Low-budget filmmaker Roger Corman’s The Trip was announced in the 12 Jul 1966 LAT as an upcoming American International Pictures (AIP) release. The project was planned as one of AIP’s current slate of “protest” pictures, described in a 14 Sep 1966 LAT brief as “realistic commentaries on our society and times,” and was to be centered around the hallucinatory drug, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), a major facet of 1960s counterculture. In a 6 Dec 1966 DV item, Corman acknowledged that The Trip would “not be ‘unsympathetic’ to LSD.” Furthermore, in order to truly understand the subject matter, he tried the drug for the first time “under strict medical supervision” and “with a stenographer on hand to record the incident,” an article in the 19 Jul 1967 Var reported. It was noted that Corman did not endorse what he considered to be the “careless, unrestricted experimenting” that was common among young people.
       According to the 31 Aug 1966 Var, Corman was hoping to re-team Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra, who had co-starred in his recent box-office success, The Wild Angels (1966, see entry), also an AIP film. In the meantime, he was discussing the subject of LSD with Sidney Cohen, a psychiatrist based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who was considered “a leading authority on the drug.” Fonda mentioned his personal experiences with LSD in a Feb 1968 Esquire article, and revealed that his agents and business managers had advised him against doing the picture since he already had a reputation for being involved with “the drug scene.” However, Fonda was adamant about the project, and agreed to perform in it for a low salary plus a percentage of the profits.        Charles B. Griffith was enlisted to write the screenplay, and Daniel Haller was considered to direct, as noted in the 18 Nov 1966 DV. Days later, the 23 Nov 1966 Var reported that Corman might direct instead of Haller, a fact that was confirmed in the 7 Apr 1967 DV, which listed 29 Mar 1967 as the start of principal photography.
       The budget was cited as $1.5 million in the 31 Aug 1966 Var. However, Fonda stated in Esquire that, although he was not supposed to reveal it, the production only cost $450,000. With Corman’s blessing, he and co-star Dennis Hopper used their own funds to shoot additional acid trip sequences in the desert, according to a 20 Jul 1969 NYT article, a collaboration which marked the precursor to Easy Rider (1969, see entry), Hopper’s directorial debut in which he and Fonda co-starred along with Jack Nicholson, who had written the final screenplay for The Trip.
       Also in the Esquire article, Fonda asserted that Corman had abandoned The Trip before editing and scoring were completed, in order to film a racing picture overseas (The Wild Racers (1968, see entry)), leading Fonda to spend an additional $7,500 of his own money to have the score produced. As stated in the 7 Feb 1968 Var, Corman got wind of Fonda’s claims before the article was published and wrote to its author, Rex Reed, to clarify that Hopper and Fonda’s additional footage took up only one minute of the final film. He also disputed the sum Fonda said he had paid to musicians, and the actor’s assertion that he had found the musicians in the first place. Reed approached others who had worked on the picture and determined that Fonda’s version of events was generally agreed upon, but he compromised by inserting Corman’s reactions parenthetically within the Esquire article.
       Special effects used to depict hallucinations were facilitated by independent filmmaker Peter Gardiner, whose short film, Voyage Omega, caught the attention of Peter Fonda just days before filming was set to begin, as stated in a 25 Feb 1968 LAT article. Fonda introduced Gardiner to Corman, who hired him and his partner, Tom Rounds, to advise on “psychedelic effects.” Gardiner claimed he and Rounds were paid $13,000 for their services, which included a process that reportedly worked “like a four-track audio recorder.” Gardiner stated, “We can feed any kind of visual information into any of the four channels and vary the intensity and flicker rate between them. This is then projected onto a surface to be photographed.”
       The 23 Aug 1967 Var acknowledged that the picture had already opened “in several situations” prior to its scheduled release that day in New York City, but television advertisements had been rejected by TV stations throughout the U.S. due to “offensive scenes” showing Fonda’s nude backside and semi-nude shots of Susan Strasberg, and featuring language that referred to LSD’s hallucinatory effects. An advisory against running the advertisements was issued by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which claimed the commercials were “an affront to good taste, community attitudes and responsibility to children.” To that time, at least one New York independent radio station, WHN, had accepted the radio commercial for the picture. In other promotional efforts, Esquire mentioned that kaleidoscopes were handed out to the press, with the following “gimmicky come-on” language: “Listen to the sound of love… Feel purple… Taste green… Touch the scream that crawls up the wall.”
       Although critical reception was mixed, the 25 Aug 1967 LAT gave the picture high praise, calling it “the most unabashed art film ever to come out of Hollywood... Ingmar Bergman for the teenyboppers, Dali for the drive-ins.” Overseas, the film was banned by the British Board of Film Censors, as noted in the 18 Oct 1967 Var, and also by Italian censors; nonetheless, it was selected by the Italian government as an official U.S. entry at the Messina-Taormina Film Festival, where Corman was due to attend a screening, according to a 31 Jul 1968 Var item.
       After roughly a year-and-a-half in release, The Trip was listed in an 8 Jan 1969 Var chart of “All-Time Box Office Champs,” which noted its cumulative domestic film rentals of $4.5 million.
       Michael Blodgett, Angelo Rossitto, and Eleanore Vogel were named as cast members in the 21 Apr 1967 and 25 Apr 1967 issues of LAT.
       Copyright length: 81 min.