Freeway (1996)

Directed by Matthew Bright
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Kiefer Sutherland
Rated R
USA

"You didn't have to kill me!"

Matthew Bright was one of the original Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. This was way before they sold out, man. He's the guy who wrote Forbidden Zone (1980), that zany midnight movie starring Herve Villechaize and Susan Tyrell they used to show clips of on USA Up All Night at 3AM. I don't know much more about him, but Mr Bright is clearly either a genius or a madman. Who else would spend $3 million Hollywood bucks on an ultraviolent re-imagining of Little Red Riding Hood, starring Reese Witherspoon as a trash-talking wayward teen and Kiefer Sutherland as a hooker-murdering child molester? I mean, that's pretty fucking bizarre, isn't it?

Witherspoon - still five years away from her break-out role in Legally Blonde - stars as Vanessa Lutz, an illiterate high school student/compulsive shoplifter with a crackwhore mom (a fully berserk Amanda Plummer) and a pedophile tweaker for a stepfather (Michael T Weiss). When mom and step-groper get popped by Johnny Law, Vanessa finds herself facing foster care. Since she's already suffered under villainous foster parents one too many times, she decides to make a run for it, shackling her parole officer to a bed (Two and a Half Men's Conchata Ferrell), jacking mom's car, and heading for the open road. She has one relative left - a grandmother who lives just outside of LA, in a trailer park. And so, Little Red Vanessa (She carries a basket and wears red, just like the fairy tale) heads off to Grandma's house, unaware that the Big Bad Wolf is already on her tail.

First, however, she stops to say goodbye to her boyfriend, Chopper (Bokeem Woodbine), who gives her a gun to help her on her way. Moments after she peels off, this decision proves fatal, as Chopper is gunned down in the street by rival gang members. His death is mercilessly realistic, and agonizing to watch. No reason. Just is.

Vanessa gets on the freeway and almost instantly, her car erupts in plumes of smoke. She has no idea what to do next, but luckily a friendly motorist named Bob (Sutherland) stops to help her out. Since her vehicle is officially dead, he offers to give her a ride to grandma's, and she takes it. At first, the two get along famously. Bob is a guidance counselor for wayward teen boys, and he encourages Vanessa to open up to him about her troubled life. Once he gets an earful of her tawdry true tales, however, he goes bananas, brandishing a straight razor and threatening to kill her. Just prior to the cops coming to take her family away, Vanessa watched a news report about the elusive Freeway Killer, a serial slayer at large who specializes in picking up prostitutes and chopping them to bits. It appears she has found him. And so she shoots him, in the face and chest, ten times.
I mean, that's what you'd do to a serial killer, right?

Vanessa gets thrown in juvie and Bob, amazingly, survives. Since there's no evidence linking him to the murders, he's set free. Of course, he has sustained some terrible injuries, and now he looks like some Frank Hennenlotter-esque mutant monster, with a gruesomely distorted mouth that leaves him with a permanent madman's leer. But still, it beats the electric chair. His gorgeous wife (Brooke Shields) hires an army of high-powered lawyers and tries to get Vanessa nailed for attempted murder. Vanessa, to her credit, admits that she did, in fact, try as hard as she possibly could to kill the fucker. So it should be a quick trial.

While in jail, Vanessa meets a compulsive lesbian with a Frankenstein face (Brittany Murphy, RIP), two evil pig-tailed twins (Monica and Leanna Creel), and a murderous gangster moll (Alanna Ubach) who Vanessa nearly decapitates five minutes after she meets her. Later on, however, they work out their differences and team up to shank a couple guards and escape.

Meanwhile, the two bumbling detectives on the case (Dan Hedaya and Wolfgang Bodison), finally put two and two together and realize that Vanessa was telling the truth about Bob. They raid his house and find a shed out back literally bursting with child porn and human remains (!). When his wife sees her hubby's dirty secret, she goes upstairs and graphically blows her head off. Who ever thought we'd see Brooke Shields' brains splattered all over a wall? Holy smokes.

