The Hallucinating Trip

Aka "Hallucinating Strip" or "Hallucination Strip" (English title). Being a huge Bud Cort fan, I was able to track down a copy of this film on VHS. To my surprise it was dubbed in Italian--with no subtitles, but, as a fan of silent films, where you can learn a lot about a story by watching how the actors react to one another, I think I have a fair understanding of the plot of the film to tell you about it.

The story is about a youth named Massimo Monaldi, who, living in Rome, is a part-time college student who has some involvement in the protests that occur at his university. Massimo is also involved with drugs and he sometimes steals to make a living and support his habit (the theft of a tobacco box is very important to the story). Among his associates are his girlfriend, Cinzia, who comes from a wealthy family, and he has a wealthy male friend named Rudy who is very naive as well as strangely pampered by his overly-doting mother. Both families don't approve of their relationship with Massimo.

After the theft of the tobacco box from Cinzia's home (she's an accomplice), and after encountering a certain man, a mafioso-type wanted by the police, Massimo soon finds himself in trouble with the police. The man, who has some dealings in the drug trade, befriends Massimo, but this association brings about Massimo's downfall; first leading to a crisis regarding his girlfriend and his best friend, when they attend a drug party with him; then finding himself on the wrong end of his association with the mobster. Who, at the end of the film, will get to Massimo first: the police or the mobster?

I found this film to be very weird and the plot a little disjointed, but interesting, especially as it's so obscure, and is very '70's-ish in the way it was filmed. It was a side of Roman youth culture I had never seen before. However, I felt that the director, Lucio Marcaccini, who it seems, fell off the face of the earth after this film, was a lousy director and didn't fully take advantage of the talent that he was working with. Maybe he was on something himself when he was making this film, as I began to feel that I would have done better directing this film myself! I also take to task the theme song, "We Got A Lord," which was also used in a love scene and at the closing credits. Its use in the film made absolutely no sense to me.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed Bud Cort as Massimo Monaldi, which I thought was a welcome change from the "crazy, demented youth" roles he had been given around the time he did "Harold and Maude". I have read that he took off a few years from acting after that film because of the typecasting he was going through. I am sure that this is the first film he did when he returned from his acting hiatus.

In "Roma Drogata" he was allowed to be more versatile as a leading man: he was sometimes romantic; sometimes cool and crafty; sometimes naive; sometimes sweet and romantic; or sexy and intense in the role. I wish that he had been given a chance to do more roles like this one! I also enjoyed Marcel Bozzuffi, best known in this country as the hit man, Pierre Nicoli in "The French Connection," who played the police inspector.

A somewhat offbeat, not uninteresting portrait of Italian youth culture of the 1970s, "Hallucination Strip" stars then-popular young American actor Bud Cort. Bud plays Massimo Monaldi, a hippie type who's just as much into juvenile delinquency as he is into political protest. He buys trouble for himself when he steals a valuable "snuff box", or tobacco box, and gets caught between the investigating detectives - led by Inspector De Stefani (Marcel Bozzuffi) - and the local Mafia. He is also approached by his friend Rudy (Settimio Segnatelli) to procure drugs for a party that Rudy hopes will be a life changing event for him.

The advertising makes this seem as if it will be bizarre and trippy throughout. Such is not the case, as most of the time, "Hallucination Strip" tells a fairly conventional story. It isn't until the film is more than half over that we get a true set piece of psychedelia. The "dream" sequence goes on for a few minutes, and is very striking with its use of colour, makeup, and choreography. Overall, this is a very well made film that looks glorious on Blu-ray. It also serves as a 93 minute snapshot of a particular place at a particular time. Buffs should appreciate this for being a reasonably provocative combination of art and exploitation; there's sufficient female (and male) nudity to hold a viewers' attention.

Bud makes the most of the material, and his role, which was definitely different from others he'd played during this time. The rest of the cast is equally fine, with an especially effective turn by Bozzuffi as the detective on a mission.

