Interstellar has finally launched into cinemas to many a sci-fi fan’s delight (and also to some dismay). We bloody loved it, soaring into unknown territories we’ll be too dead to explore ourselves. One scene in particular involved a rather trippy trip we don’t want to spoil for you. However, we will spoil these 12 cinematic trippy trips into the unknown we’ve been reminiscing over ever since.
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Vehicle: A freaky alien monolith.
The Trip: An acid-simulating, dimension-crossing, hallucinatory, kaleidoscopic experience that left people either in total awe or total annoyance as to WTF just happened.
The Destination: Evolution/a giant, floating space baby.
Altered States
The Vehicle: Shamanic herbs and a sensory deprivation tank.
The Trip: Psychedelic adventures in the name of science concocted by mad director Ken Russell (Tommy, The Devils) including an encounter with a crucified Christ that for some reason has an 8-eyed lamb’s head. When Dr. Jessup (William Hurt) gets his combo of drugs and deprivation right, he mentally regresses and eventually turns into an ape man.
The Destination: Goo. And sex. Sexy goo.
Being John Malkovich
The Vehicle: An impossibly long, crawl-space located on the 7th-and-a-half floor of a Manhattan office building.
The Trip: Passengers are able to experience life in John Malkovich’s mind for a brief moment before being booted out onto a nearby highway. However, when John Malkovich enters the tunnel to his own mind, things go weird. Really, really weird.
The Destination: A Malkovichian limbo comprised of an infinite number of John Malkovi that can only say/sing “Malkovich”. Includes waiter Malkovich, piano singer Malkovich, baby Malkovich and – of course – the well-endowed Malkovich.
Dumbo
The Vehicle: Watered-down champagne.
The Trip: The head – as in, this was a massive head-trip. Back in the day when alcohol and cigars were totally okay for children’s cartoon characters to consume, Walt Disney put innocent ol’ Dumbo and Timothy Mouse through a drunken fever dream
The Destination: A parade of pink elephants comprised of musicians, insomniacs, worms, Technicolor, camels, belly dancers, figure skaters and electric bolts used like butt floss. The pair eventually wakes up in a racially-insensitive tree.
Enter the Void
The Vehicle: Death, DMT and the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The Trip: Killed by police, drug dealer Oscar floats above Tokyo as he re-examines his life and passes through the after death experiences as described by Tibetans as he searches for reincarnation. Or, Oscar is high when shot, and this is his final experience. Or some other bonkers idea of director Gaspar Noé.
The Destination: Eventually returning to the moment of his conception, shot from inside Oscar’s mother’s vagina as his dad ejaculates, is Oscar bring reincarnated? Or has he completed his journey by tracing it back to the very beginning? You tell us.
The LEGO Movie
The Vehicle: A “magic portal” made of paper tubes, tin foil and colourful arts-n-crafts stuff.
The Trip: With his evil plan ready to be executed, Lord Business pulls one more dick move by throwing out the Piece of Resistance into an endless vortex (AKA the “magic portal”). To save everyone, Emmet valiantly jumps in after it, believing he’s headed towards his doom.
The Destination: The real world, where Emmet learns a vital life lesson from a cat poster.
[REC]
The Vehicle: A long flight of stairs.
The Trip: Trapped in a building where most of the residents have fallen victim (and risen again) to a zombie infection, the two remaining survivors – a midnight anchor woman and her cameraman – have no choice but to flee to the elusive top room suspected to be the origin of the outbreak. It all leads to one of the most terrifying scenes in horror movie history.
The Destination: …we’re not telling.
Return to Oz
The Vehicle: A river, an escape from a mental institution, and a well-timed thunderstorm.
The Trip: Yes, we’re well aware that Return to Oz is actually the follow-up to The Wizard of Oz, meaning Oz wasn’t exactly unknown to little Dorothy. But this wasn’t the Oz she knew…
The Destination: A dilapidated Oz where the yellow brick road has been torn to shreds, dominated by the Nome King who turned all the citizens of Emerald City into stone. Also included is a princess with interchangeable heads, creatures with wheels for hands, and freaky stop-motion rock people. These characters might sound familiar, probably because they live in the deep recesses of your repressed childhood nightmares.
The Trip (’60s version)
The Vehicle: Crack this tricky code: A *L*ovely *S*ort of *D*eath.
The Trip: Meticulously “researched” by writer Jack Nicholson and director Roger Corman, they take ad exec Peter Fonda on a physical and psychedelic journey that’s part elation, part terror, and 100% trip. Wandering through Sunset Strip, his own psyche and a young woman’s bed it’s the consummate tripper’s night out.
The Destination: “Tomorrow”.
Vanishing Point
The Vehicle: A “1970 Dodge Challenger with a 440 engine, and a white paint job,” as Zoë Bell puts it in Death Proof.
The Trip: A Benzedrine-fuelled drive from Denver, Colorado to San Francisco by Kowalski, “the last American hero to whom speed means freedom of the soul”. As he runs afoul of the law, what starts as a simple vehicle relocation for Kowalski becomes a tussle with authority, as “the last beautiful free soul on this planet” resists the controlling influence of The Man.
The Destination: Not what the client who wanted his Challenger moved had in mind.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
The Vehicle: A paddle boat with a dainty umbrella and a unicorn horn, just the thing that will place anyone in a false sense of security.
The Trip: A dark tunnel that conjures nightmarish images of insects, reptiles and – not kidding – a chicken being beheaded. “You’re going to love this,” he said. No, sarcastic Wonka, no-one loved it – except Grandpa Joe and that cowboy kid. But that’s not a surprise given the former was probably senile and the other a serial-killer-in-the-making.
The Destination: A rather anticlimactic stone dock with a door and a janitor’s closet. Neither door leads to a reason for what just happened.
Zabriskie Point
The Vehicle: A plane, sex, and the music of Pink Floyd (among others).
The Trip: A stolen plane gets Mark from Los Angeles to the Mojave Desert, where he meets Daria (Daria Halprin). Walking to the scenic Zabriskie Point, the pair make love in the desert, as geological formations come alive around them, and also begin to have sex (as referenced in the Smashing Pumpkins’ video Today).
The Destination: Explosive. No, not like that…
