Quicksilver Highway

'Quicksilver Highway' is the collaboration of two of the world's most talented literary horror writers, Stephen King and Clive Barker. It is a rather short anthology of two terrifyingly twisted tales, with an inset story featuring Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future). But do they terrify the average film-goer? A wandering storyteller, Aaron Quicksilver (Lloyd), narrates the tales in two strikingly different locations: Stephen King's 'Chattery Teeth' along a deserted stretch of desert highway and Clive Barker's 'The Body Politic' within the carnivalesque setting of a funfair.

The more interesting of the two tales is 'Chattery Teeth', which tells of a psychopathic hitchhiker who falls prey to a relentless and dangerously-sharp set of chattering teeth owned by the travelling salesman driving the car. 'Chattery Teeth' is taken from a short story written by King and first published in 'Cemetery Dance' magazine in the nineties. Similar to the stories found in 'Creepshow' and 'Creepshow 2', it is a bizarre and disturbing story with a twist in the tail (think 'Twilight Zone' and the 'Ray Bradbury Theater').

The lesser of the two is Barker's 'The Body Politic'. Here, a hand comes alive, goes completely out of control, and eventually attacks its owner. The story is taken from Clive Barker's 'Books of Blood: Vol 4' and is actually quite an entertaining and intelligent story ... in print. However, attempting to re-create this story on film just doesn't work. The effects are nothing short of laughable, which inevitably ruins a good tale.

'Quicksilver Highway' is directed by Mick Garris, who has collaborated with Stephen King on more than one occasion (see 'Sleepwalkers', 'The Stand', 'The Shining' (TV), and the forthcoming 'Riding the Bullet' and 'Desperation'). He is also the man behind some of the 'Twilight Zone' episodes and 'Freddy's Nightmares', the latter explaining his less than efficient effort with 'Quicksilver Highway'.

Nevertheless, the cast is well chosen - Matt Frewer (The Stand), John Landis (dir. 'An American Werewolf in London'), Bill Nunn (Kiss the Girls), and Clive Barker - and although the movie does have its tedious and ridiculous moments (check out Lloyd's fetishistic leather garb), it is watchable. Fans of 'Tales from the Crypt' and 'Tales from the Darkside' will certainly want to give this film a look-see.

Matthew J Lee-Williams, Review.

This movie wasn't all that good. Christopher was awesome in this movie, and thats it. That was the only good thing about this movie. It just isn't scary other then Christopher's part in the movie. It just wasn't all that good. I recommend watching some other scary movie. This wasn't worth it.

I'm sorry I had to spent my money on this movie, because this definitely has to be the worst movie I have ever seen in my life !!!

The reason I didn't like the movie is that the whole movie I was waiting for something to happen, but it just didn't !!

Also the whole idea of hands on the loose isn't quite what I expected from a Stephen King-based movie...

So my advice to you is : DON'T RENT IT !! it's a waiste of your precious dollars.

Fans of Stephen King and Clive Barker will love the two horror stories told in this swift refreshing movie. Stephen King fans will remember "Cat's Eye" from 1983 which starred James Woods and a young Drew Barrymore which told similar tales. Both tales are both horrifying and funny and they are joined together by Christopher Lloyd acting as a deviant soul looking for "America's lost heart". This movie is never a classic, but it was never supposed to be. It's a light hearted look at horror with sarcastic overtones. A refreshing horror movie.

At the time of this writing I'm a bit confused because the version I saw gave the "hand" story first followed by the "teeth" story, but comments here and on Amazon say the movie presents the two stories the other way around. And it should be noted that I haven't read the original stories; I judge the movie as a stand-alone form of entertainment.

So, imagine what would happen if your hands stopped responding to commands from your brain and began doing whatever *they* wanted to do. And what if your hands plotted a revolution requiring an army of hands from other people. If you happened to see the modern "Addams Family" remake then you can extrapolate: picture a bunch of "Thing" hands running around free. I thought the army, and how they got that way, were very funny. OK, there is a rather serious horror story going on in the background, and Matt Frewer does some excellent hand-acting.

As for the second story, well, I can't say much without giving too much away. But I was blown away by my favorite character, the wind-up teeth. I have a small collection of similar wind-ups, similar in that they walk or play instruments, but I never saw anything like these teeth. I felt totally torn between the seriousness of a hitchhiker-horror story and the humor of a wind-up character. Enjoy, just for fun.