Film Review: HIGHWAY TO HELL (1992, Ate de Jong)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 94 minutes.
Tag-line: "If there's one thing worse than dying and going to Hell, it's not dying – and going to Hell."
Notable Cast or Crew: Chad Lowe (Rob's brother), Kristy Swanson (DEADLY FRIEND, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER), Patrick Bergin (SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, PATRIOT GAMES), Adam Storke (MYSTIC PIZZA, Larry Underwood in Mick Garris' THE STAND), Jarrett Lennon (CHEERS, FREAKS & GEEKS), Richard Farnsworth (THE STRAIGHT STORY, MISERY), Lita Ford (of "The Runaways"), Anne Meara (FAME, THE DAYTRIPPERS), Jerry Stiller (SEINFELD, HAIRSPRAY), Ben Stiller (REALITY BITES, EMPIRE OF THE SUN), Gilbert Gottfried (ALADDIN, BEVERLY HILLS COP II), Kevin Peter Hall ("The Predator" in PREDATOR, "Harry" in HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS). Special Effects by Randall William Cook (FRIGHT NIGHT, THE THING, Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS, GHOSTBUSTERS, POLTERGEIST II). Matte paintings by Rocco Gioffre (BLADE RUNNER, ROBOCOP) and Mark Sullivan (KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE, THE PHANTOM MENACE). Cinematography by Robin Vidgeon (HELLRAISER, NIGHTBREED, THE FLY II). Written by Brian Helgeland (MYSTIC RIVER, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL). Directed by Ate de Jong (DROP DEAD FRED).
Best One-liner: "When I come home from a long day in Hell, there's nothing I'd rather reach for than a fire-brewed bottle of Styx Beer. Made from the filthiest waters from our own River Styx. Styx Beer is a third more toxic than any other regular beer. The worst beer - the filthiest beer - the deadliest beer. It's Styx Beer!"

HIGHWAY TO HELL... where have you been all my life? Shot in 1989 and dumped straight-to-video in 1992 (after a limited release), it took a long time for this wacky little horror-adventure-comedy to find its much deserved cult audience. 

A twisted retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth glimpsed through a "what-if-Tim-Burton-and-Clive-Barker-made-LITTLE-MONSTERS?" lens, Dutch director Ate de Jong dives into the material with visually inventive flourish (think Sam Raimi or Richard Rush) and a goofball sense of humor (imagine MAD Magazine with a Euro-arthouse cool factor).

 

Here, our Orpheus and Eurydice are two road-tripping elopers, played by Chad Lowe and Kristy Swanson. 

Despite a prolific television resume, Chad Lowe never managed to match his brother Rob for relevance, though his performance here is certainly likable and persistent. As "Orpheus," it's mostly his journey and therefore he gets the most screen-time. Kristy Swanson's late '80s star had been on the rise, between DEADLY FRIEND, FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC, FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF, MANNEQUIN 2, and HOT SHOTS, though mostly this film places her in in a series of "distressed damsel" scenarios. I can't help but wonder if this film would have found greater purchase with more charismatic leads, somewhere in the vein of Nic Cage/Christian Slater/Woody Harrelson or Jennifer Jason Leigh/Winona Ryder/Bridget Fonda. That being said, Lowe and Swanson do a serviceable job, and they do manage the feeling of two naïve waifs unexpectedly encountering the depths of hell.

Their Route 66 honeymoon road trip is interrupted by a demonic state trooper (C.J. Graham, "Jason" in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 6) who is part Freddy Krueger, part Cenobite, and part THE HILLS HAVE EYES. 

 

Naturally, he has the vanity plate "DAMNED." 

Using "hand cuffs" that are literal, zombified hands (the first of the film's many visual puns and sight gags)

 the demonic trooper kidnaps Eurydice and takes her through a portal to hell in the Arizona desert.

Taking advice from "Last Chance" gas station owner Richard Farnsworth, Lowe's Orpheus decides to enter the portal to Hades himself and save his fiancée.

It's a nice bit part for the pathos-exuding Farnsworth (Oscar nominated for David Lynch's THE STRAIGHT STORY), who also tells Lowe he's got "the wrong car for this kinda road." [Devotees of THE STRAIGHT STORY, which came out in 1999, will note that this weirdly foreshadows an aspect of that film, where Farnsworth's character, against all advice, drives a ride-on mower cross-country to see his dying brother!]

