The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, December 2-8
The Trip (1967)
Directed by Roger Corman
Having already responded to teenage sex-angst with belly-button-heavy beach party movies, American International Pictures kept their finger on Young America’s pulse by putting tab to tongue. The Trip redacts the inaccurate biases of uptight scare films by depicting the LSD experience as wondrously enticing, bad vibes and all. Oh, the studio bigwigs rendered the ending more ominously, sure, but with counterculture poster boys Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper (along with budding screenwriter Jack Nicholson) proving you can be prosperous and whacked out on goofballs, what’s to stop audiences with curious tastes and disposable income? Equally under the influence is Corman himself, who fills even the most “sober” scenes with candied colors and stereotypically “groovy” fixtures. Come hallucination time, he’s parroting Bergman and Fellini while exercising experimental montage, resulting in a rare AIP entry that’s as wholly visual as it is economical. Max Kyburz (December 6, 10, 9:15pm; December 13, 5pm at Anthology Film Archives’s AIP series)