The Trip

Independent film pioneer Roger Corman’s The Trip marks one of the earlier forays into psychedelic narrative filmmaking.

Written by Jack Nicholson and featuring the likes of Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Susan Strasberg and Dennis Hopper, The Trip carries audiences through the psychedelic journey of finding oneself through chemically aided introspection.

Corman reportedly took LSD himself to prepare for the making of this film, and he used his experiences to cinematically simulate the moods, sounds and visions felt on the drug. With artful shots, trippy visual sequences, groovy settings and innovative camera movements, Corman was widely known for making shoestring-budget cult films that leave lasting impressions on viewers and the box office.

As one of American International Pictures’ most successful releases, The Trip cost around $100,000 to make and grossed a whopping $6 million during its initial run. Released during the ‘Summer of Love’, The Trip was not only inspired by psychedelia but also made its own cultural reverberations and generated a new wave of drug-induced Hollywood films to follow.

– Harvard Film Archive

The screening will be followed by a conversation Graham St. John, author of Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terrance McKenna, moderated by Fiona Patten.