Highway to Hell
Richard Farnsworth has one of the most trustworthy faces in the movies. When he plays a desert gas station owner who warns a young couple not to take the back road, you believe him. Charlie and Rachel don’t. If they did, we would have a short film about a wedding in Las Vegas.
They are eloping and are meant to be about 16. I didn’t realize that until well into the picture, because Chad Lowe and Kristy Swanson look old enough to have graduated college. Soon after this production, Swanson would play a high school senior in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which at least had the decency to be kidding.
On the back road they are stopped by Hell Cop, a hulking figure with lines of scripture carved into his face, and he drags Rachel down to the underworld. Charlie goes back to Farnsworth, who gives him a shotgun, special ammunition, a 1940 Ford V8 and far too much explanation. He also tells Charlie to pack antifreeze, because “it’s gonna be hotter than hell down there.”
C.J. Graham’s Hell Cop is the best thing in the movie. Graham, who played Jason in the sixth Friday the 13th entry, is large, silent and patient. For the first half hour he is a figure of real horror. Then Charlie crosses over, and the movie switches genres. Hell turns out to be a sunny desert that looks a lot like the one Charlie left, only brighter, as if someone had turned up the contrast on Nevada. Hell Cop stops in at a diner full of dead policemen who want only coffee and a donut and will never get either. The paving company working on the highway is called Good Intentions. Gilbert Gottfried plays Hitler.
The diner, I noticed, is populated by most of the Stiller family. Anne Meara is the waitress, Jerry Stiller is one of the cops, and Ben Stiller works the grill before returning as Attila the Hun. Amy Stiller shows up later as Cleopatra. I enjoyed spotting them, though I doubt the filmmakers wanted me spotting Stillers when I should have been worried about Rachel.
Some of the jokes are good, and so is the horror in the opening, but the film never settles on a tone. The director, Ate de Jong, all but confirms this on his DVD commentary. He says he wanted the scripture on Hell Cop’s face legible to anyone who looked closely, and then explains that the film’s hell was never meant to be Judeo-Christian at all. He was after the classical version, with Cerberus and the River Styx. That suits the comedy better, but it leaves me asking why the villain is wearing Bible verses. De Jong also says they were aiming for a PG-13 rating, which explains why the horror never gets far. It got an R anyway.
Brian Saur, on the “PCP Horrorthon 2026” episode of the Pure Cinema Podcast, said the film reminded him of Savage Steve Holland, the director of Better Off Dead. Once I heard that, I understood what Highway to Hell was reaching for. Put Holland behind the camera and a young John Cusack in that Ford, and you have a hero who is a sad sack and still worth rooting for. Lowe plays the sad sack without the charm. In the early scenes I was rooting against him, and he and Swanson have so little chemistry that I wasn’t sure Rachel would want to be rescued.
Along the way Charlie befriends a small boy who has also been carried off to hell, so apparently nobody is safe. The boy belongs to a mechanic named Beezle (you can finish that one yourself), played by Patrick Bergin. His greeting of “Hello, Charlie” kept reminding me of Chris Sarandon’s “Hello, Charley” in Fright Night. It’s never wise for a movie to remind you of a better one.
Still, if you collect video store oddities, there’s enough here for one late night: Graham’s menace, the doomed diner, a Stiller in every other scene. Anyone else will find that ninety minutes feel longer than they should, and that the film’s best version would have needed a different director and a different leading man.