The Tripper

Director - David Arquette (Scream, Eight Legged Freaks)
Starring - Jaime King (My Bloody Valentine, Sin City), Thomas Jane (The Punisher, The Mist), and Lukas Haas (Mars Attacks!)
Release Date - 2006
Genre - Horror/Comedy
Tagline - " On 4.20, Hippie Blood Will Trickle Down" "Move Over Jason, Look Out Freddie. HEEERE'S RONNIE!" "Sex, Drugs, and Rock'N'Ronnie!"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection)

Rating (out of 5):

     A few years back I heard this film was in production.  I didn't know how to take David Arquette as the director of a slasher film.  David Arquette will always be Gordie Boggs from the 2000 film Ready to Rumble to me.  Sure, most people know him from the Scream series, but until last year I refused to watch any of the Scream films.  Most mainstream horror fans love the series, however, to me the series just did not seem that interesting.  I was open minded to the whole idea.  I do love slashers from the golden age and will watch any I can find regardless of the decade it was created in.  In 2007 the local Ma and Pop rental store was still up and running when this film was released.  After I watched it I fell in love, but the owner of the rental store would not sell it to me.  Luckily, when I was in college the local Movie Gallery went out of business and I was able to grab me a copy for a few dollars.

     The film opens in the early 80's with a lumberjack taking care of his bed ridden wife and young son.  He receives a phone call from his foreman that a group of tree huggers are protesting at their logging site.  The hippies refuse to move so the lumberjacks can complete their job and putting them in a bad spot.  The lead lumberjack tells the head hippie that his wife is deathly ill and he needs to complete the job.  The hippie tells him he does not care if people have to die as long as he can save the trees.  The lumberjack is pissed and pulls a gun on him when the police arrive.  They place him in the cruiser while his son watches the entire ordeal.  His son snaps and cuts the hippie down with a chainsaw to the neck.  We then skip to present day and a group of modern druggies are traveling to a small mountain town for a festival of sorts.  The local town folk do not like the hippies and a few even go as far as to terrorize the group.  Gus is now grown.  He was institutionalized after killing the hippie but was released in the late 80's by Reagan and now idolizes him.  Gus sets out, while wearing a Ronald Reagan mask, to butcher all the hippies he can sink his axe in.  That is until one of the young hippies teams up with the local sheriff to stop him.

     This movie does a great job at being a modern slasher, but fails horribly at paying homage to the slashers from the 80's.  The acting is actually very well done but I am a little disappointed Jason Mewes did not have a bigger role in the film.  He did a great job in the vampire horror flick Bitten, even though the movie was not that great.  I think he could definitely make a name for himself in the horror genre.  The special effects are also very good.  The film offers some very bloody kills with some decent gore.  The kills, though nothing new, are done brilliantly on screen and does not fail to entertain.  The story is in the vain of true slasher films but with a sense of humor.  Adding a killer Reagan to the plot gave the film some much needed humor.  This is not the first film to use a kill wearing a presidential mask, but it is the most entertaining.  Having the killer wear the Reagan mask made the storyline even more solid while throwing in some political satire and historical humor in to the mix.  The title of the film comes from Reagan's nickname, The Gipper, mixed with the hippie lingo for getting high.  David Arquette and Joe Harris are very clever and did a great job when they wrote the story for the film.  My biggest complaint with the film is the ending.  During the last twenty to thirty minutes of the film, the movie felt like it could end at any minute, but it did not.  The movie just kept going and going and the real ending we got was not as satisfying as one of the many potential endings.  Overall, I think this movie is worth the price and more.