Le voyageur de la peur

Firstly, you can't be paying movies like this your fullest attention. This is the kind of movie you watch when getting through a stack of ironing or playing a monkey bloons game. Secondly, these midday horrors have to be watched accelerated somehow.

Ok, so the story is straight out of 80's slasher heaven. It's a jump in my ride of death movie. Acting is pure B gold. So rich guy uses camper van to catch female hitchhikers is kill them. The movie is full of one liners, thats about the depth of the dialog. Don't bother unless you are seriously into B thrillers.

This movie has some things going for it. It features some really beautiful scenery of the American South. It features some really beautiful scenery of a young, lovely Josie Bisset. And it is not quite Umberto Lenzi's worst movie ever. It has a lot of problems though. First, the dialogue is terrible. (Maybe these ridiculous conversations would sound better if they were badly dubbed and delivered with Italian accents). Second, the acting is wretched. The aforementioned Bisset is even worse than she was on "Melrose Place". The only time her acting is halfway tolerable is the scene where she is being photographed naked and sexually assaulted, and that is only because she has been mercifully drugged unconscious. The killer is played by a Christopher Atkins look-alike who is not only just as bad as Bisset but woefully miscast to boot. A five-foot-tall, effeminate pretty boy wearing Vaurnet sun-glasses and driving around in a RV camper is just NOT scary.

The amazing thing though is director Umberto Lenzi who started out as a great director with classic Italian giallo like "Paranoia" in the late 60's, but seemed to get worse with each film. His infamous cannibal and zombie movies in the early 80's were awful but at least they elicited some reaction. This movie and its Florida-lensed follow-up "Nightmare Beach" don't even do that. At the rate he was going here, if Lenzi's still working at all he's probably making amateur porn videos and forgetting to take off the lens cap. I can certainly understand why Lenzi started using a cinematic pseudonym about this time, but why did he choose the name "Humbert Humphrey" recalling classic literature's most infamous pedophile?(Would that make Josie Bisset "Lolita")? What a strange, strange guy.

I love 70s movies and it shocks me that this was released in '89 as if looks and feels like a mid 70's movie. Its not a "horror" but more of a thriller about a young man who preys on woman hitchhikers in his dad's camper. Its cheesy and there's nothing new here but its entertaining if you go in not expecting much.

There's also a small amount of T&A sprinkled in if you're into that.

Tedious tale of a serial killer who picks up hitch-hikers, Daniela (Josie Bisset) is his current pray and Kevin (Jason Saucer) is her boyfriend trying to rescue her.It is written by Umberto Lenzi. The guy who made Cannibal Ferox & Eaten Alive should just stick to people who eat people movie, as this film plays out like a poor man's Toolbox Murders. Heh what am i saying?? Toolbox Murders was a poor man's Toolbox Murders. But I digress, the point is you'd probably do better just waiting for the upcoming remake of The Toolbox Murders by Tobe Hooper.

My Grade: D

Dvd Extras: Umberto Lenzi interview; theatrical trailer; trailers for Black Demons, and My Dear Killer

Eye Candy: Daniela (Josie Bisset) goes nude & a completely random wet T-shirt contest

Umberto Lenzi is perhaps best known for his zombie and cannibal movies of the early '80s: the derivative but gory Eaten Alive!, the silly but fun Nightmare City, and the spirited nasty Cannibal Ferox. He's certainly not so fondly remembered for his later movies, which include this frustratingly dull psycho thriller that possesses a mean-spirited tone, and boasts a fair amount of sleaze, yet still manages to be both tedious and rather dumb.

Joe Balogh plays rich kid Mark Glazer, who cruises the highways in his daddy's Winnebago picking up young hitchhikers to torture, rape and kill. After seeing pretty blonde Daniela Foster (Josie Bissett) dancing at a campsite, he decided to make her his next victim: when she storms out of a bar following an argument with boyfriend Kevin (Jason Saucier), Mark is there to offer her a lift to the bus station. She doesn't make it. Instead, she spends days shackled in the RV being abused by crazy Mark, who has confused the girl for his long-gone mother, who ran off with the tennis coach when Mark was ten. Meanwhile, Kevin is combing the area for his missing girlfriend.

Much of the movie focuses on the mind games played by captor and captive, and with neither Balogh or Bissett being great actors, these scenes are interminably boring. The film is much better when its being more exploitative: the opening murder of a gorgeous blonde is promisingly lurid; Daniela's attempted seduction of Mark delivers lots of nudity; a wet t-shirt competition at a family waterpark is totally unnecessary, but welcome; and the torture of Kevin provides the gore (the nut-job carving the word 'PIG' into Kevin's chest with a switchblade).

As far as the dumb stuff goes, the daftest scene sees Daniela wasting a prime opportunity to smash a vodka bottle over a sleeping Mark's head, although the twist ending is almost as unbelievable (it was apparently tacked on leave things on a happy note).