"The Trip"(1967)d/Roger Corman

Inverse to the producers' warning that precedes tonight's review, a Hollywood flirtation with head-freakin' hallucinogenics as penned by no less than Jack Nicholson, is a short disclaimer from this guy over here:Ah, glorious lysergic acid diethylamide.Where does a guy like me begin to write about our many mind-blowing escapades together over the years.Without your entheogenic pleasures, I might not have ever mooned state troopers from a van window, shouting:"Behold! The fancy ass of the DEVIL!", I might not have been bitten by a pissed off African baboon spider that I thought I was communicating with, I might not have stopped my vehicle in courthouse traffic, worried that the front of the car, engine and all, had just dissolved into liquid metal and poured onto the asphalt.I might never have played naked hide n' seek with my girlfriend all over my apartment, culminating in a vista-revealing bathtub fuck that unlocked the secrets of the universe to me.Oh, you get the idea, already.Potent acid is tits, dudeskis.Tonight's feature focuses on some hip cats of the day and just such a journey to the center of the mind, as portrayed by genre faces Peter Fonda, Susan Strasberg, Bruce Dern, and Dennis Hopper, among others, and as directed by the original Motor City Madman and B-Movie Bishop, Roger Corman, in between his uncredited work in the director's chair on A Time for Killing(1967) and 1968's The Wild Racers.Semi-corny in its posi-delivery of the microgram-laden mirth; it's always a good time to viddy when you're in an altered state yourself.Diiiig...

"Yeah, I was Babalugats in 'Cool Hand Luke', maaann, I'll bogart this spleefie if I want to..."
Paul Groves(Peter Fonda) is a mild-mannered director of television commercials in the midst of a heavy divorce from his unfaithful wife, Sally(Susan Strasberg), a chick who's not opposed to rocking a salmon polyester pantsuit out in public just for kicks.Is it any wonder he's looking for some introspective on his own successes and failures in one o' them there acid trips all them youngins seem to be poppin' off on, in between their flower power and their Lothar and the Hand People records.He enlists his buddy, John(Bruce Dern), as a chaperone for his twelve hour mental vacation, as provided by Max(Dennis Hopper), a babbling, reef-tokin' white Navajo wanna-be in leather dungarees, who owns the local psychedelically painted drug spot frequented by the upper eschelon of turn-onners, tune-inners, and obligatory drop outs.A hot young blonde tells him that she thinks "acid-takers are groovy."Paul retreats upstairs with John and drops with some apple juice, while Max passes around a hog's leg downstairs and mumbles incoherently.John tells his soon-to-be-soaring associate that he probably won't wanna eff with all the recording equipment he's laid out for himself once he's on his trip.Before you can say, "Down on Phillip's Escalator", Paul's starting to see some things over there.John, guarding against a possible freakout, tells him, "I'm gonna be here, man, trust me.", as Paul starts getting into some beautiful stuff, like holding the sun in his hands, and swimming bare-assed and free.He imagines bedding the hot blonde from earlier and his soon-to-be ex-wife at the same time in a groovy ménage à trois until he's being chased on the beach by Templar-esque knights on horseback.Then he's on a merry-go-round with midgets being forced to watch his spouse share adulterous kisses with another man on a big screen, while Max appears and passes hippie judgement upon him for working for a living.John! John, where's that thorazine, maaaaaan!I wanna get off!

Would you let this man chaperone your first acid trip? Me neither.
John pulls the incoherent naked wreck out of the pool and towels him off, then does exactly what he promised he wouldn't do, in leaving Paul alone while he's gone to score some more juice.Paul imagines John is slumped dead in a chair with a paintified headwound, and slips out into the street in the middle of the night, peaking his nuts off.He lets himself into a strange household, rousing the resident little girl from her sleep, watching television with her and getting her a drink until her father wakes up and scares him off.He grooves on the washing machines at a laundromat and suggests to a spinster-in-curlers that they communicate with each other using only their minds, before running off when she calls the police as he tries to free the girl he imagines he sees spinning in a dryer full of the woman's clothes.He snags a table at a psychedelic club on Sunset Strip, but splits prematurely when the cops make the scene, somehow making his way back to Max's place to come down in the process.After he tells the drug dealer he may have led the cops to his doorstep, he's told to head back to the strip where John, who isn't dead afterall, can collect him again.This time, he bumps into the aforementioned hot blonde who speeds off with him in her convertible sports car to her place, where they have all kinds of trippy sex, while he hallucinates about the hooded knights, only they're Sally and the blonde in disguise.The next morning, she asks him whether his trip was a good one or not, and he remarks that though he found love, he may need another day to reflect upon the turn of events, as the screen freeze-frames on his face, then cracks like glass, Fulci-style.Roll credits...

