Route 666
(2001)
Director: William
Wesley
Cast: Lou Diamond Phillips, Lori Petty, Steven Williams
In 1988, first time director William Wesley made the
independent horror movie
Scarecrows. Despite it being released
straight to video on a minor video label (now defunct) with absolutely
no fanfare, over the next decade it has apparently managed to build
somewhat of a rabid cult, in part judging from the user comments for it
at the IMDb. I did
see Scarecrows many years ago, though I
confess that I really don't remember too much of it, except for the
fact that I was kind of let down seeing it after hearing all of that
positive buzz. In fairness, I should reveal that I saw the R-rated
version, since all the video stores in my area were too dumb to get the
unrated version (which is supposed to have some truly bloody nastiness
that the censored version is missing.)
Despite all that, when recently I saw another Wesley movie
- Route 666 - had recently arrived at my
neighbourhood video store, I was willing to give him another chance.
For one thing, from examining the video box it seemed that this
production of his had a lot more money at its disposal,
considering that this movie was able to afford minor stars like Lou
Diamond Phillips and Lori Petty. As well, considering the fact that a
whopping thirteen years had past between Scarecrows and
this new movie of his, maybe he learned some new tricks during this
time. Though it could be argued that in such a long period of
inactivity, he could have easily forgotten a lot as well. As it turns
out, all of these possibilities actually do occur in the finished
product.
Like Scarecrows, this movie also concerns
the living dead wrecking havoc in the middle of nowhere, the nowhere
this time around being the desert around the
Arizona/California border. This is where mob accountant Frederick
"Rabbit" Smith (21 Jump Street's Steven Williams) has been
hiding out after fleeing both from the mafia honchos as well as the
Federal Witness Protection program, afraid for his life even after they
promised him protection when he agreed to testify. Despite having
relocated to such a desolate place, in the beginning of the movie the
mob has finally tracked him down to Dick Miller's desert bar. He
manages to get away from the hired gunmen, but it's only due to the
timely intervention of several armed Federal Witness Protection agents,
lead by Jack (Lou Diamond Phillips) and Steph (Lori Petty, Tank
Girl)... and being now in their clutches isn't much of a better
fate than the one planned by the mob. Somewhat disoriented from
escaping from the remaining mob hitman, and in a rush to return their
witness to the L.A. criminal court the next day, the agents decide to
take a blocked-off shortcut - a jinxed stretch of abandoned highway
nicknamed "Route 666", closed off decades earlier after convicts on a
chain gang were killed in a tragic roadwork accident and buried nearby.
Of course, there was a lot more to that accident story than reported...
and Frederick and the agents soon discover some secrets literally won't
stay buried...
At the very least, one will have to admit that Wesley
has managed to give his second effort a much superior look to it than
generated by the production values
found in Scarecrows. He obviously did have a higher
budget this time around, and while it's probably not more than the
maximum amount given to a B movie these days, the end results look so
good that the movie could have played at any multiplex without any
accusations that it looked cheap. Unlike his murky and taking place in
the dark previous effort, this time around every scene takes place
during the daytime, under the blazing sun in a cloudless sky. And
virtually every scene takes place in the middle of this stretch of
abandoned highway, with very few sets and props brought into this
desert - the script was cleverly written to so there wouldn't be any
elaborate sequence that would put excessive demands on the budget, yet
the story itself does not seem forced in any way from this
cost-cutting. While there may not be many man-made things visible on
the screen for the most part, every shot brings a crispness and polish
to the movie that gives it a professional look. The specific desert
locations chosen do suggest a bleak and isolated area where something
unnatural could happen, and the cinematography manages to beat even
that found in the best PM Entertainment movies.
There are also a few good actors here as well. Besides
the brief but fun appearance by Roger Corman
legend Miller, there is also an appearance by
Sam Peckinpah veteran L.Q. Jones, playing a shifty sheriff who knows a
lot more about the mysterious highway than he initially lets on. Though
his appearance isn't more than an extended cameo, he still manages to
add his
trademark charm into the proceedings, and it's nice to see him still
going on strong in his 70s. As for the main performers, the standout
among them is Williams. Given a lot to say at once at several points,
he's also given quite a considerable task in making his character hard
enough so that he's believable as someone who worked with the mob, yet
at the same time sympathetic in our eyes. He's up to the task,
delivering a gruffness in whatever he says, but careful not to take
this feeling too far so he becomes annoying or grating to the nerves
and/or making what he says feel unnatural. His sense of humor gets to
shine as well with his many sarcastic asides, delivered in a
hilariously dead-pan manner.