Bob sees the cops outside of his house and splits. He remembers Vanessa's yapping about her grandmother, so he heads out to the trailer park to see the old girl. Vanessa, on the lam, heads there, too. So do the detectives. Mayhem ensues.

Pitch-black, aggressively weird, and laced with queasy chuckles, Freeway is one of the most enigmatic films of the 1990's, and certainly the most extreme film Reese Witherspoon was ever involved in. Half arthouse, half grindhouse, it walks a woozy line between trash and transcendence. If David Lynch and Roger Corman got into a batch of brown acid together, this is very likely the movie they'd make.

Amazingly, Bright was really only revving up with this one - his follow-up, 1999's Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trick Baby, is pure balls-out, gutbucket exploitation. Starring a too-close-to-the-fire Natasha Lyonne and a cross-dressing, kid-killing Vincent Gallo, Trick Baby is an eyeball-searing trip to hell that's nearly impossible to shake off. Freeway, in comparison, is a mere fairy tale.

A fairy tale with graphic murder and mutilation, but a fairy tale, nonetheless.

- Ken McIntyre

Deadline (2009)

Directed by Sean McConville
Starring Brittany Murphy, Thora Birch, Tammy Blanchard
Rated R
USA

"Stop filming me!"

The idea of pitting crazy-eyed spazz Brittany Murphy against bosomy cool grrl Thora Birch in a bump-in-the-night shocker is drool-worthy enough, but throw in a lesbian subplot and you've got a sure winner on your hands, right?

Umm. Well. Here's the thing. Murphy and Birch are never actually in the movie together. Unless you count ghosts.

The plot goes something like this. Murphy plays Alice Evans, a manic-depressive screenwriter trying to get over a miscarriage caused by a violent boyfriend. Said boyfriend is now in prison, and Alice has settled into a more leisurely Sapphic lifestyle with her girlfriend, Rebecca (soap actress Tammy Blanchard, who happens to be a deadringer for whinnying porn star Dana DeArmond). As the story opens, the already frazzled Alice is falling behind on her latest screenplay. In order to make her deadline, she accepts the offer of a sketchy producer acquaintance to stay at his rarely used, completely isolated country home, so that she might find the solace and solitude needed to get the job done. What could go wrong with that plan, right?

Wary Rebecca drives Alice to the house and, against her better judgment, leaves her there. Almost immediately, Alice starts to hear strange noises in the cavernous, empty house, so she Scooby Doos around the joint to see what she can find. While tooling around in the attic, she finds a wooden box filled with digital videotapes. She starts watching them on her laptop, and central narrative unfolds.

The tapes document the life of a young couple who have recently moved into this self-same house. Lucy (Thora Birch) is pregnant and grumpy. Her husband David (Marc Blucas, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is both possessive and clingy. He insists on filming Lucy day and night, ostensibly to provide a record for their unborn child. This drives Lucy nuts, and in each subsequent tape, the two grow more and more at odds. In the last tape, Lucy attempts to leave, but David stops her, drags her to the attic, and ties her to a chair. And that's where their story ends. Or does it?

One more tape case remains in the box, but the tape itself is missing. Alice goes in search for it, and finds, to her horror, that she is not in the house alone.

There's a good three or four twist-endings to endure before Deadline finally screeches to a halt. That's the biggest problem with this film, it tries to cram too many ideas into what should be a very simple haunted house thriller. A lot of the so-called 'intrigue' involves Alice's state of mind. Is she taking her pills? Is she hallucinating all these events? Is this house really filled with ghosts? It is impossible to tell, really, since we never know whether Alice is crazy or just inquisitive. Casting Murphy - who always seems sorta crazy, no matter what the role - only furthers to muddy the already too-busy story.

Still, it's always fun to watch Brittany Murphy twitch, and she looks great - a quick glimpse early on of her jeans-clad ass is nearly worth the price of admission. Who knew such a skinny girl could have such a shapely butt? Unfortunately for Thora fans, she's thoroughly de-glammed here, her epic rack kept under loose granny dresses. So that's a bummer.

She does make a pretty awesome zombie, though.

- Ken McIntyre