Armchair Commentary: Halloween 2008: Horror Guy Keenan's Top 10 Road Horror Films

Bloody-Disgusting.com: Picks from Keenan McClelland

10. Wolf Creek
We have seen many road trip films turn out just like Wolf Creek. Schools over and a few teens jump in a car and go across the country "discovering life" when all of the sudden a crazed red neck man craps on life with a huuuge knife! Well Wolf Creek does fit into that category just nicely but it's a bit different. Writer and director Greg Mclean made the realistic atmosphere come to life when he shot the film entirely in HD. The colors and day time moments just look stunning and it makes you feel as if you are right there in the outback. The film was inspired by the case of the Backpacker Murderer, a demented Aussie drifter named Ivan Milat, who tortured and killed seven tourists between 1989 and 1991. The film is pretty brutal at times and it has an almost hand held documentary feel to it. The really scary part about this film is where do you go when you're far out in the wide open outback and have know place to hide. Especially when the killer knows these parts like the back of his hand. There are a few twists and turns that throw you off track and the aussi killer is one hell of a bad ass. He brings new meaning to the quote "That's not a knife? *That's* a knife."

9. Kalifornia
Brad Pitt has not always been that suave talker and swank dresser we all know and love in the Oceans 11 films. No, I remember a darker Pitt. A bloodier Pitt. A Pitt that has one of the worst hick accents ever! I'm talking about dirty ol' Early Grace. When city folk intellectuals Brian (David Duchovny) and Carrie (Michelle Forbes) set out on a cross country trip to research a book about serial killers (No not aliens), they share the ride with a couple they barely know for extra cash - Early Grace (Brad Pitt) and his girlfriend, Adele (Juliette Lewis). Locked in a car hurtling westward on the old dirt road, the four travelers struggle to find some common ground. But when they finally do connect, Early's violent nature abruptly emerges, and the terrified Brian and Carrie realize that they don't need to go very far to learn about ruthless killers...because they're already face to face with one! First off I would just like to say Lewis plays one of the cutest, zaniest characters ever in this film. She holds a strong part of this film together. - with the help of Pitt being an ODB. This film keeps your attention for a good while but does have points where you just don't care anymore and then brings you back full force.

8. Freeway
One of the oldest road murder stories to date has to be the fairy tale story
of little red riding hood. Freeway pretty much takes this story and warps it to hell. After her hooker mother has been arrested again, 15 year old Vanessa (Reese Witherspoon) sets off to find the grandmother she's never met. Unfortunately, the kindly stranger who gives her a lift (Kiefer Sutherland) turns out to be (you guessed it!) a freeway cruising psychopath. But he's picked the wrong girl in Vanessa who, steeled by her violent upbringing, fights back. This film was not at all what I thought it was going to be going into it. The crazy soundtrack by Danny Elfman make the acid-like thriller that much more. There are so many turns and dark humor moments that you can't help but crack a smile. Especially with some of the things coming out of little Witherspoon's mouth. Oh and for all you gore hounds, it's here. This film says no way to cut-aways.

7. Death Proof
Hot muscle cars. Hot ladies. Long drawn out dialog. Death Proof was Quentin Tarantino's film in the Grindhouse feature film in 2007. The film is about two separate sets of voluptuous women who are stalked by a stuntman called Mike (Kurt Russell) who uses his death-proof cars to execute women.
Being his own cinematographer, QT has full control over the shots that make this road horror film feel like the old school Grindhouse road horrors (the motor hood shot and side car shots). He injects plenty of sleaze into his story. Leggy girls in tight tees and perky butts peeking out of hot pants, flaunting their hotness and daring attitudes. It's actually two different segments in one movie, each being quite different from the other in terms of themes and style. The dialog segments are long and uncut, sometimes boring but mostly captivating and succeed in bringing you back to basics of movie making and acting. When Kurt Russell is on screen, you know things are just about to heat up and go wild. AND THEY DO! This film has some of the best car stunt work I have seen in a while. Very raw and real. Another thing that is key is the soundtrack. Very nostalgic. If only gals listened to that type of music nowadays. (ha!)

6. Natural Born Killers
OK. First off I would just like to say that Adam Green said he had way more blood in his film Hatchet that any other film in Hollywood. That's a lie, because Natural Born Killers takes that award hands down. No police! The misadventures of Mickey and Mallory - outcasts, lovers, and serial killers. They travel across Route 666 conducting psychedelic mass slaughters not for money and not for revenge - they do it just for kicks. Glorified by the media, the pair become legendary heroes and their story is told by the single person they leave alive at the scene of each of their slaughters. The first half of this film is a good road horror. I'm talking senseless killing, laugh tracks, trippy killing scenes and Rodney Dangerfield! The whole nine yards. Then the second half is more of a "Lets get into Charles Manson's head and play around a bit." Still good in every way! The film really kicks its notch up when Robert Downey Jr. comes to play and just makes this film a bloody masterpiece of goodness. This film really shows that the media is just as bad as the murders, if not worse. A fantastic flick of road horror that actually just hit DVD. Do yourself a favor and pick this massacre up.

