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>If you’re Chad Lowe, this must be the Highway to Hell.
December 1, 2010
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An eloping bride is taken into Hell, and her fiancée must pursue. (IMDB)
Director: Ate de Jong
Writer: Brian Helgeland
Stars: Patrick Bergin, Kristy Swanson and Chad Lowe
Yes- Chad Lowe here – no no- Rob’s brother. His agent lets me take his call forwarding runoff when’s he’s at the gym. What’s that? A project? A supernatural thriller with Kristy Swanson as my girlfriend? Four-day shoot with full craft tables? I’m in. Such a conversation must have preceded the making of Highway to Hell, a cheap queasy fever-dream of a movie that fumbles its intended quirky/scary ratio so badly that it pulls off a rare trick – it simultaneously sucks and blows. If I told you every member of the Stiller family made cameos, and that Gilbert Gottfried played Hitler, would you watch this shit? Go ahead, but you’ll still need a hot cleansing shower immediately after.
From the opening scene, the audience must suspend disbelief, as nice guy Lowe and Swanson play a naughty couple on their way to Vegas to elope, going at it hot-and-heavy in the back seat along a side a of a dark desert highway. She reveals that she’s still a virgin (yup), saving it for their big night. But soon they wind up in a bad (in fact, evil) stretch of highway guarded by a cop from hell (C.J. Graham as Sgt. Bedlam). They seek refuge at a deserted service station run by old codger Richard Farnsworth (The Straight Story), who coaches them on the only way to beat the demon-cop – racing him through a wormhole into hell or something. (He also wants them to find his Amelia Earhardt-looking sweetheart) They even take his souped-up cherry white antique roadster for luck.
So they follow his advice, punching the car straight into ‘Hell,’ and taking the movie with it. Some of the characters they pointlessly meet there are supposed to be famously ‘bad’ (like Medea, Hitler) while others are randomly stupid and evil. The aforementioned Stiller cameos fly by in a diner scene – Ben Stiller fries an egg on the sidewalk (cause it’s Hell). The couple has some car trouble, so they take it to a mechanic who later turns out to be Satan (bland Patrick Bergin, a poor man’s Kevin Kline) So Swanson gets kidnapped (Satan luvs virgins) and replaced with monster saggy-breasted succubus.
Lowe must get her back, traveling across the River Styx (guarded by three-headed dog Cerberus). Then the Devil challenges them to one last race back to their dimension. They win somehow.
As I said, in trying to mix quirky Repo Man-esque moments into its Ghoulies-esque scare-story, the movie just comes across a wtf mashup you can’t wash off quicky enough. But if you’re a Stiller completist, you had this coming.
Categories: chad lowe, highway to hell, horror, Kristy Swanson, Obsolete Sheet, patrick bergin, richard farnsworth, video
>"This sorta thing happened before!"
October 16, 2010
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1991, PG
Director: Stewart Raffill
Writers: Edward Rugoff , Michael Gottlieb
A young department store intern falls in love with a female store mannequin possessed by the ghost of a young 17th Century princess who comes to life whenever her necklace is removed by him only.
This is the kind of steaming turd of a movie that lulls the mind of the viewer into a Moebius strip of speculation on how it got made (and necrophilia) – anything rather than watch the painful events unfolding on-screen. It’s a Moebius turd.
“OK – so we got a green-light on another ‘Mannequin.’ No we don’t got that pussy McCarthy, but that douche from Herman’s Head is available. Fuck McCarthy- you know “Weekend at Bernie’s?” We got Bernie the stiff to play the heavy in this one, some count. And that effay Negro, Hollywood, is a lock. (He’d work for a sandwich.)”
The train-wreck opens with a bargain-basement unfunny Borscht-belt “Princess Bride” fairytale costume set-up in the enchanted land of ‘Hauptmann Koenig,’ and it’s all downhill from there. Even those admirers of Kristy Swanson’s ‘talents’ will be hard-pressed to endure the whole ordeal, and will marvel at how none of the mannequins used for her scenes actually resemble each other.
Cut to ‘modern times.’ Our hero (William Ragsdale) is a ‘likeable’- enough faceless nebbish whose doting Jewish mother runs her own dating service and just wants him to find a nice ‘goil.’ He takes a new job at a Philly department store run by a ruthless dictator (Stuart Pankin, the fat guy from ‘Not Necessarily the News’). After a few forgettable characters are introduced and discarded (security guy, perfume girl), the kid is quickly scuttled to be an apprentice to good-ole over-the-top Hollywood Montrose, in charge of staging the climactic store musical production.
Meanwhile, the evil sorcerer Count from H-K (Terry Kiser) is hatching a plot to steal the store’s jewelry by delivering a fake goodwill shipment of his country’s products to the store. (containing Swanson the enchanted princess mannequin with the magic necklace.) So there’s this truck mishap, where the enchanted mannequin fall out the back of the truck and into the river. Our hero quickly jumps in the water to rescue the ‘goods’ which underwater turns into a real woman. The confused kid brings her back to the store, and after removing her necklace discovers the stiff is his ‘dream-girl,’ who is destined for him. He tells Hollywood, who helpfully reassures him, “This sorta thing happened before.”
After a night of introducing Swanson to the ‘crazy world of today,’ and some nice leopard-print nightclub outfits, he must defend and protect her from the evil Count’s fiendish plot. (and much painful ‘comedy’ is made of the Count’s facial mole hair and his bumbling homo-erotic leotarded henchmen.) Yadda yadda- he is caught dry-humping his dream stiff by his mother, and eventually foils the plot at Hollywood’s big (terrible) show, in a ridiculous duel with the Count, who is himself turned into a mannequin that crumbles to pieces from a hot-air balloon. Aah- sweet justice.
Keep yer fingers crossed for a Hollywood ‘reboot!’
Categories: B-Movie, cinema, DVD, exploitation, Kristy Swanson, Meshach Taylor, Stuart Pankin, Terry Kiser, The Obsolete Sheet, video, William Ragsdale
The Obsolete Sheet 