Sex whilst trippin' face? L.S.D.elicious!
As you might have guessed, the flagrant use of boring jazz in the soundtrack was a big red light for me.I'm thinking Corman should have scored some genuine psych rock instead, a la Pink Floyd or the Amboy Dukes, for authenticity's sake, I dunno.You can see Henry Fonda's rebellious son, who's experienced a sort of cinematic renaissance of late, in a treasure trove of genre cult classics;The Wild Angels(1966), Spirits of the Dead(1967), Easy Rider(1969), Spasms(1983), and even the crappy remake of Escape From New York, 1996's Escape From LA.Dern, a premier psycho in television and movies dating back to 1960, was at his genre best in the late sixties/early seventies, scoring credits in everything from Bloody Mama(1970) and The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant(1971) to Black Sunday(1976) and Hitchcock's Family Plot(1976).The curler-coiffed Barboura Morris dates back to early Corman, appearing in The Wasp Woman(1959) and The Haunted Palace(1960).Judy Lang, who plays Fonda's blonde sex-interest, can also be spotted in The Psycho Lovers and Count Yorga, Vampire.Curiously, LSD-25 was last completely legal in the United States in 1966, but you don't have to be a hardcore blotterhead to enjoy the cultish charm of Trip, which earns two double-dipped wops on the ratings scale.Add it to your collection.

Woooooooooow, maaaaahnnnn...

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre Pt. 2"(1986)d/Tobe Hooper

My junior year in high school had to be pretty uneventful, since I don't remember much of it.A lot of ball-busting during classes followed by a lot of post-date blue balls from dating underclassmen chicks from rival area schools, maybe.Yin and Yang of the high school universe, I guess.One thing I do remember was how amped up I was for the long awaited sequel to Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, only intensified by the more I read and saw about it; Hooper was again in the director's chair(we all know how sequels usually go when that duty gets passed off to somebody else) with a budget, Dennis Hopper, a long-time fave of mine in front of the camera, the splatter was to be handled by none other than Tom Savini, my long-standing childhood horror hero of heroes, and Leatherface was gonna be mincing up yuppies, for which I'd never held back one iota of deep-seated repugnance.What could possibly be better'n that?As I walked out of the theater, I remember being highly disappointed with the experience; cheated by the censors out of most the magnificent gore I was looking forward to, loathing Dennis Hopper's Lefty character like he was onions personified on the big screen(I hate onions btw), and lastly, wondering where the fuck the mad brilliance that screamed its way off of every frame in the original was...
As the years passed though, I found myself warming up to the production more and more, finding little things that I dug, the excellent soundtrack featuring Lords of the New Church, The Cramps, and Oingo Boingo, and even appreciating the dark humor that Hooper emphasized over horror this time around.Did I mention the equally beautiful and talented Caroline Williams?The girl's got legs for days and a throaty southern twang that's just hot.Wop approves.Ultimately, after the theater, two VHS releases, and a bare bones dvd, I finally got what I was asking for when MGM issued a special "Gruesome" edition disc with deleted scenes in 2007.I can say now, without a shred of doubt, this is a cult classic, indeed.

