Its a movie and a kick ass one at that I finally got around to watching this one.
“Highway to Hell” is a movie I always used to see in video rental stores and I’d say “One of these days, I am gonna rent that, its got Kristy Swanson who is so damn hot.” Yet I never did, now that most mom and pop video stores and Blockbuster have gone kaput I went looking for this one and I am pissed at myself I didn’t watch it sooner.
Directed by Ate De Jong, who directed one of the craziest, bat shit episodes of the awesome show “Miami Vice” an episode that involved aliens, UFO’s, James Brown and peanut butter, the episode was widely unpopular and panned out of existence. De Jong’s weird, Danish sensibilities didn’t translate too good to the television screen and people in Hollywood were hesitant to throw money at him. Finally somebody had the good sense to throw De Jong another chance along with a script by Brian Helgeland who claimed he got the idea from being pulled over on some side stretch road outside of Las Vegas with his wife, Brian said the cop was really patronizing and walked around their car threateningly, all over Brian driving a little over the speed limit. Brian wondered “Is this the cop from hell?” And a light went off in his head.
Charlie Sykes, played by Rob’s younger brother Chad and Rachel played by Kirsty Swanson go to elope in Las Vegas. Chad is afraid that his parents and Rachel’s parents might’ve called the police to stop them from getting married and in fear he takes a side road, he comes upon a lonely gas station run by a lonely old man named Sam played by character actor who plays old coots all the time, Richard Farnsworth. He tries to tell them not to go any further past the Joshua trees and especially not go to sleep past that point because they’ll get into trouble, he advises them to get back on the main road, in other words, Farnsworth plays the typical stock character “crazy old man” that appears in a lot of these horror movies who warns people about doing something or going somewhere and when they do what they were told not to or go where they told not to, they get killed. Chad in fear takes the side road, falls asleep and the cop from hell shows up, busts up their car and takes Rachel.
In anger and fear Charlie goes back and grills Sam who tells him that his girlfriend got taken by the Hell Cop, the Hell Cop kidnaps virgins to take back to the Devil’s bordello and if the cop gets to Hell City then it will be too late. Sam tells Charlie to take his old Pontiac and says the Pontiac has something special in it and he gives him special ammo to take down the Hell Cop, he tells Charlie that he needs to go back to the Joshua trees, drive really fast, close his eyes and believe, then he can get into hell, when drives really fast a real cop does chase him. Charlie does this and ends up in hell which is a desert and from there I don’t want to give up much more.
This movie is satire but it will keep you on the edge of your seat, you’ll get the Stiller family, Ben (if you don’t know who Ben Stiller is I don’t know what to tell you) who plays a retarded fry cook, Jerry (Jerry Stiller played George Constanza’s dad in the best sitcom of all time “Seinfeld”) who is a corrupt cop caught in eternity in this diner from hell where you never get a coffee refill or what you ordered, Anne (Ben’s mom and Jerry’s wife, a funny comedian in her own right) who plays the waitress that bores the mummified, corrupt cops with her stories, you get Lita Ford as a hooker who traps men into getting killed by a ice cream truck serial killer who wants to scoop brains out of their heads and Gilbert Gottfried as Hitler and Patrick Bergen as Satan. There is various character actors in this movie, the monster effects are pretty awesome, especially the stop motion three headed Cerebus guard hound. Over all this is a wild ride, this is a movie where you can shut off your brain and let the movie do the driving, don’t let it crash your car though. CJ Graham under heavy make up plays the Hell Cop, CJ played the Jason incarnation in “Friday the Thirteenth 6, Jason Lives!” There is more in this movie that I don’t want to give away. This movie is almost as good as the song “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC, I was kind of hoping that it would make an appearance in the movie and it didn’t because this movie was a medium budget movie, however, you get a slower rock ballad from the aforementioned Lita Ford. This movie was made in 1989 but was shelved due to the company Hemdale going bankrupt, it didn’t see release until 1991.
So visual white noise addicts to get on the Highway all you have to do is go here: https://www.amazon.com/Highway-Hell-Chad-Lowe/dp/B081D8Z3MK
For any of you that want an actual road to ride on go to: https://www.amazon.com/Highway-Hell-Blu-ray-Patrick-Bergin/dp/B018STFHKC/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=Highway+to+Hell&qid=1627583632&s=movies-tv&sr=1-5