Welcome to the first of what will be a small series of cult movies focused on drug use. I’m going to review Roger Corman’s “The Trip.” When I rented it, I was under the impression that this film was going to be a horror movie where Peter Fonda faces some pretty interesting and literal demons when he opts to take his first hits of LSD.

This does turn out to be the case, but this film showcases the dreamier aspects of his trip, what happens when he decides to go out while high off his ass, and how he faces his own faults.

Peter Fonda plays a television commercial producer that is devoted to his job marketing perfume and other consumer products. His workaholic ways take him to the point where he misses his own divorce hearing. His soon to be ex wife pursues him on the set to sign papers. At that point, shit gets real to use use the Orwellian terminology.

Somewhere, in all this mass marketing, he finds the time to smoke grass and try his first hit of acid for a mind altering experience. He experiences a series of strange psychedelic images, some of which involve his trial, crucifixion and a walk through the forests…while he is in a major metropolitan city.

The horror element is his own demons and doubt, some of which centering around his soon to be ex wife. The camera work was fairly solid and the visuals very colorful and dreamy. The dream like and surreal elements made the movie hard to follow and I had to watch it twice to really get the point of the movie.

I didn’t see too many negative effects of the drug use. Fonda, while fearful of the police, did not get arrested, even when he broke into a stranger’s house and spoke to the little girl inside. It doesn’t end in his ruin or real redemption. There is no horror that you might expect, even though the drug use makes it possible.

Overall, it’s pretty cool even as anti-drug propaganda. It’s worth a rent if you have spare time.