Look out!That blood is gonna overstate your pastel sweater!
It's broadcasting as usual for radio dj, "Stretch" Brock(Caroline Williams) until two drunken yuppies who've been abusing their call-in priviledges play chicken with the wrong monster pickup on a bridge.Hiding behind his hitchiking brother's corpse, now a gruesome puppet, on the roof of the truck, is Leatherface(Bill Johnson), who ruins the boys' evening with his trusty revving chainsaw, the vicious murders all captured on tape at the radio station.After seeing one of his newspaper articles, Stretch reaches out to Lefty Enright(Dennis Hopper),the vengeful uncle of two missing persons from a decade earlier(Sally and Franklin Hardesty from the original movie) he believes to be victims of the mysterious chainsaw killings occurring across the state of Texas, and he suggests that she play the tape live on the air.Meanwhile, she covers a Texas-Oklahoma Chili Cookoff, which is won for the second year in a row by Drayton Sawyer(Jim Siedow), who staunchly refuses to name his secret ingredients with good reason.When she finally plays the tape on her show, she's startled to find Chop Top(Bill Moseley), a 'Nam vet with a metal plate in his skull and twin brother to the Hitchhiker, hiding in the shadows as she's about to shut the station down for the night.He's soon joined by Leatherface, who traps her behind the metal door of a storage closet as her co-worker L.G. returns, only to be viciously pummelled by a pun-spewing, tack hammer-wielding Chop Top.When Leatherface saws his way into the closet, Stretch charms the pants off of him, and after he yanks his wankie(blech), he destroys everything in his path with his signature buzzsaw, save for his new gal pal.Believing that Bubba has done the dj in, Chop Top and sibling drag L.G.'s battered body back to their digs:a massive abandoned carnival ground strewn with human remains and strings of colored lights.

Stretch(Caroline Williams)is clearly impressed by the size of Bubba's(Bill Johnson)weapon.
Stretch follows the killers to their home, finding herself trapped there only to be further wooed by Leatherface, who puts the freshly removed face of her still breathing bud, L.G. over hers(!), clumsily dancing with her amidst a bevvy of slaughtered bodies.Love is a many splendored thing.She's finally captured by the Sawyers, who sit her down to a home-cooked plate fulla insanity then bent over a bushel to get head-whacked by the greatest killer of them all, Grandpa(Does any of this sound familiar to you?).Meanwhile, elsewhere on the compound, Lefty, screaming for vengeance like Rob Halford after discovering a Dear Bruce letter in his dressing room, decked out with three chainsaws, stumbles upon the skeletal remains of his nephew Franklin, still in his wheelchair.He chainsaws through a wall, dropping in on the Sawyers' festivities, and when Drayton offers to pay him off, Lefty chainsaws him in the keester(!) and frees Stretch.A buzzsaw battle of epic proportions ensues between the former Texas Ranger and the unemployed cattle slaughterer in the human skin mask, with Bubba taking a Poulan to the labonza.Drayton sets off a grenade while hiding under a table, apparently snuffing everyone but Stretch and Chop Top with the explosion.The two end up in a carved out rock tower overlooking the entire property, where Chop Top repeatedly slashes her with a straight razor until she stumbled upon a makeshift shrine where a mummified Grandma is kept, holding a signature chainsaw, which Stretch uses to dispatch the plate-headed goon, who's just cut his own throat several times to show he means business(!!).As the smoke clears, we see Stretch atop the tower imitating the swinging, spinning chainsaw dance Leatherface ended the first movie with.

Compared to the average Monteforte family reunion, these chappies are positively lucid.
Two noteworthy scenes that ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor involve Leatherface chainsawing a crowd of boisterous football fans in a parking garage, and movie patrons in a theater, to the glee of Joe Bob Briggs, cult reviewer/personality extraordinaire, who gives a signature review("Saw Fu!") of Bubba's bloody handiwork and the end of the sequence.There was also a scrapped alternate plotline where Lefty turns out to be Stretch's father.A lot sillier than they were gory, it's still cool to be able to finally see what you've been missing all these years.Looking at the film through more experienced eyes, and taking it as the black comedy it was intended to be, TCM2 is pretty enjoyable overall.The cast is solid, with great performances by the original cook, Jim Siedow, cult vet Bill Moseley, Bill Johnson as a new Leatherface, and even Hopper's turn as Lefty isn't nearly as abrasive as I once thought it was.Oh, did I mention Caroline Williams? She also gives a stellar performance here.Savini is at the top of his game, with clever gore set pieces that are sparingly used in the final cut.On the scale, this often hilarious sequel to one of the greatest horror movies ever made merits three big ones, and a firm recommendation.Love it!

TCM without a demented dinner scene? Not on yer meat, you bitch hogs!

R.I.P. Dennis Hopper 1936-2010