While Williams gets a lot to say, it is actually Phillips and Petty who
get most of the focus... and unfortunately they are both completely out
their league in their roles. Though Petty's post-modern valley girl
style of acting might make her a good choice for movies like
Tank Girl, it doesn't make her appropriate to play a character
that's a seasoned professional that follows things strictly by the book
- like this character, which Petty doesn't even try to alter her acting
style to accommodate. Phillips (who has visibly aged considerably in
just a few years) apparently didn't learn from movies like The
First Power, Extreme Justice, and Bats that
he's simply not convincing as a law enforcement officer. Whenever he
says tough-cop lines like, "So why'd ya run, punk?" you don't sense any
toughness coming out of him - all you can do is laugh at his pathetic
attempts to act like Harry Callahan. And in this particular movie, we
are not only supposed to believe that Phillips' character is a U.S.
Marshal helping out the Witness Protection Program, but according to
Petty's character that he's "...just a highly decorated, ex-navy SEAL,
[and] a former CIA op"(!) Uh, yeah.
That description of Jack's past is just one of several
instances where the script crams in obvious exposition about the
characters - possibly due to the fact that for a long time after the
movie begins, we not only know so little about what's going
on, but even the names of these characters. Not long afterwards Steph
announces to Frederick what he read about him, so that we finally learn
who he is and why the government was after him. Later, when the group
comes across a graveyard (containing a marker for Jack's father), it is
the cue for Jack to recite a monologue about his past and his convict
father - it is so obvious that speech is not only a contrived way to
provide some background for Jack, but that's it's also an unsubtle hint
of what's to come. All this exposition slows down the movie
considerably, but what also expands the time between the attacks by the
zombie convicts (as well as a long time passing before even the first
attack commences) are a number of completely unnecessary sequences,
including an endless fist-fight between Jack and another agent at the
graveyard, and when Jack later meets a mysterious Native American that
gives him peyote tea and tells him the area is cursed. (Well, duh.)
Wesley's direction is at least somewhat better than his
padded script. Though there are scenes that are unnecessary or
prolonged for a greater extent than they should run, they are
competently staged for the most part, occasionally using widescreen to
very good effect. Unfortunately, the scenes where Wesley blows it are
the key action/attack sequences. There he seems to go nuts, wildly
jiggling the camera in almost every shot and choppily playing out the
footage like it's a Real Video clip being downloaded at 56k. Sometimes
all of this makes it impossible to figure out exactly what's going on
with the people being attacked, or where the zombie convicts are coming
from or what they are exactly doing. It was nice to see in an age when
most horror movies come across as ironic or comic, Wesley's attempt to
portray the zombies in a deadly serious way, with serious makeup
effects and having the silent creatures come across as a relentless
evil that can't be bargained with. It's a good try, though not
completely successful. With the shaky camera and choppy feel, we can't
really get a good look at them, or a good grasps of their malevolent
nature. Plus one of the zombies carries around a pneumatic drill, and
his use of it unfortunately comes across as comic, which doesn't seem
to have been intentional. At least the drill helps in giving the movie
an acceptable splatter level, though some of the editing suggests that
a lot more gruesome stuff was cut out in order to give it an R rating.
Route 666 does have a number of
problems with it. Still, I have to admit that I overall found the whole thing
pretty watchable. Even though there were certainly a lot of unnecessary
moments, I wasn't bored for the most part. It passes the time, yes, but
there's the problem for Wesley and company - that's all it does.
There's nothing in it that compels a viewer to see it again, to
recommend it to a friend, to do anything that would increase the number
of times it gets viewed. In a competitive business like movie making,
it's not just enough to be competent, but you have to be good enough to
compel the audience so that there'll be enough of a demand to justify
you continuing in the business. This movie is the cinematic equivalent
of a disposable lighter - you'll chuck it away without a second thought
after you're through with it.
Check for availability on Amazon (VHS)
Check for availability on Amazon (DVD)
See also: Curse Of The
Cannibal Confederates, Mutant, Rituals
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