What A Trip! The Greatest Psychedelic Movies of All Time

The last time we saw Alice In Wonderland, we were about ten and had no idea what the movie was really about. Then we got older and wiser and started going to concerts parking lots. Now it all makes sense. Think about it: Falling down the rabbit hole? Caterpillars smoking hookah atop giant mushrooms? A weird Cheshire cat that keeps appearing at random? This movie is almost exclusively about psychedelic drugs.

So you can't blame us for being excited to see Tim Burton's take on Alice when it opens in theaters today. In fact, we're so excited we decided to put together a list of our Ten Favorite Psychedelic Movies...

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, 1998
DIRECTOR: TERRY GILLIAM
• To simply call this a movie about drugs is an understatement. From start to finish, this movie is literally one long, wrenching acid trip. It doesn't always make a whole lot of sense, but there's never a lack of crazy shit going on.

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FANTASIA, 1940
DIRECTOR: JAMES ALGAR
• Disney movies are notorious for their hidden references and this one is no different. In fact, Fantasia didn't turn a profit until 1969 when Disney repackaged and re-released the film as a psychedelic movie. After all, you basically have to be on drugs to enjoy twenty minute-long scenes of broomsticks dancing to classical music.

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YELLOW SUBMARINE, 1968
DIRECTOR: GEORGE DUNNING
• Beginning with their Rubber Soul days, the British pop stars admittedly did quite a bit of dabbling in hallucinogenic drugs. Which was great for the fans because it seemed to only make their music better. Plus it gave them the inspiration to create the quintessential psychedelic movie, complete with trippy colors and "feed your head" imagery of the hippie movement.

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WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, 1971
DIRECTOR: MEL STUART
• When we were little we didn't read too deeply into Willy's song lyrics, "Count to three and then you'll be in a world of pure imagination." While we know have heard acid works quite that fast, there's certainly no lack of trippy shit in this movie. The chocolate factory is a colorful world where the walls taste like Snozberry and little orange men run around singing songs. The chocolate factory might even make you pee on underage girls, who knows.

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ALTERED STATES, 1980
DIRECTOR: KEN RUSSELL
• This one is like the TRON of drug movies. Complete with its own set of cheesy 1980s special effects, Altered States is about a scientist who repeatedly doses himself with psychedelic drugs while laying in an isolation tank. We can't imagine why he keeps having bad trips.

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THE TRIP, 1967
DIRECTOR: ROGER CORMAN
• Written by Jack Nicholson during his Easy Rider days, this movie's got it all: A baby-faced Peter Fonda tripping on LSD, plenty of disorienting and nonsensical scenes, and if that's not enough, Dennis Hopper makes a cameo as a seedy drug dealer.

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THE DOORS, 1991
DIRECTOR: OLIVER STONE
• The Doors are one of the most classic psychedelic bands to ever do it, and The Doors the movie featured an infamous peyote scene shot in the Mojave Desert that actually resulted in damage to the ancient limestone caves used for the set.

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THE WIZARD OF OZ, 1939
DIRECTOR: VICTOR FLEMING
• Is it a coincidence that Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon corresponds perfectly with the action in The Wizard of Oz? Probably. But that doesn't change the fact this is a seriously trippy movie, complete with intense psychedelic colors, flying monkeys and fields of poppies that make Dorothy fall asleep.

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PINK FLOYD: THE WALL, 1982
DIRECTOR: ALAN PARKER
• A lot like Lost, no matter how many times we watch this we still can't figure out what it's really about. While movie buffs will do backflips to analyze the deeper meaning, we're just going to chalk this one up to Pink Floyd's Roger Waters doing serious amounts of LSD then deciding to make a movie.

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A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, 1971
DIRECTOR: STANLEY KUBRICK
• When you think of psychedelic movies, gang rapes and street violence normally don't come to mind. But this is probably the most violent psychedelic movie ever made. In this haunting portrayal of the future, people go to their local milk bar to drink drug cocktails and the entire movie has a trippy, surreal feeling to it.

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