There he goes again

The scariest thing about the new-to-DVD horror film “The Tripper” is “a film by David Arquette” above the title.
Let’s give Arquette an "A" for tackling a horror comedy as his maiden directorial voyage. It's not an easy genre to nail. His letter grades in every other category hover in the D-minus range. The wannabe cult film is a throwback slasher movie with a Ronald Reagan imposter doing the ax wielding. Naturally, using the late president as the latest Freddy/Jason/Michael isn’t by accident. Arquette fires away at conservatism in general and Reagan in particular. His idea of fair and balanced is to make the film's hippie heroes nearly as insufferable as his right-of-center targets. Suffice to say his political bromides are about as delicate as a hippo noshing at a banquet. Zero budget horror flicks need something, anything, to make them rise above the competition, so adding partisan politics isn’t the worst idea. Here, it’s just another awful element in a slapdash feature that barely made it to theaters nationwide. The cast is a grab bag of semi-famous and should-never-be-seen-again faces. Thomas Jane plays the straight arrow cop and comes off the best, while Paul Reubens shouts obscenities out from under a curly wig in his poorly written role as a concert promoter. The special effects are beyond awful, but that's almost endearing, like it wants to sidle up to other '80s slasher flicks. Stick around for the credits and you’ll hear private plane lovin' Robert Kennedy, Jr. droning on about the environment, just the sort of prattle every horror fan dreams of.