This is entertaining enough to make one glad that there are home video companies that see fit to resurrect obscure items like "Hallucination Strip".

Six out of 10.

I don't know if director Lucio Marcaccini was aiming for a more realistic approach to the Eurocrime genre, because this film is devoid of the usual traits of gun battles, car chases, and people glaring over the top of their giant moustaches. Instead, we get a lot of stuff about the Italian student body, political unrest, the class system, and a lot of boredom. This might well be the worst Eurocrime film I've watched, and that number must surely by now be in the nineties. The number, not the decade.

Marco is a young, annoying, left-wing hippy type looking to destroy the system if has time between all the sex, drugs, and stealing antique snuff boxes from stuffy middle class types. This antique snuff box provides some sort of hook in a film that has too many characters and not too much going on. Marco has several mates, including the daughter of the guy he stole the box from, and a rich kid who has an Oedipus complex who wants loads of drugs. There's also the hard case cop (Marcel Bozzuffi) who is after the antique box, but also wants to track down Marco in order to get to a high-level drug dealer.

In amongst the teenagers getting wasted on drugs, the parents lamenting about their kids being wasted on drugs, the mid-seventies philosophy...nothing much happens. The highlight of the film, and the only bit that really caught my attention was a mass hallucination bit once the kids get their drugs, resulting in a colourful trippy sequence that the rest of the film could have benefitted from.

Boring! I don't mind Damiano Damiani's long, meandering crime flicks. The drama keeps things rolling along. This one is just disjointed.

"Roma Drogata" is a disaster on every level. The film as aged terribly, where most Italian crime films from that era look better now than they did then. Tired story centers on the son of a wealthy family, who for some reason has plucked eyebrows more severe than Joan Crawford, and is wearing more makeup than a clown, who wants to get his hands on some hard drugs. He wants to throw a party and provide the party favors, so a bunch of ugly, drugged out hippies can hang out at his house and use him for drugs. Bud Cort, looking seedy and creepy is a drug pusher along with his girlfriend. There are some hallucination scenes which are hilariously dated and cheesy, and the rich boy's father is a rabid right winger who feels that all drug dealers, addicts, and thieves should be burned at the stake. And this features the worst soundtrack ever. The cheesy, dated songs made me nauseous. Complete drivel. It doesn't help that the cast is so damn unattractive either. Don't bother with this one. If you want to see a good drug-themed film from Italy, search out "Amore tossico." Now that is a well-made and serious film about the drug scene.

Saw this at HMV and thought "I like Italian movies and love 70's psychedelia" but this movie was terrible. It was made in 1975 and the drugs were pot and the "other stuff" which comes in pill form and makes you trip. Oh and it makes some drug-less dealer woman in a castle want to die if she doesn't have any. It also makes you foam at the mouth and sense bugs all over you. Basically those pills caused every negative thing every to come out of the mouth of your local police scare mongers about every drug that ever existed. The USA was producing realistic depictions of heroin five years before this like Panic in Needle Park and The Trip was showing realistic LSD use in 1967. In 1975 this film shows the mafia supplying LSD to student radicals, a drug they have have always considered below them. There is no money in it and its not addictive. This movie is so detached from reality it is a joke considering the mafia were pumping heroin into Italy by this time. It could have been relevant, instead it was silly. Some of the city backgrounds are nice but the "trippy party" was not trippy and they stole Peter Fonda's Pirate shirt and some music from the Trip but that was apparently all they got from that flick. It may be hard to simulate the experience, and probably even harder since no one involved had clearly ever done any drugs ever in their lives. This was an anti hippie flick but it seems like it may have been marketed to that crowd, although also trying to appeal to middle class Italians who are far enough removed from drugs that someone dying with foam in their mouth a day after an LSD party seemed legit. Terrible movie 3/10. Anyone want to buy a Blu Ray?