Roger Corman
The trip

It is commonly believed that the art of cinema was made possible thanks to the achievements of great directors (and each of us has a list of names in mind that I will avoid mentioning just so as not to forget someone). However, I believe it is equally important to consider those less known authors, the so-called secondary importance directors (or cult and niche authors), who did valuable craftsmanship work by creating interesting B movies that were later reevaluated over time.

A special mention in this regard is deserved by a director like Roger Corman, who, working from 1955 to 1971, was known for making low-budget horror films that yielded large box office returns. His name is usually associated with films based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe (the famous "Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque"), appreciated by the public at the time. Among Corman's various films, however, there is a very particular title that, in my opinion, deserves to be rewatched to rediscover the intact Zeitgeist (the so-called spirit of the time) of the late '60s, namely "The Trip" (released in Italy with the horrendous title "Il serpente di fuoco" just to mislead and not shock too much the young audience of the time since the film's topic concerned the infamous narcotics).

The plot of the work (released in 1967 during the height of the Summer of Love and the flower generation) is very simple: a certain Paul Groves (played by Peter Fonda), an established advertiser, is experiencing a crisis in his marital life (here the screenplay doesn't specify too much the reasons for the situation, assuming that Sally, Paul's wife, is unfaithful). Perhaps in response to this situation (and to overcome a sort of abandonment syndrome), the protagonist opts to try lysergic acid for the first time, provided by a providential dealer (played by Dennis Hopper) and assisted by Bruce Dern playing a sort of psychedelic guru named John. But if after taking the LSD tab, Paul experiences pleasant sensations (like fulfilling embraces with his ex-wife), shortly after, he starts to have distressing visions (what is colloquially called a bad trip), and the frightened guru unexpectedly leaves, abandoning him to terrible hallucinations (enough for him to exclaim that he feels like he's dying, just as Peter Fonda had actually said earlier to John Lennon, who referenced it in the song "She Said She Said" recorded in 1966..). These are perhaps triggered by unconscious traumas and past fears, but the fact is that Paul feels hunted by knights clad in dark attire (and one of them stands out for having an open-painted face, perhaps to evoke the character of Death in Bergman's film "The Seventh Seal").

The lysergic journey continues with the protagonist wandering through the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, in and out of nightclubs where some dancers, wrapped in strobe lights, wriggle nearly naked to the rhythm of psychedelic music by the band Electric Flag, while some policemen try to capture Paul Groves. He seeks refuge by entering the apartments of strangers and acquaintances, pausing to ponder existential issues. At the peak of his bizarre nocturnal wanderings, the protagonist has the unexpected fortune to meet a woman named Glen, who confesses her interest in people experiencing LSD, so much so that the two head to a seaside villa where they engage in passionate and kaleidoscopic sexual encounters. At the end of this long and chaotic night of acid trips, Paul Groves gets out of bed, goes to the villa's balcony to take in some fresh air, and when Glen asks him how he would rate this first LSD trip, he prefers to postpone his answer to the next day.

Regarding the plot, re-watching Corman's film after so much time, I am always intrigued by the fact that, based on a screenplay written by Jack Nicholson inspired by both his previous family troubles with his first wife and his consumption of LSD tablets, it remains a work shot in real-time (even the director and other actors thought it wise to get high on acid just to see what effect it might have..). And so, the film sequences are a faithful reflection of what it meant back then to apply Timothy Leary's experimental philosophy, which invited trying certain substances to unplug the rational ego, letting oneself be carried by the flow, and thus expanding consciousness (this was also the underlying sense of the song "Tomorrow Never Knows," another Beatles track recorded in 1966). Naturally, the trip wasn't guaranteed to be painless if the person undertaking it had a frail balance due to past traumas and unconscious reservations. And, last but not least, thinking that drug use was the keystone to seeing reality differently enough to change it did not prove to be an effective revolutionary move by the then hippie movement, which was absorbed and neutralized by the hated capitalist establishment.

Today, after so much time, there remain interesting artistic documents of that era, and certainly, a film like "The Trip" by a director like Corman is one of these. If for no other reason than to remind us that some, in that consumer society, sought an escape route from an alienating reality. Today, instead, in this unprecedented historical phase, there's no need to get high to realize that reality itself is a bad trip..