The Freeway Maniac

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.

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.

This late '80s slasher is perhaps notable in that no actual attacks happen on the freeway ("Hey, a deserted highway is close enough," the director). We start with the genesis of nearly all killers - spying on mom having awkward sex on the kitchen table. It sends poor Arthur into a rage and he stabs them both to death. Amusingly, the mom is killed first in shrieking fashion a room away from her beau and he hears nothing. Flash forward to the present day and Arthur (James Courtney) is housed in a nuthouse. He escapes in grand fashion by bashing a bunch of guards ("No, I'm new here" screams one orderly before getting bashed, as if Freeway Maniac cares about seniority). Cut to poor model Linda (Loren Winters), who has escaped in her own way after she finds her boyfriend cheating on her so she heads into country for a drive. Bad move as her car breaks down and she ends up at a gas station with a perv owner. To make matters worse, Freeway Maniac Arthur has shown up in a stolen car and attacks her. She successfully fights him off and he is re-captured. Her status as serial killer survivor gets her cast in a low budget sci-fi picture (!) and this causes Arthur to escape again and head to the set for his revenge.

Probably the most notable thing about Freeway Maniac is it was co-written by illustrator Gahan Wilson. He also designed the rock aliens for the movie-with-the-movie. He and co-writer/director Paul Winters would reunite for Walking Dead of the West (2013 aka Cowboy Zombies). Winters commits some unfortunate goofs that result in some laughable moments. My personal favorite is the bit where a guy is squashed under a semi truck. It is a great stunt, but the poor fellow is wearing a blue jean jacket while the dummy that gets pulverized is sporting a red flannel shirt. It is the kind of film where people just wander off to get killed (my favorite being the lone set security guard who confronts a chainsaw wielding Arthur and says, "Hey! What are you doing that? That doesn't belong to you. Bring that here right now!"). The sci-fi film setting is interesting, but never used to the fullest extent of satire (I assume that is where they were going with a lecherous producer and barking mad Aussie director). If anything, Freeway Maniac proved to be a great training ground for the hulking Courtney as he would go on to play Michael Myers 30 years later in the new David Gordon Green HALLOWEEN film trilogy. I can only assume this on his resume got him the gig.

Well, no need to beat about the bush, this is probably one of the worst films I have ever seen. Everything looks so false that it made me laugh (literally)... Most of what happens in this 'film' is simply ridiculous. For instance, in the asylum where the psycho is confined, one of the watchmen is explaining to a new recruit that the cell he is going to open contains the most dangerous madman he has ever seen. However that does not seem to bother him since he opens the door without any caution. Of course the psycho escapes as he was apparently hiding behind the door with a chair !!!(yes this crazy killer has furniture in his room and even a telly !!!) After having murdered one or two guards, the man finally escapes the asylum by jumping from a tower and landing on a guard's belly... That was probably one of the funniest scene from the whole film. Other than that, the film is full of inaccuracies and incoherence: The desert where most of the film within the film is set is probably the most crowded desert I have ever seen (you have of course the film cast and crew, but also campers, a sheriff, a carpenter, an old lady (interpreted by a young woman whose way of acting reminded me of Steve Urkel from Family Matters...), young lovers, and so on); the psycho slaughters half of the crew but no one seems to care for those who have disappeared; the killer kills someone with plastic bear claws !!!; no one notices the killer's presence despite his uncommon lack of ability for hiding, and so forth. In short, this film is a real disaster but as funny as Hell.

We launch our story with a camera-eye recollection, wherein a little boy quietly witnesses a sloppy kitchen-table hump starring his slatternly mother and some random strong-arm she likely picked up on her nightly stroll of the docks. He overreacts slightly to this, and proceeds to slay them both.

Flash to present day...our now-adult(and physically very imposing) killer has spent the passing years in a maladministered sanitarium, and is deemed such a 24-karate psychopath that he is feared by the staff and kept in constant seclusion. Following his predictable escape, he stalks a pretty B-movie starlet on the set of an in-production sci-fi epic, leaving a bloody trail of victims in his wake. Will the imperiled girl be saved by her repentant two-timing husband? Probably.

This really isn't a movie so much as it is a noxious deposit of aesthetic waste by-products disembogued by untalented and delusional film-industry parvenus. With that being said, FREEWAY MANIAC is also a priceless paragon of unpremeditated hilarity, one of the cheapest and most inexpedient integrants to the 80s slasher canon. It has a sizable body-count, with several of the murder scenarios curiously inferring a veneration of the killer and a latent applause for his pernicious crusade. Somehow, this antagonist pep-rallying comes off more silly than sick, suggesting a flippant tongue-in-cheek to the entire project.

Individuals of a schlock-mongering countenance will probably squeal with flurried excitation upon viewing this...no-nonsense types, on the other hand, may assent to earning their Hari-Kari wings before the closing credits roll.

5/10