three on a Meathook. Thrown into the mix is political lampoonery far too broad and scattershot to be called 'satire,' but it's clear that Arquette (better known as an actor, Eight Legged Freaks) has no particular agenda--he's just making fun of everything he can think of, and the results are preposterous, gruesome, and sure to hit the sweet spot for a certain brand of cineaste. You know who you are; check this out. --Bret Fetzer
The Tripper Reviews:
The Tripper 
2009-09-01 - Hey, I was a fan of Ronald Reagan personally...and I thought this was HILARIOUS! Of course it's a horror film, but it's also absolutely a comedy. Everything about it, for what it is, is perfect. I can't believe this was David Arquette's first movie (as director). I think he will be huge. And Pee Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) as the slimy Frank Baker (organizer of American Free Love Festival) is just too funny, a gut buster, especially at the end when he's covered head-to-toe in s--t.
A very confused gore fest 
2009-04-17 - A group of hippies attending a modern day Woodstock-esque music festival find themselves being picked off one by one by a killer wearing a Ronald Reagan mask.
The idea behind this film, that of a conservative "President" killing drug-taking hippies, is a good (albeit warped) one, and thus it should have been a good film, but unfortunately, "The Tripper" falls down in its execution (no pun intended). It takes far too long for the killings to really get started - the first half of the movie primarily comprises an extended introduction to the characters who we know are later going to meet horrible deaths, and watching them getting stoned - and once the killing starts, the premise behind the film completely evaporates. According to the DVD cover, the Ronald Reagan killer is meant to be targeting hippies, but in reality, he pretty much just kills everyone who crosses his path (red-necks and Republican voters included), thus rendering the whole film completely pointless. In the film's favour, I will admit that some of the death scenes are pretty cool (if you find ultra-gory horror violence amusing) and that might be enough for some viewers, but I personally prefer gore films that have something resembling a coherent plot.
You'd have to be trippin' out to enjoy the tripper! 
2008-12-21 - This film is appalling. Not in the way 'so bad it's good', but so bad it's very bad. It has nothing to offer, apart from wasting an hour and a half of your life. I got this film for free, and I still feel conned. It's not scary, or gripping, or gory, or interesting. It's badly directed by a bad actor. You will be hard pushed to get past 15 minutes of this fodder without wanting to turn it off, but you keep watching thinking it has to get better, which it doesn't.
Even if you're a fan of old skool stalk 'n slash, or low budget zombie flicks, or 80s video nasties, or any genre of movie, you will not like this crap.
Expect divorce papers from Courtney Cox
2008-11-30 - There's no need to beat around the Bush. This movie sucks. It gets lost in a haze of decent horror, poorly done dark humor, and atrocious inserts of political history.
It's nearly inconceivable how someone could mess up the simple horror formula that has been reproduced a hundred times: scary killer, a little mystery, lots of topless women, tons of fodder, a few sex scenes, maybe some drugs, and a pointless ending. It's a nearly flawless concept. It's too bad the movie is too much like its inept director David Arquette - painful and incompetent.
First and foremost, the killer is scary only because he somehow reminded me of an axe-wielding Christian Bale in American Psycho. That would have been enough, but noooooo. Arquette had to make an unbearable attempt at being clever by making the villain wear a Ronald Reagan mask and speak in a poorly done impersonation of his most famous catch-phrases. The attempt only works for the braindead.
The hippie sacrificial lambs in this movie are nearly pointless. Sure, there is Thomas Jane as a sheriff - who probably signed on because he wants to do Courtney Cox - along with Jay (Jason Mewes) from Clerks, but the rest are people who at best have been in a truck commercial or something, but they're fairly abysmal and surely not memorable. Regardless of their past accomplishments, or lack thereof, none is interesting enough to live, or deep enough for viewer empathy. You will want them to die. Anyway, they make their way to the redwoods of California for a Love/Drug/Music festival overseen by an F-bomb spouting Pee Wee Herman where they walk into a slaughterhouse.
With so much pure horror potential squandered, it's really a shame. In the same way that Jeepers Creepers was initially intriguing and later exploded, so too does The Tripper. With an interesting buildup and a group of great initial killings, the movie shows promise. With the first decapitation I cheered. And then the suck began.
No story was developed, secondary antagonists were thrown in for no reason other than to give Arquette a reason be in the movie, and the rest devolves in a steaming pile of political commentary, horrible drug jokes and special effects, and pointlessly predictable murders. Eventually it becomes evident that the movie is horrible and nearly impossible to enjoy unless drunk or stoned. It's a complete mess, and it sucks. I implore you; don't watch it.
uneven mixture of politics, horror and satire
2008-10-12 - **1/2
In "The Tripper," a slasher movie with a political conscience, a serial killer wearing a Ronald Reagan mask stalks a group of anachronistic hippies (so anachronistic they have cell phones along with their tie dye t-shirts and psychedelic van) who have come to the forests of Northern California to celebrate free love and partake in unlimited drug use at a Woodstock-type outdoor event.
The Red State/Blue State divide is never far from the filmmakers' minds as a bunch of gun-toting rednecks go up against a group of Flower Power love children who suddenly descend on the area. The saving grace, if indeed there is one, of this gory, but not particularly disturbing, splatter-fest is the tongue-in-cheek humor it manages to display from time to time. Otherwise, this odd little mixture of horror movie cliches and outdated political satire (does anybody really care about the Reagan administration any more?) falls strangely flat.
