Note: The only truly sane response to any political campaign is terror and bewilderment, and as the 2008 presidential contest rockets to its inevitable conclusion, the Video Vault is celebrating by watching genre flicks of a more political bent.

the plot: A small town in Northern California is gearing up for the Free Love Festival, a neo-hippie celebration put on by sleazy promoter Frank Baker (Reubens). But Baker couldn’t have picked a worse spot. Numerous disappearances and mysterious deaths have occurred in the forest surrounding the town, and adding a crowd of messed up hippies to the mix troubles Sheriff Buzz Hall (Jane). Meanwhile, Samantha (King) and her group of drug-addled misfit friends are traveling to the festival. Samantha is trying to clean up following a bad trip and several months stuck in an abusive relationship, and she’s wary about the festival. Once the music starts and the drugs flow, her fears are confirmed, as each of her friends disappear in the woods. Sheriff Buzz suspects that creepy old Dylan (Gleeson), a former logger known for setting “hippie traps” in the woods, is behind all the missing revelers. But when a mysterious axe-wielding psycho in a Ronald Reagan mask starts dispatching hippies during a late-night bonfire, Samantha and Buzz are left alone to stop the bloodshed.

why it’s good: Despite director David Arquette’s protests that “The Tripper” was intended to be a fun flick without any agenda, you just can’t slap a Reagan mask on a maniac and expect things to remain apolitical. And while there are a handful of jokes about the Gipper and a few potshots to the current commander-in-chief (he’s got a pig named after him)—not to mention the whole arch-conservative-as-axe-murderer thing—“The Tripper” isn’t a pro-hippie screed, either.  Conservatism, it seems, kills, but so does excess liberalism and unchecked capitalism, proving that trickle-down economics only really apply to gratuitous bloodshed. If anything, the movie is pro bloodshed, with flower children, angry rednecks and yuppie Republicans alike getting hacked, slashed, stabbed and strung up. “The Tripper” sticks to the standard slasher film clichés, but the novelty of seeing a guy in a Ronald Regan outfit, complete with a blue suit and red tie, never really wears off. Sometimes, the gags work. A couple of victims are found with “Just Say No” carved into their corpses. And sometimes, the gags fall flat, such as a late scene in which a whiny hippie chick begs police not to shoot the angry German Shepherd mauling her neck because “It’s one of God’s creatures.”

why you should own it: “The Tripper” is fun enough to add to your library, as long as you can find it cheap. The DVD is rife with extras, including commentary by Arquette and Jane, as well as a series of making-of features showing how the Ronald Reagan mask was created and how Paul Reubens was expertly covered in fake feces—yum!