Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

hyped garbage

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The Tripper is set in Northern California where six doped up tree loving hippie friends make their way to the Free Love Festival in the middle of some woods just outside a small town. There they intend to dance, smoke some weed, make love & generally have some fun. However their plans are slightly thrown out of kilter when a Ronald Reagan mask wearing psycho killer turns up & starts killing all the hippies & guests. Personally I would give the guy a medal but you can't just go around killing people no matter how annoying they are so local cop's & surviving hippies team up to put an end to the Ronald Reagan killer once & for all...Co-written, co-produced, directed by & starring David Arquette I am yet again amazed by all the positive comments this piece of crap film has, where has people's taste in films gone where they can rave about a piece of turgid crap such as The Tripper which offers zero entertainment value as far as I am concerned? I keep reading & hearing about how clever The Tripper is, how relevant it is, the fact that it's a knowing satire of American culture & has something socially relevant to say & get across. Did I just see the same film? Where is all this social commentary & satire then? There's a conversation between the hippies talking about George W. Bush but the most intelligent thing said is that he 'has Texan sized balls' which just about sums up how clever & thoughtful The Tripper is. There seems to be a quick anti war message thing going on at the start but then is completely forgotten about as none of it's ideas or themes are carried through with an conviction. Even the hippies are shown as stereotypical tree huggers who are always stoned, boring & it's been done to death plenty of times before. There is nothing thought provoking, clever or relevant in The Tripper & I found it one long bore. So the social commentary sucks & doesn't work what about the horror & slasher content? Well that sucks too, the pace is mind numbingly slow, the kills are tame & few & far between, the killers motives are again meant to be clever but they don't work & I don't really see why he dresses up as Ronald Reagan, maybe it's an American thing & being British I don't get it but I got it enough to know it sucks. So as a horror film it sucks, as a comedy it's not funny in the slightest & as a film that tries to be meaningful it fails completely on all fronts. One to avoid I think.I must admit that The Tripper does seem to have a budget & it actually has good production values but the film still sucks balls though. The gore levels are disappointing, there's an off screen decapitation, there are a few dead bodies seen, someones hand is chopped off (to which the stoned one handed kid says 'what's your f%^&ing problem?), the killer stabs a couple of people, he uses an axe at the end to kill hippies in a rather bloodless way, someone is sliced in half with a chainsaw & a guy is seen with a chainsaw stuck in his neck but it's all pretty tame actually. There's no build-up to any of the kills, there's no tension & while the woods provides a decent yet clichéd location there's not too much of an atmosphere either. I am really struggling to find one single positive thing to say about The Tripper, I just thought it was moronic & unfunny rubbish of the highest order that doesn't satisfy on any level whether your looking for horror or comedy or satire.To give The Tripper some credit it does look quite nice with above average production values but as I said the film is still terrible. Apparently shot in the Big Basin Redwoods State Park in California. I found the entire cast grated on my nerves, David Arquette's wife Courtney Cox appears although I didn't recognise her.The Tripper is a truly terrible film that I hated, I keep seeing & reading about how good this is but I just didn't see it at all & I really do wonder if I saw the same film. Absolute total & utter crap from start to finish & that's my opinion.

OK so I've read a lot of these comments about how they think it's dumb that the characters are so revolved around they're drug use the whole movie or people just asking why that is.I have been to festivals and understand how and why the characters are acting like that. hippies go to festivals to mainly do a lot of drugs and watch amazing bands. At festivals most people talk about drugs a quite a bit of the time. They're excited and very pleased that they're going to be able to be free with they're drug use and not really worry about the law and people who define they're drug use as criminal or just wrong. So honestly that's what most of the conversation at festivals are about. I'm not saying that it's not messed up that even though they see murdered people that they're still partying. My friends and I that watched this movie together agreed that we would be trying to do something about it like Sam.I loved this movie. I thought it was hilarious and as far as behavior of the characters and the setting was pretty realistic. The blood was super super super fake, as well as all the gore. They probably should have explained things better, and had a little more sorta storyline on the killer. But overall I really enjoyed it. the whole concept was great!

That so many prominent actors would collude to produce this piece of crap saddens me. Sophomoric would be an aspiration for this film but The Tripper can't reach that bar. The crudity of the political impetus to this film is not just simplistic, it's severely retarded. To draw characters of such stunted stereotypicality is an insult to any prospective viewer. There isn't one role that isn't appallingly encumbered by the nature of their shallowness of type. The sheriff (Jane), while chasing the killer's father, comes across the lair of the psychopath , papered with newsclippings about Reagan, and is scared when the (venal, crooked and meddling) roughed up mayor steps out of the shadows blubbering. This causes the sheriff to not only lose his hat but drop on the floor the shotgun that had been his main weapon while in pursuit. Does he stoop to pick it up? No, and of course as soon as the sheriff helps the mayor out of the shack, the shotgun becomes an immediate need when dogs attack the mayor. Does the sheriff take out handgun on his hip to take care of the dogs? No, he runs like a scared rabbit. Courtney Cox, Paul Reubens, Jaime King, David Arquette, Thomas Jane, Lukas Haas and Balthezar Getty-- you'd think acouple of them would have called for a rewrite to the crapulous script,but again, no. What a terrible waste of money (because the production values are of a professional caliber). Better that the celluloid wasted on this film had been used to make guitar picks.

In the 80's, after seeing his father and lumberjack foreman being hit by a protester against the deforesting and arrested by the police, the boy Gus kills the protester with a chainsaw. In the present days, Samantha (Jamie King), who is traumatized after being abused by her former boyfriend Jimmy (Balthazar Getty), travels with her pothead friends in a van to the American Free Love Festival, a rock-and-roll concert in the woods. Near the location, they are assaulted by three local hillbillies, but they succeed to arrive in the festival. Meanwhile, Mayor Hal Burton (Rick Overton) and Deputy Buzz Hall (Thomas Jane) try to give a minimum of organization to the event. However, a deranged psychopath serial-killer wearing a mask of Ronald Reagan uses an ax to kill the pacific stoned hippies.The slasher "The Tripper" is a great disappointment. David Arquette certainly had the intention of making a cult-movie and was supported by a good cast (probably his friends) including a cameo appearance of his wife and a great cinematography and lightening, but unfortunately the story never works. Jason Mewes is comfortable performing his traditional role of pothead; the sexy Jaime King has a good performance in the role of Samantha but the good actor Thomas Jane is displaced in his silly role. Further, the political anti-war jokes and speeches of the Republicans and Ronald Reagan are boring. In a cheap manipulation, the Brazilian DVD highlights the name of Courtney Cox-Arquette in the movie, misleading her fans. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): "Perseguição Assassina" ("Assassin Pursue")