5. Maximum Overdrive
This movie scared the creeps out of me so much as a child. Machines taking over and having a mind of there own?! This is possibly one of the worst Stephen King adaptations ever next to Graveyard Shift but lord knows I can never get enough of that Green Goblin pick up truck.
This fun and ridiculous plot revolves around a comet that flies around earth and causes all the electrical devices to go haywire. Trucks, soda machines, lawnmowers, heavy machinery, microwaves...you name it. This is pretty much a poor mans' Transformers with more brutality. A small town tries to stand up to the machines and live out the night at a truck stop before they are destroyed and taken over.
Now I don't care who you are, but seeing a steamroller kill a kid in the first ten minutes of a film is pretty intense. (Especially for a seven year old!) And who hasn't ever thought about seeing a draw bridge go up while there are still cars on it? The 80's were a great time and only this film can deliver all that goodness to you. Sure, look over "Emilioooooo" Estevez's bad acting and it's not such amazing storytelling but it's still a fun film.

4. Near Dark
In the 80's there were few great vampire films to come out. Most were overlooked next to Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys, which was serious at times but for the most part very goofy and campy with that great 80's teen appeal to it. Near Dark is a lot more aggressive and a pretty dirty film.
This film is what happens when young cowpoke boy meets ah girl next door like vampire. Caleb is bitten during a moment of passion by Mae, and almost immediately against his will becomes a member of her family of bloodthirsty night dwelling killers, made up of Jesse (Lance Henriksen), Diamondback (Jeanette Goldstein), Homer (Joshua Miller) and Severen (Bill Paxton). Caleb pretty much knows he has become less than human when he sees his flesh sizzling and smoking when it is hit by sunlight. As Caleb travels with the clan in their motor home with its blacked out windows, he has to work to earn their odd trust, and at the same time realize he enjoys the taste for human blood.
The desert is a different world at night and Adam Greenberg captures it perfectly with his Terminator like cinematography. One scene that sticks out in my head the most is the roadhouse slaughter sequence. The build up an fear in this scene feels very raw and real. A teenage love story with the setting of a Western and road horror, the film is surprisingly sweet while not losing the necessary gore that makes a successful gritty picture.

3. Duel
The film that launched Steven Spielberg's career as an icon. A man named David Mann (Dennis Weaver) is in a race to get to an important appointment when a mysterious rig traveling on the same deserted highway decides to run him off the road. The truck's driver is never seen as Weaver's ever increasing panic and rage build in this tale of road rage gone too far. Now I know everyone has though about this film while driving on the road. "I could go around this guy. But what if he's as crazy as the truck driver in Duel? The film is essentially a crazy cross between a road horror and a monster film. Steven Spielberg originally directed it to be shown on television, but it was considered to be so effective and amazing that additional scenes were added to increase the running time to ninety minutes, and the film was released to cinemas around the world. Duel was shot very well, capturing the roar of both vehicles ripping down the desert highway at 90 miles an hour. This was one of the finest, most suspenseful car chase films of the seventies. It could have just been overlooked as another TV film, but thank goodness it was not.

2. The Devils Rejects
"Just like stone cold roosters in ah F*** farrrrm" You want that old feeling again of 70's cinema?
That dirty-gritty-reality of murder in the desert mixed in with more raw gore and
a tad bit of humor to keep you on the somewhat lighter side? Rob Zombie executes this perfectly with the sequel to his zany (almost cartoon like) film House of 1000 Corpses, though you won't find any color saturated funny video clips here. With an all star cast of mature horror veterans like Bill Moseley, Ken Foree, Sid Haig, Danny Trejo and one of the best performances I have seen on film in a long time by William Forsythe.
We revisit House's serial killing Firefly clan as they're cast into the backwater dustbowls of rural America by a sheriff intent on exacting vigilante revenge for the murder of his brother. Rob does a bang up and a better job then Quentin Tarantino did with Death Proof in capturing the old Grindhouse feel. This movie reaches into your gut and makes you hate yourself for loving it so much. "Why am I laughing while this dirty clown beats a mother in front of her child?" Rejects keeps you wanting more until the film's unforgettable closing moments. Road Horror fans unite for a night of gore and cinema mastery.

1. The Hitcher
So you pick up a drive-away car and you're going from Chicago to San Diego. A pretty long drive and its pouring down rain outside, you keep drinking coffee to keep yourself awake but it's having the opposite effect and you're getting pretty drowsy....OUT OF NOWHERE you hear a horn blare and you're almost run off the road by a semi. With your heart almost beating out of your chest you know you must stay awake at all costs. That's when you see a poor man stuck on the side of the road in the pouring rain hitch-hiking. "Sure, I'll give the guy a hand. I need to stay awake enough as it is" you say to yourself.
And thus it begins. A road story so terrifying, so heart pounding that only one man could be cast to bestow fear in the eyes of the viewer. That man's name is Rutger Hauer. Hauer plays one of the scariest characters I have ever seen. He's so frightening because you don't know what this man wants. What are his motives? Why is he still following the protagonist (C. Thomas Howell)?. You just don't know! And it scares you. Watching this film I put myself into the Howell's shoes wondering "What would I do?" And every time you think you have something figured out, The Hitcher just blows that to hell with a smile on his dirty face. Watching this film for the first time (and even now) I still get on the edge of my seat. This movie is as good as road horror gets. Nobody is safe in this film. Not even the poor police officers. I still say to this day that the original Hitcher is still one of the scariest films of all time.