So Lowe's Orpheus blasts through the hellmouth (in a very BACK TO THE FUTURE-inspired moment) and finds himself in a surreal desert afterlife, somehow equal parts AIRPLANE!,  MAD MAX, and HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN.

(I believe that the sole purpose of his red 49ers cap is to reference Harry Dean Stanton's desert wanderings in Wim Wenders' PARIS, TEXAS.)

 

There are many incredible set-pieces during Orpheus' journey through Hades, and while I wouldn't dream of spoiling them all, I'll set the scene with a few:

Picture it: Pluto's Donuts, a perverted post-Americana 1950s diner that becomes a Stiller family affair, with Anne Meara playing Medea (as a diner waitress),

her husband Jerry Stiller, playing an insistent customer (and dead highway patrolman)
 

and their son Ben Stiller, playing a whiny line cook (in the first of two roles).

 

The visuals throughout are extremely detailed and inventive, and there's a PEE-WEE'S PLAYHOUSE kind of claymation beauty in even the corniest moments. 

 

 Next, consider Hoffa's, a hellish casino

where Genghis Khan (Ben Stiller again), Cleopatra (sister Amy Stiller), and Hitler (Gilbert Gottfried, of course) 

 whine about the poor service, while the table next to them is reserved for 

Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, martial law enthusiast Imelda Marcos, apartheid brute P.W. Botha, and... Jerry Lewis. This is probably the best illustration of what kind of tone this movie means to convey; in fact, your mileage may vary (on the road to hell). Which is paved with:

 

I admire the inspired, wacko choice to have hell's civic infrastructure run by an unsettling army of Andy Warhols

 who pave hell's roads with a conveyor belt of screaming, freshly deceased victims.

 

Along the way, we witness advertisements for Styx beer (see: best-one liner, above)

and, through the magic of Rocco Gioffre and Mark Sullivan's gorgeous matte paintings, glimpse Hell City and its notorious traffic jams. 

 

 

As Lowe's Orpheus continues his descent

 

 

 (damn, they actually got permission to shoot in Antelope Canyon!) 

he meets a rogue's gallery of characters and cameos, some of whom bear mentioning. Former Runaway and solo artist Lita Ford appears as a hitchhiker:

 

seven-foot-tall character actor Kevin Peter Hall (PREDATOR, HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS) plays a creepy, eyes-sewn-shut Charon:

 

Adam Storke plays sort of rebel prince from hell (seen here acting alongside Kristy Swanson's statement vest):

 

and the deliciously deranged Patrick Bergin (I once did a deep dive into how thoroughly his performance steals the movie SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY) who appears first as a suspiciously earnest "Satanic Mechanic"

 

and later, in a turn, as a nearly Willy Wonka-ish take on Old Scratch.

 

Oh, and did I mention that this thing has the best depiction of Cerberus in film history?

 

So hitch a ride on the HIGHWAY TO HELL: stop-motion monsters, desert madness, post-apocalyptic Americana, and an exquisite, cult movie tone. You'll be left wishing that Ate de Jong had been given greater opportunities in Hollywood to wield his particular brand of zany-satirical creativity. (Though, we'll always have the oeuvre of his fellow Dutch satirist, Paul Verhoeven.)

Only now does it occur to me... THE BIG RACKET (1976)

Only now does it occur to me... that it's been way too long since I've watched an Enzo G. Castellari film. It's a certain, unique strand of plagiaristic Italo-madness inflected with the pure joy of visual storytelling, á la Sam Raimi or Richard Rush. About fifteen years ago, I first watched a spate of his classicks: 1990: BRONX WARRIORS, THE LAST SHARK, THE HEROIN BUSTERS, KEOMA, TUAREG: THE DESERT WARRIOR, INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, et al., a series of films which rip off and then reinvent everything from JAWS to THE WARRIORS to LAWRENCE OF ARABIA to THE DIRTY DOZEN.

After all these years, I finally took a stab at THE BIG RACKET, which is a reinvention of the original DEATH WISH with enough Roman derangement so as to prophesy the swirly-eyed Cannon Films sequels.

