O Maníaco das Estradas

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.

Homicidal maniac Arthur (James Jude Courtney) escapes from the psychiatric hospital where he has been a patient since a child (when he murdered his mother and her lover for recreating the table-top shag scene from The Postman Always Rings Twice) and makes his way to the desert where aspiring model/actress Linda (sexy blonde Loren Winters) is filming her debut movie, the woman having escaped the killer's clutches the last time he broke free (security is not the institution's strong point, but the patients do get a daily smoke break with free cigarettes).

Low budget slasher The Freeway Maniac is knowingly dumb, as evidenced by the schlocky z-grade sci-fi movie that Linda is starring in and the fact that Arthur knows how to drive a rig despite being locked up for almost all of his life; as such, it is quite a lot of brainless fun, Arthur more than living up to his title of maniac, the man killing virtually everyone he meets, howling at the moon, and snacking on the rattlers and ants that he catches in the desert. In addition to the movie's many murders, writer/director Paul Winters features lots of crazy stunt-work, with impressive vehicular action, a full body burn gag, and an explosion, all of which keeps the film trundling along at a decent lick.

Unfortunately, the kills in the film are largely free of gore despite Arthur's weapons including claw-hammer and chainsaw - more blood and guts would definitely have helped to make this one a more memorable bona fide trash classic - and the ending, in which Arthur poses as an actor to get near to Linda, is a total mess, the film closing in an unsatisfactory manner with the maniac still at large. Also, it would be remiss of me if I failed to mention that the very lovely Winters doesn't have a shower scene, although there is a strip routine by one of the supporting actresses.

5.5, rounded up to 6/10 for IMDb.

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.

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.

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