Highway To Hell
(1992)
Director:
Ate De
Jong
Cast: Patrick Bergin, Chad Lowe, Kristy Swanson
Highway To Hell in many ways feels like a
first draft,
or a dry run. There is a story here, but not much time is devoted to
it;
it sometimes feels like things are being made up as the movie
progresses
There's a resolution, but it's very forced, and feels like it was
constructed
out of leftover scraps. And a lot of the promising material that is
used
is never used to its potential, or used as a throwaway gag.
I'm not saying this movie is bad; Highway To Hell
isn't
awful and/or boring to watch. In fact, I kind of liked it, and I'm
giving
it a recommendation. There was almost always something happening
onscreen
that caught my eye, that was either bizarre, cool, or visually
impressive.
There are a number of amusing sequences and funny one-liners, and I
have
to admit that this is one original movie - I can't think of another
movie
quite like this one. But still, there were many times in the movie
where
I saw a lot of potential that was ignored by the makers of this movie.
Plus, the movie is very sloppy, both technically and story-wise - this
probably explains why Hemdale shelved this movie for a few years, then
subsequently gave it a tiny and quiet theatrical release before
becoming
another anonymous title in the horror section.
Charlie (Lowe) and Rachel (Swanson) are a very young
couple driving
the backroads to Las Vegas to get married. Not listening to the cryptic
advice of gas station man Sam (Richard Farnsworth) for the route ahead,
the couple keeps driving into the night. On one particular deserted
stretch
of the road, they are suddenly stopped by Hellcop (C.J. Graham), a
bald,
deeply scarred demon cop from Hell. Hellcop kidnaps Rachel and
vanishes.
Freaked out, Charlie returns to Sam, who tells him (in a vague and
rushed
explanation) that (I think) his girlfriend has been kidnapped by
Hellcop,
and will be taken to the underworld Hell City to Satan to be his new
bride.
Given a shotgun, a new set of wheels, and the directions to the
underworld,
Charlie travels to and through the underworld to rescue Rachel from
both
the Hellcop and Satan.
The underworld is one weird place - imagine the world of
The Road
Warrior mixed with the world of Route 66, and you'd
only
begin to picture this bizarre environment. There's a cobwebbed donut
shop
filled with the living dead (the Hellcop stops here for a break - an
amusing
touch); Charlie is at one point out of the blue attacked by a psychotic
ice cream man (Charlie quickly blows the guy's head off, and the scene
ends, with no further mention of this incident); Members of a roadside
construction crew all resemble Andy Warhol; Charlie meets weird
characters
like "The Satanic Mechanic" (Bergin), an underworld tow truck driver
who
gives him some assistance; and there are bizarre encounters, such as
when
Charlie finds himself in the middle of a gigantic pack of speeding VW
Bugs.
Along Charlie's journey, there are also a number of hilarious moments
and
sight gags. I like the "handcuffs", consisted of two hands connected by
a chain. There's a very funny sequence when Charlie's car is broken
down,
and he uses a highway emergency phone to try and get assistance. The
movie
tries everything to interest and amuse us, from using stop-motion
animation
to showing a team of midget mechanics. Keep your eye out for some cameo
appearances as well.
It's amazing that this low budget movie was able to
throw in so much
stuff.
Since there is so much to find here, it's perhaps inevitable that the
makers
of Highway To Hell had to find as many ways as possible
to
cut back on expenses. People wear a variety of costumes, but there's no
logic to what they are wearing, even for the underworld - it's as if
the
wardrobe department rented costumes in "bulk". There are many
locations,
but many are familiar desert locations slightly (and cheaply) dressed
up
to represent locations in this underworld. So many locations are in
this
movie, it's as if the filmmakers only had enough money to rent them out
for a few hours - this also seems to apply to the cameo appearances,
for
the actors in these cameos just seem to sit on the sidelines, make a
few
comments, and disappear.
The low budget also hurts the technical side of the
production. I realize
this was a low budget movie, and you can't always expect
production
values equal to major studio movies. But this movie has such incredibly
shabby technical qualities, that even Roger Corman or North American
Pictures
would be embarrassed. When characters are driving down one lengthy
stretch
of a road, we see the same shots repeated. There are numerous
times
when we see the shadow of the camera jutting into the scene. In chase
scenes,
the speeds of the vehicles and their positions keep wildly changing
from
one shot to the other. One scene has Charlie racing towards a canyon
wall,
then in the next shot he's suddenly parked and on foot out of the car.
When two people fall into a ravine, we see at the bottom of the screen
the cardboard boxes the stuntmen subsequently land on! What's really
disgraceful
about this incompetence is that Hemdale, during its short life, was
know
for making movies with superior technical qualities on low budgets (Platoon,
Miracle Mile, etc.) So what happened here? I don't know; my
best
guess is that the production encountered some major problems of some
sort,
and director De Jong tried the best he could to try to complete enough
of the production so it could be called (barely) a movie.
This might also explain why there seem to be gaps in the
narrative.
Changes from the end of one scene to the beginning of the next move as
if there was no money for a second unit director; footage seems to be
missing
at these points. Certainly, the ending of this movie feels like it
wasn't
what was originally intended. After the climax has ended, we cut back
to
footage that seems to have belonged to an earlier and unfinished scene
in the movie. Then before this footage seems to have finished playing,
the screen turns black, and we are treated to a very long title
crawl explaining what happened to the characters. Actually, I should
make
that "some of the characters", for there are some subplot
threads
that even here aren't resolved.
Highway To Hell is a real mess. But it's
still an entertaining
mess all the same. It's fairly fast paced, never boring, and is
alternately
amusing and exciting. More conservative viewers will probably hold
their
heads and groan, but people who like B movies will probably find it as
entertaining as I did. Still, it's likely even they will occasionally
point
at some major boo-boo, and hiss or sneer. If you're patient enough to
take
the time to pull off the bits of mould on a good piece of cheesy
entertainment,
then you are the audience for this movie.
(P.S. - To the makers of Highway To Hell:
Idi Amin is
NOT dead! Even in 1999, he's still alive, and living in exile!)
Check for availability on Amazon (VHS)
See also: Survival Run, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Rituals
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