''Hell's Highway'' is a 2002 American

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...

written and directed by Jeff Leroy.

Plot

Out on a highway in

Death Valley Death Valley is a desert valley in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert, bordering the Great Basin Desert. During summer, it is the Highest temperature recorded on Earth, hottest place on Earth. Death Valley's Badwater Basin is the ...

, a man picks up a female hitchhiker named Lucindia, and gives her a drink. Lucindia has a coughing fit upon ingesting the liquid, stumbles out of the vehicle, and is stabbed to death by the motorist. The man (revealed to be a priest, whose offer to Lucindia was

holy water Holy water is water that has been blessed by a member of the clergy or a religious figure, or derived from a well or spring considered holy. The use for cleansing prior to a baptism and spiritual cleansing is common in several religions, from ...

) buries Lucindia's body, and erects a crucifix over the impromptu grave. As the preacher prays, Lucindia reappears, and bludgeons him with his shovel as he screams, "El Diablo!" Nearby, four college students (Eric, Chris, Monique, and Sarah) from

Western Pennsylvania Western Pennsylvania is a region in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, covering the western third of the state. Pittsburgh is the region's principal city, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic ...

are on a road trip to Redondo Beach. Spotting Lucindia at a cluster of crosses, the quartet pick her up. When Chris mentions that a group of their friends are also on their way to Redondo, Lucindia brags that she tortured them to death before pulling out a gun and sexually assaulting Sarah. Lucindia then tries to shoot Sarah in the crotch, but is knocked out of the car by her and Eric. The next day, Lucindia (who had just robbed, castrated, and murdered a motorist) catches up with the college students, who run her down, beheading and disemboweling her. On what's left of Lucindia's body, Eric finds Chris's brother's cell phone, and a battery pack that fits into a camcorder that Sarah had earlier unearthed in the desert. The group watches the last few minutes recorded by the camera, which shows Lucindia shooting all of their friends during a botched séance. Lucindia then turns to the camera and tells the story of a settler couple that became trapped in the valley; to try and save his wife (implied to be Lucindia), the husband killed himself so that she could consume his flesh. Her husband's body was not enough to sustain her, and in her last dying hours the woman cursed God and prayed to the Devil for salvation, and received it in exchange for a steady stream of victims. When the video ends, Lucindia appears, and attacks and mortally wounds Chris with a chainsaw. The students drive off, with Lucindia catching up to them when they run out of gas. Sarah, Eric, and Monique run, but are cornered by a pair of Lucindias, who murder Monique. Sarah accidentally kills Eric, then kills one of the Lucindias and is saved from the remaining one by two government operatives, who then capture Sarah. Sarah is taken to a military installation, where it is explained that there were four equally delusional Lucindias and that they were the result of cloning and accelerated growth experiments. The staff tell Sarah that she is going to become their new test subject and as they try to give her an injection, a wounded Lucindia barges in. Sarah screams "I told you the Devil would come back!" as Lucindia opens fire with a shotgun, causing an explosion that presumably kills her and everyone else in the room.

Cast

* Phoebe Dollar as Lucindia/Nurse Polonia * Kiren David as Sarah McKinnis * Hank Horner as Eric * Beverly Lynne as Monique * Jonathan Gray as Chris Struther *

Ron Jeremy Ronald Jeremy Hyatt (born March 12, 1953) is an American former pornographic actor. Nicknamed "The Hedgehog", Jeremy was ranked by AVN at No. 1 in their "50 Top Porn Stars of All Time" list. Jeremy has also made a number of non-pornographic ...

as Jack * Joe Haggerty as Preacher * Garrett Clancy as Doctor Sullivan * Brian C. Donnelly as Ralph Struther * Jackie Johnson as Julie * Jennifer Warren as Carla * Natalie Pierre as Debra

Reception

Joe Bob Briggs John Irving Bloom (born January 27, 1953), known by the stage name Joe Bob Briggs, is an American syndicated film critic, writer, actor, and comic performer. He is known for having hosted ''Joe Bob's Drive-in Theater'' on The Movie Channel fro ...

gave ''Hell's Highway'' a score of 2½ stars out of a possible 4, and wrote, "The acting is uneven, but the story does satisfy the first rule of

drive-in A drive-in is a facility (such as a restaurant or movie theater) where one can drive in with an automobile for service. At a drive-in restaurant, for example, customers park their vehicles and are usually served by staff who walk or rollerskat ...

movie-making: anybody can die at any moment. And you've gotta love a movie that has a sequence with porn legend

as a bitter film producer who picks up the diabolical hitchhiker and is rewarded by getting

disemboweled Disembowelment or evisceration is the removal of some or all of the organs of the gastrointestinal tract (the bowels, or viscera), usually through a horizontal incision made across the abdominal area. Disembowelment may result from an accident ...

with a butcher knife while he's driving". Bruce Kooken of Horror News was highly critical of the film's twist ending, but still categorized ''Hell's Highway'' as "campy, funny and, without question, a blast" and summed up his closing thoughts regarding it with, "Just because I was disappointed with the ending doesn't mean there isn't plenty of entertaining aspects of the film".

References

External links

* * {{IMDb title, 0301393, Hell's Highway 2002 films 2000s chase films American road movies American slasher films Demons in film American splatter films 2000s teen horror films 2002 horror films Films about cloning American serial killer films Films set in deserts Films about telepathy Mass murder in fiction Films set in California 2002 independent films Films about vacationing Films shot in California 2002 direct-to-video films American independent films American teen horror films Direct-to-video horror films Films based on urban legends American direct-to-video films 2000s science fiction horror films American science fiction horror films Direct-to-video science fiction films Supernatural slasher films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films