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.

We've seen a lot of slashers already that are intended as throwbacks/tributes to the 80's – the era when this horror sub genre was at its peak of popularity – but David Arquette takes his 80's love even a couple of steps further, as the killer in his directorial debut is obsessed with, and even wears a mask resembling the President who was in charge of the White House for the largest part of the 80's decade. "The Tripper" is a fun and imaginative piece of splatter cinema (much better than, for instance, the simultaneously released but massively over-hyped "Hatchet") that effectively blends nostalgic slasher clichés, over-the-top political satire and a whole lot of unsubtle gore effects. The action takes place in a remote and forestry region; all the lead characters are either dim-witted teenagers or mentally underdeveloped hillbillies and the maniac with the axe is a completely deranged and unstoppable killing machine! What more could you possibly expect? The film even opens with a good old-fashioned crazed 60's flashback, which immediately explains the madman's sympathies for Ronald Reagan. A young boy witnesses how hippies prevent his struggling father from reclaiming a forest whilst his severely ill mother lies dying in bed at home. Blinded by rage, the boy picks up a chainsaw and violently attacks the lead hippie. Only moments before the assault the boy was staring at Governor Reagan on TV, and his "People are more important than trees" speeches clearly made an everlasting impact! The action than jumps forward to present day and we follow a van filled with stoned teenagers as they're on their way to attend the biggest annual and hippie-themed music festival in the woods. Guess who shall be present as well and will go conservative Republican on their butts? "The Tripper" is reasonably fast-paced, light-headed and very easy to digest. Arquette clearly opted for a comical approach of the genre right from the beginning, presumably following the tradition of the "Scream"-trilogy in which he starred, but still you can't help thinking the concept of this film also had a lot of suspense-potential. The idea of an old-fashioned, conservative and Reagan obsessed killer taking on a group of stoned kids could easily have resulted in a much more grim and sadist movie, but instead the killer is simply a life-sized Reagan caricature and fires off legendary presidential one-liners like "There you go again" and anecdotes about jellybeans. There are quite a few familiar faces in the cast and they all contribute a pretty reasonable performance, particularly Thomas Jane as the small town sheriff and Balthazar Getty as the stalking ex-boyfriend of one of the partying teens. The gore is plentiful enough to satisfy the majority of the horror-loving crowd, but there's never any truly sick or revolting stuff shown on screen. "The Tripper" is not a great or even highly memorable film, but it certainly entertains while it lasts and sets positive expectations for David Arquette's further career as a director.

In "The Tripper," a slasher movie with a political conscience, a serial killer wearing a Ronald Reagan mask stalks a group of anachronistic hippies (so anachronistic they have cell phones along with their tie dye t-shirts and psychedelic van) who have come to the forests of Northern California to celebrate free love and partake in unlimited drug use at a Woodstock-type outdoor event.The Red State/Blue State divide is never far from the filmmakers' minds as a bunch of gun-toting rednecks go up against a group of Flower Power love children who suddenly descend on the area. The saving grace, if indeed there is one, of this gory, but not particularly disturbing, splatter-fest is the tongue-in-cheek humor it manages to display from time to time. Otherwise, this odd little mixture of horror movie clichés and outdated political satire (does anybody really care about the Reagan administration any more?) falls strangely flat.

OK, it was campy, fun and a little racy too. But I thought it was totally entertaining! Great concept with the Reagan thing and all the irony of the times with Bush and all, but the movie just had a fun feel to it. My wife thinks I am nuts, but I love these kind of movies and David should make a sequel to it! Two thumbs up here! The more blood and bad jokes the better! The ultimate was Pulp Fiction. Lots of blood, no one cared type of atmosphere. The irony of Samuel Jackson quoting passages from the bible, then wasting someone away. Or John Travolta taking out the Boss' woman and really getting her almost killed by drug use. Some of this is pretty sick when you think of it, but reality does stink sometimes, doesn't it? And bringing in people like Paul"peewee" Reubens to be in it, he was great! The beginning is classic too, with the tree huggers and all. I have to give it two thumbs up! JT