Hell's Highway (2002)

 

Director: Jeff Leroy

Screenplay: Scott Leff and Jeff Leroy

Cast: Phoebe Dollar as Lucindia Polonia; Kiren David as Sarah; Hank Horner as Eric; Beverly Lynne as Monique; Jonathan Gray as Chris; Ron Jeremy as Jack

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #218

 

Author Note: This was originally written without prior knowledge, referencing Ron Jeremy, to the sexual assault and rape allegations that he started appearing in court for in mid to late 2020. Whatever direction history goes, the scene mentioned in this film may have taken on an unexpected irony. The review aside from one paragraph has nothing to do with this figure but this warning is in respect to any reader to let them know.

 

Your sense of humour sucks sister!

Today we turn to the American highway. Long before the automobile existed, as is explained in the opening narration, a couple is stuck in the American wilderness in the colonial past. He dies, whilst she has to eat his corpse, still doomed to die and praying to Satan whilst renouncing God. The other story is of the early 2000s micro-budget era - produced by David S. Sterling, who produced countless films into the modern day like Camp Blood (2000), and special effects by Joe Castro, which has a fondness to write about in name nowadays for me in spite of his M.O., as a filmmaker in his own right and as a special effects designer, being nasty gore. This era of cinema is one that is interesting for me to return to with a greater interest with, even if it might be an acquired taste for many. In particular, this is connected to a company called Brain Damage Films. Sadly, they do have one foot in edge lord transgression, as they produced the Traces of Death series, imagining if the notorious Faces of Death films had actual real scenes of death instead of many faked ones. Thankfully, they are the people who distributed and/or produced the likes of Rise of the Animals (2011), Terror Toons (2002) and Suburban Sasquatch (2004) over the years into the modern day. Maybe one day we will look to them in their own way with delight beyond the little community I have become a part of who like this type of micro-budget cinema too.

Our prologue sets up a supernatural side, something to remember, when a priest picks up a female hitchhiker (Phoebe Dollar), kills her and buries the body only for her to return and cave his head in with a shovel. Cut to young adults in a car drinking whilst driving, flashing the camera by pulling their top up to the camera, held by a passenger filming the scene we are seeing through, smoking and saying "rehab is for quitters". I do not know why these films populate themselves with characters that are not likable, the men obnoxious here, but I can only speculate that horror films, especially slashers, made them a trope and thus creators who grew up with these films a decade later or so decided to continue having them as part of the aesthetic beats. The self reflective nature of these later films having been made by people who watched those earlier products is found here, in one of the people in the car saying a horror film is going to start when they pick up Dollar's hitchhiker by the name of Lucindia.

Immediately I have to say, barring one dumb plot twist, the film is entertaining in terms of how unpredictable this is, part of this wave of early straight-to-DVD micro budget genre films. Unfortunately, I have to say too, as part of that, they really misfired in one scene, following from Dollar doing an impression of the hitchhiker from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), which involves her sexually molesting the female protagonist at gun point in the backseat, never seen but fingers between thighs explicitly evoked. It is tonally inconsistent to the film, and will trigger some, so it is a poor choice in High's Highway when the review will be more positive about the rest of the content.

Particularly for a film where, whilst gruesome, you have a cameo of adult actor Ron Jeremy as a low budget filmmaker picking up Lucindia; a scene which leads to her cutting off his penis before he realises it and, when she gets out of the moving care, he to run into a gas station and thus explode. One poor choice of bad edginess is out of place in a film which is tonally more playful then that and is interested in scenes with Jeremy more brazen and over-the-top. Thankfully, if you like this type of cinema, everything else is weirdly interesting. It will be interesting to see if the 2000s is reassessed as the 80s shot-on-video and low budget era has, the standard digital sheen of oversaturated light and colour which is yet fuzzy in detail its own aesthetic from its own decade. It will be curious to re-examine such a look in a 4k world, as fascinating as with the audio as, composed by Jay Woelfel, Hell's Highway has a score which sometimes turns into fantasy New Age music. We get a sex scene, also involving sharing beers mid-coitus, in blue lighting that washes over everything in a tent set to what sounds like an off-cut to Tangerine Dream's album Zeit (1972). That Jay Woelfel is also prolific in this area of low budget genre cinema, including as an editor/director/writer/actor among other jack-of-all-trade roles, really goes to show what a curious wilderness Hell's Highway belongs to, where everything is likely interconnected by everyone working on everyone's genre film.

It is also a rare production where the randomness is backed by a willingness to push itself for ambition and something memorable. Yes, it is contrived that someone brought a chainsaw in the car with them, even if it is part of their obsession with creating perfect campfire wood, but it is Chekov's and Joe Castro as your special effects man knows how to use it. For every effect that feels dated, such as superimposing a thrown knife aimed at a moving car, it still has to be painstakingly included and is to look back with admiration as even the early 2000s was a time with limited resources to work with even as more people could make films. This is also a film, showing its hard work, where they will have the gruesome gag of dragging half a headless and legless torso off behind the car, after accidentally having intestine being stuck in the car axel. That sort of scene is not for everyone, but requiring hard work to pull off just to even make a prop corpse, something we neglect is a construct requiring hours to create even for a low budget film.

And for none gore content, Hell's Highway has a bit. It dabbles, post The Blair Witch Project (1999), with a found footage section, when the leads locate a camera from their friends, showing an ill advised attempt at a demon summoning séance. There is also the scene which won me over to the film, in a production that also happens to have the female protagonist have a dream in an orange hued and fog covered hellscape with demon costumes and stop motion which could have been a show stealer. It starts as a scene involving a pager, when they were a thing, involving if a male character's brother is still alive by sending a message to it from a phone which is found in the wilderness. This scene then cuts to a telecommunications building, than to an actual satellite (a model superimposed in outer space) including a peek inside (built with the insides of computers etc.), a sequence which the film could have done without but the production team decided to have for artistic flair. It is inspired and shows the best of this cinema, especially as the crew had to put this all together on minuscule resources.

Some of the creative decisions do not work well. The one I mentioned earlier, a grim trigger warning, was not advised and aged badly just for being out of place in the film. The other is that the film takes a strange turn in how the plot resolves, one that is less a concern unless you wanting a cohesive plot. [Spoiler Warning] That for a film which has had an occult edge, where the lead heroine since her traumatic interaction with Lucindia has almost a psychic link afterwards, and has included the Hellscape sequence, decides "Nope, let us us have a plot twist involving Lucindia being cloned". This leads to a finale involving a secret government laboratory and rewriting the film around four Phoebe Dollars existing. [Spoilers End] The film for all its ambition does sway into a plot twist in the science fiction genre that is so out-of-place, and involving rewriting much of what we see, that it will completely knee capped the film badly for most viewers. For me, it was just a dumb plot twist and befittingly drawing the film closer to the bonkers territory, even if it should have not been there at all. Truthfully, Hell's Highway is a great template for these types of films, specifically an era of them from the early 2000s, in both their best aspects and the worst. Ultimately, the virtues, the best, stand out for those of us interested in these films, but the film does have some decisions you have to put up with too.