Merrick again...

Here’s Run-and-Gun with another look at THE TRIPPER, which has yet to be picked up for distribution. We ran a brief, and less-than-enthusiastic, review of the film yesterday.

Run-and-Gun provides considerably more detail about the movie, as well as its political sensibilities. He seemed to enjoy TRIPPER quite a bit more than the previous reviewer.

Read on…

Hey guys, Run-and-Gun here. Dropped you a few things here and there, usually I try to keep it to dropping bombs and breaking news, but after reading the "so-so" review of The Tripper you guys just posted, I figured I'd throw in some cents on this. I too caught the World Premiere at Mann's Chinese Theater, although it was in Auditorium 1, which is still sweet, as opposed to the actual famous part of the joint.

I strolled in pretty early, around 7 for the "7:30" start but things didn't get rolling until much later, sometime after 8. But it was worth it, a ton of stars showed up, (To name a few: David Arquette, Courtney Cox-Arquette, Patricia Arquette, Tom Jane, Steve Niles, Jamie King, Paul Reubens, and pretty much everyone else on the cast, except Jason Mewes. Some people just there to watch- Rob Zombie, Gary Shandling, Fred Durst, Paris Hilton, Dean Devlin. Basically, it was star studded) and there was a T-Shirt cannon. David Arquette also came around tossing around Screamfest 06 shirts (this was the opening night of the venue) and looked damn snazzy in an all white suite spattered with blood. Sweet.

Anywho. On to the film. I enjoyed it a lot. Now, it wasn't perfect, but let's remember this was Arquette's first go-round in the director's chair. Like was mentioned, the plot revolves around a kid who grows up hating Hippies and emulating Ronald Reagan. The reason he emulates Reagan is not as half-assed (I felt) as was dished on earlier, but rather because the kid grew up during the Reagan administration and saw all that go down and also knew that big Ron absolutely hated Hippies. And hippies wronged his family, so it's just normal he'd love the Gipper.

So the hippie festival gets going, full frontal nudity gets tossed around to a bunch of laughs and the killings start. Tom Jane rips it up and is a lot of fun to watch and was probably the best part of the movie for me. It was nice to see Paul Reubens too. Great guy. Anyways, a lot of drugs are consumed and this leads to some of the shots that some people will not like. Normall, I don't enjoy drug movies and I hate drug shots where things are all "trippy." However, in this film, they felt justified to me and I didn't mind them, and in fact, a couple were down right cool.

The body count in this is down right insane-o awesome and it gave me exactly what I wanted - massacred hippies. Like, imagine every film you've ever seen called "_________ Massacre" and picture the body count. Double it, at least. An average death count is probably between 4 and 10 and this movie slips right on by that. We're talking "Commando" levels of destruction - well, almost. Methods of death range from gunshots to beheadings, to hammers, chainsaws, knives, axes and German Shepherds. Yes, German Shepherds. That is probably the best scene in the movie. Either the dogs or Ronnie stumbling across a bunch (like 20-30) of drugged out hippies while sporting an ultra-sweet chopper. We even get some axe-POV shots that are kinda cool, I thought.

Basically, this movie isn't for everyone, like was said, but I think most people can find a lot to enjoy here. The acting is good pretty much all around and the direction is very solid and the writing is very humorous. As far as plot, it's well above normal for a slasher type flick. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret - I'm a Conservative. Republican. For real. And I still dug this movie. Liberals and the like will find a lot to like because some harsh things are said about Bush and Reagan and what not, and the tirade over the end credits, as well as the images shown are all pretty much anti-Conservatives, but there are a few things that Republicans can get behind. For example, Mewes' character at one point says he loves Bush because the dude has "Texas sized balls" and is probably the first person ever to tell the "entire world to fuck off, we do what we want." I dug it.

So no one has bought this yet, but I'd bet my bottom dollar on at least a DVD release, if not some theatrical. There were definatly a few buyers representatives at the screening, people I talked to before the film, but missed afterwards. It's a bit more independent or "arty" than say, Grudge 2 or Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Beginning, but it really is a damn enjoyable film. Most everyone there enjoyed it that I spoke with, the cast and crew was very happy with it, and a lot of the big names there said they enjoyed it. They all chilled in the theater lobby for awhile before heading to the Roosevelt for the after-party.

Anyway, in short, any fan of the horror genre will dig this AWESOME throwback to slasher films. There were a lot of people who said "The Roost" was a great throwback, which I didn't really dig on, but this is really a film that captures the spirit of the original slashers and does it well. I hope Arquette does more in the future, he's got promise. In some ways while watching it I was comparing to Rob Zombie's first, "House of a Thousand Corpses," and I thought this film was a good bit more solid, although I enjoy "Corpses." I also feel like Rob Zombie grew exponetionally into "The Devil's Rejects" which was fantastic and if David A. can ramp it up into his second film, he may well turn into a serious director.

As always,

Run-and-Gun