The plot is thus: a gang full of models and character actors destroy bowling shirts and flowers with ball bats. This represents Italian crime in the 1970s.

 

What do they want? Protection money from local business owners.



They're part of a huge operation that goes all the way to the top––a smarmy mobster played by Joshua Sinclair's "Rudy." (He's a member of Castellari's acting troupe who almost always plays a gleefully pompous baddie, and––no joke––he's also a medical doctor and expert in tropical diseases who worked with Mother Teresa.)

But there's one man who will not allow this to happen. A likable man who wears a lot of denim and looks disapprovingly upon property destruction

and spilt sugar.

That's right, it's one tuff cop played by the one and only Fabio Testi. I've referred to him in the past as "Italo-Rock Hudson" and "Eurotrash Hugh Jackman." When he fires his weapon in top-to-bottom, skintight, cinched denim, you had best believe that he's doing a back-strengthening Superman extension as he does it. That's just standard Testi operating procedure.

Most of this movie is glass being broken in slow motion or Peckinpah-style bullet ballet featuring folks in close-fitting bell bottoms set to the wacka wacka beats of De Angelis, basically a nonstop bassline cribbed from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and some random psychedelic guitar tinkering. Or else it's criminal organizations meeting up and sitting around and flashing their eyes at each other and posing while jazz drum solos riff unto infinity (just like in 1990: BRONX WARRIORS). There's a fair amount of ickiness, too, like the comically fascist pro-police agenda and "fridging" tropes and multiple gang rapes, which mainly seem to be in here because Castellari genuinely believes he is making a contribution to the same contemporary ultraviolent subgenre as A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, DELIVERANCE, STRAW DOGS, DIRTY HARRY, and DEATH WISH. In fact, he's making a live action cartoon with some of the best-worst dialogue in his entire canon.

"Holy jumpin' jackrabbits, somebody took a strong dislike to the decor in here!"

 

 "Well look at that, we've got a plainclothes peeping pig in our window!"

"There we were having a couple of quiet beers and these guys arrive and just start beating the bean bags out of us!"

 

"I think I better warn you, if I find one bedbug, you will see me for dust."

"We can't offer them protection 24 hours out of 24."

There's excessive use of the word "diddly." Sometimes it's used to mean "diddly shit/squat," and sometimes the uses are, shall we say, even more imaginative.

"Yeah, you're right, but, uh, but if they cooperate with us, they'll be up diddly creek."

"Pull yourself together before you drop us both into the diddly."

–"If we're gonna get into the diddly, I'm gonna make sure it's because we really earned the right to be in it."

There are moments of the sublime, like when a gang member is pouring kerosene on a small restauranteur's dining room and says, flatly,

"Pity we ain't got some chestnuts to put on this."

"Ya mucker" is a common insult in the world of THE BIG RACKET, and sometimes gang members make spirited and hilariously weird commentary on the beatings they're administering:

"Ah sure, a sizzling face stinger... topped off with a rear-over-headlight turnover!"

All of this is too much for Good Cop Pushed Too Far™ Fabio Testi, who must break the law in order to enforce it.

"Criminal methods, in this case, were necessary. I know my methods are, let's say, somewhat illegal, but if the results are right, don't they justify the means?"

Because Castellari loves a "men on a mission" movie more than anything else, a now suspended-from-the-force Testi recruits a band of avengers to take out the mob, PUNISHER style. He enlists a thief-buddy (Vincent Gardenia––two-time Oscar nominee, DEATH WISH and MOONSTRUCK cast member, and "Mushnik" in LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS)

and other roughnecks to join his "let's say, somewhat illegal" crusade. Along the way, there are darkly comic and socially dangerous vigilante fantasies, like an Olympic skeet shooter being present (by happenstance!) when hero cops are pinned down by a literal army of mobsters. He proceeds to take out half the army while never being mistaken by the cops as a gang member. Holy jumpin' jackrabbits.

Anyway, the film's politics (described by Morando Morandini in Il Giorno as "a fascist film, a vile film, an idiot film"––and he's not wrong!) somehow can't fully drop this film "into the diddly," so to speak, and distract from its glorious, era-defining kitsch and denim-related achievements.