It was shot on location in and around Los Angeles, including on top of Kirkwood in Laurel Canyon, the Hollywood Hills, and near Big Sur, California, over three weeks in March and April 1967.
It became one of AIP’s most successful releases and was important in the later development of an even larger cultural touchstone in Easy Rider, which involved many of the same personnel and appealed to the same young demographic.
[3] Paul Groves, a television commercial director, takes his first dose of LSD while experiencing the heartbreak and ambivalence of divorce from his beautiful but adulterous wife.
Experiencing repetitive visions of pursuit by dark hooded figures mounted on black horses, Paul sees himself running across a beach.
As the sun rises, Paul returns to his normal state of consciousness, now transformed by the trip, and steps out to the balcony to get some fresh air.
Corman did research by taking LSD himself while scouting locations at Big Sur, noting it was under "strict medical supervision" with a stenographer to record what happened, and stated that the film would not be unsympathetic to the drug.
[8] According to Fonda biographer Peter Collier, upon reading this initial draft, the actor allegedly cried and proclaimed it would be the greatest American film ever made.
[5] The interior of the house with the indoor/outdoor pool where Fonda takes his LSD trip was located on Blue Heights Drive near Laurel Canyon and occupied at the time by Arthur Lee of the band Love.
[8] For the topless sequence at the Bead Game club, shot at an actual L.A. establishment, assistant director Paul Rapp admitted passing around hundreds of amyl nitrate poppers to the dancing extras to "get their energy up a pitch".
The Trip also features photographic effects, body paint on seminude actresses to lend atmosphere, and colorful patterned lighting, both during sex scenes and in a club, which imitates LSD-induced hallucinations.
The story plays over a backdrop of improvisational jazz, blues rock, and electronic music by Mike Bloomfield's new band The Electric Flag, including an exotic organ and horn-drenched theme.
It had been Fonda's original intention to use ISB music in the soundtrack, which resulted in the group recording the song "Lazy Days" to be used in the film.
[8] AIP also obscured the images on the television screen in the scene where Fonda wanders into a middle-class suburban home, because it contained grisly news footage of the Vietnam War.
The Los Angeles Times enthusiastically called it "the most unabashed art film ever to come out of Hollywood...Ingmar Bergman for the teenyboppers, Dali for the drive-ins".
"[15] Time magazine wrote, "The Trip is a psychedelic tour through the bent mind of Peter Fonda, which is evidently full of old movies.
In a flurry of flesh, mattresses, flashing lights and kaleidoscopic patterns, an alert viewer will spot some fancy business from such classics as The Seventh Seal, Lawrence of Arabia, even The Wizard of Oz...
The photographer's camera work is bright enough, and full of tricks, without beginning to suggest the heightened inner awareness so frequently claimed by those who use the drug.
"[16] Meanwhile, Judith Christ of The Today Show savaged the film as "little more than an hour-and-a-half commercial for LSD...The subject matter enables the director to make a totally incoherent movie with erratic, repetitious and fake-arty effects that simply nauseate, both intellectually and physically".
"[19] Nonetheless, the film retains a strong cult following, particularly in Europe where it is hailed for its application of various New Wave cinema techniques within the Hollywood system.
[21] Writing for FilmInk, Stephen Vagg argued the film "proved to Corman that you could make personal movies as long as they had authenticity and naked women.
"[23] The Trip was released in a Region 1 DVD by MGM on April 15, 2003 as part of their Midnite Movies series doubled with a similar film, Psych-Out, on a double-sided disc.
In 2015, the MGM HD channel broadcast a newly-constructed "Director's Cut" of the film, which removed the opening disclaimer and the "shattered glass" ending imposed by AIP, as well as restoring additional footage to the Bead Game club party scene and exit music previously clipped on home video releases.
In 2004, film historian Tim Lucas and his friend Charlie Largent's screenplay The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes, which serves as a fictionalized account on the making of The Trip, was optioned by Corman's frequent collaborator Joe Dante.