The Freeway Maniac

Freeway Maniac (1989)

** (out of 4)

By 1989 the slasher genre was pretty much drying up and dying off as even mainstream fair like Friday THE 13TH and HALLOWEEN were turning up dead numbers at the box office. A few films still snuck onto video and here's one example that I still have fond memories of renting when I was around ten years old. Young Arthur sees his mom getting nailed on the kitchen table so he takes a butcher knife to her and the lover. Years later he (James Courtney) escapes from the nut house and goes on a killing spree that takes him to an actress (Loren Winters) who stops him and send him back to the nut house. Have no fear as he escapes yet again and goes after the actress who is now making a sci-fi movie out in the desert. I remember renting this thing so much as a kid that the video store owner finally gave me the store's only copy because he said I was the only one who ever rented it. It had been at least fifteen or more years since I last watched this thing but I gave it another viewing and I must admit that I respect this film a lot more now and I understand why I loved it so much as a kid. This film certainly belongs in the group of such films as MANIAC (1934), REEFER MADNESS and TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE as all-time disasters that are so incredibly horrid that you can't help but laugh and be entertained by how bad everything you're seeing is. This movie has an awful production value, a horrid story, horrendous acting, bad special effects and everything else is just as worse. Everything in this movie is so bad that you can't help but laugh at it and just take a look at the first escape sequence when our maniac body slams a guy by jumping off a three or four story building. It's also funny that after each murder sequence we see the dead person lying there yet nearly every time they're still breathing. It looks like someone would have caught this at some point. This film was released by Cannon who were well known for delivering trash and this certainly fits that bill. This isn't as good as some of their other horror films like HOSPITAL MASSACRE but fans of the weird are going to love this. The movie is rather tame in terms of violence, blood and nudity but it makes up for that in the sure brilliance of the awfulness of everything. The body count is pretty high as people just seem to come out of no where for our maniac to slaughter. The title comes from the fact that our killer is constantly having to hitchhike or kill people for their vehicles in order to track down the actress. Fans of art house pictures aren't going to find anything entertaining here but if you love bad movies then this here is certainly one of the all-time greats.

My review was written in January 1989 after watching the film on Media Home Entertainment video cassette.

Previously known as "Breakdown", this threadbare horror pickup from Cannon boasts a couple of unusual names in the credits but flunks out in execution, accounting for its direct-to-video release.

Co-producer Loren Wines toplines as a model who gets a job starring in a low-budget sci-fi flick, "Astronette". She also has a run-in with an escaped looney (James Courtney), who slashed folks in the pic's prolog and keeps getting loose to wreak havoc on or near the freeway.

Filmmaker Paul Winters includes some heavy-handed spoofing of low-budget genre lensing, while his own work is a substandard example of same. Renowned horror cartoonist Gahan Wilson contributed to the ho-hum script and also fashioned a large clam monster for the film-within-a-film that resembles his magazine drawings. Lead guitarist for The Doors, Robby Krieger, delivers some forgettable songs, and such heavyweights as Robert Bloch and Stan Lee figure in the thank-you credits.

It's all a lost cause with amateurish acting, cheapo technical work and little imagination.

This low--budget flick concerns a young actress who stops at a desolate auto shop one day when her vehicle breaks down and is nearly murdered by the psycho of the title. She narrowly escapes and a year later is stalked by him again on the set of her new movie. This film is alternately hilarious and dull. I can't even begin to describe everything that is wrong with this movie, from the acting down to the gore effects, but I can mention a few of the more ridiculous moments. For instance, it's astonishing to discover that the film crew and director of the victim/actress's new film actually think they're making an intelligent sci-fi film! We see several sexy women walking through a desert in one scene. There is no dialogue other than when one of the women woodenly lifts up her arm and says "Look". Then one of the women is devoured by a gigantic mouth with sharp teeth protruding from the ground. I laughed hysterically at this scene! The film tries to make a statement by portraying the maniac/hero as a complete savage in every way, thus the hilarious scene where he picks up a live snake and takes a bite from it (you can plainly see that he's eating a chunk of food sitting on the snake's skin). And then there's the "climax" on top of a giant wooden spaceship, which will leave most people screaming "What the f***!?" This is a must-see for fans of truly terrible cinema . . .others beware.

This is a good slasher film with decent kills and acting. Definitely worth watching.

Wow - this film is fun. Inept in every way - our group just LAUGHED at everything. The acting is horrid - the filmmaking is terrible, there are some decent stunts but the script sounds like it was written by drunk 7th graders trying to write a slasher film. The film wastes no time. A little boy kills his slutty mom and her lover with a giant fake knife. And then of course he's put in the nuthouse, where I guess he had a personal trainer and access to a 24 hour gym and a personal hair stylist. And this escaped maniac justa starts killin'. And one bimbo gets away and he must have her - he must kill her. And of course she is cast in a sci-fi film (where the auditions are held in a school auditorium). And the maniac follows her to the desert where they are making the film and starts picking off people one by one. (too bad he didn't strangle the real director of the film). The scene where he kills a rattlesnake and then "eats" it is hysterical. The quickly made prop looks like a Snake Sub - he is so clearly eating bread that has been covered in green food coloring. Actually Rural Dirt Road Maniac is more accurate.