Human Highway

Posted on March 10, 2025 by k.ratticus

Before The Simpsons normalized living next to a nuclear power plant, Neil Young (under the pseudonym Bernard Shakey) gave us the film Human Highway. Part social commentary and part live action cartoon akin to an episode of Hee-Haw. Familiar and deeply underrated, Human Highway started off in quite a few different directions. But with the help of friends like Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, and Devo as sort of a Greek Chorus, we’re left with a musical of atomic anxiety where the fringes of nostalgia burn. Utilizing miniatures, projection screen backgrounds, and the hyper realistic sets at Raleigh Studios, many believe this bizarre comedy has inspired other Avant garde directors. Whether or not Alex Cox or David Lynch was taking notes, the audience is taken for a ride to Otto’s Corners. A liminal gas station and diner on the edge of Megapolitan City, deep in the heart of the Linear Valley. A nuclear garden run by corporate entities, where residents dream of escaping their tiny lives by any means necessary.

Don’t They Know? It’s The End of The World

“Bernard Shakey” paints a rosy portrait of small-town life, the nostalgic echoes of yesterday mutated by the industry of today. Dense smog feathers across the horizon of this company town, controlled by Cal-Neva Nuclear Power Authority. Neil Young portrays Lionel Switch, a dorky mechanic with apple pie dreams of being a rock star. Perhaps an inversion of Young himself, dreaming of giving up the life of fame for something simple–though we all know it’s never quite that organic. The nuclear glow is always brighter on the other side of the reactor.

Lionel gets his friend Fred (Tamblyn) a job at the gas station right before the boss, Otto Quartz, dies from radiation poisoning. The fellas want to double date with the Goodnight sisters, Charlotte and Irene, both waitresses at the Hi-Rail Café. Old Otto’s son, Young Otto (both played by Stockwell), begrudgingly inherits his father’s business and starts changing things. More money for less product, no more customer tabs, and fewer coffee breaks for employees. The short order cook, Cracker, keeps repeating that Young Otto just doesn’t have “that glow to him” that Old Otto had.

Broadcasting out of Linear Valley, K-GLO radio announces there’s a big talent show tonight at the nuclear plant. The winner gets a trip to the Indian space casino. Charlotte sashays around the diner, rehearsing for the show and gushing to Lionel about her big chance. “All the big shots are gonna be there!” When he’s not making googly eyes at the waitress, Lionel spends a lot of time whistling to the cigar store Indians in the garage and clanging wrenches together. But when our hero takes a nasty conk on the head, he trips out to a fantasy land where he is a famous rock star. Wandering into a punk show where Devo is performing “Come Back Jonee” dressed as cowboys. Lionel gets swept up in the crowd with a ukulele until he finds himself on stage with a backup band of the wooden cigar shop figures. This is where Human Highway becomes a concert film with a live jam session between Devo and Neil Young covering “My My, Hey Hey”. Featuring Mark Mothersbaugh in a baby crib with his moog and Booji boy mask. If this is the norm for talent shows in the Linear Valley, radiation be damned—I gotta get me a ticket.

The love-in dream sequence ends in a bonfire of xenophobic effigies and Lionel comes out of his delusion. Everyone gathers around him in the garage, but instead of “there’s no place like home”, an explosion goes off in the distance. The rosy glow of the sky turns a haunting red. This is it! Booji Boy pulls up in a Cal-Neva truck with a megaphone, “Listen up hippies! I’ve got your shovels– now dig your hole!” The film culminates in a choreographed civil defense boogie to Devo’s cover of “Worried Man Blues”. A happy, heel-kicking ending as Armageddon has arrived and of course the only folks happy about it are the working class. FINALLY.

Talk About a Weenie Roast

Child actor of Old Hollywood, Dean Stockwell, is best known to me as the wise cracking hologram, Al from Quantum Leap. One of my first childhood crushes. Beyond The Boy with Green Hair, Stockwell was a working actor most of his life until the mid-60s when he dropped out of show business and joined the hippie counterculture. Living between Topanga Canyon and Haight Ashbury, he got mixed up with beatniks and flower children like Russ Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper, and Neil Young. The group frequently collaborated on creative projects, such as Stockwell doing photography for Neil Young’s American Stars and Bars LP.

Hopper had connections with Universal after the success of Easy Rider and asked Stockwell if he was interested in writing a script. With the help of Tamblyn, Young, and Herb Bermann (Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band) came the screenplay titled After the Goldrush, inspired by Young’s 1970 album of the same name. It was about the end of the world in the form of a tidal wave hitting Topanga with Neil doing the soundtrack. According to Russ Tamblyn at a 2015 Q&A in Los Angeles, “The suits from Universal saw the script and wanted nothing to do with it.” When Neil moved out of the canyon area, he got the idea for a film about a rockstar’s life on the road. He called up Dean and Russ and reignited the excitement of working on a film together.

Professional dancer and choreographer Toni Basil (Yes, “Hey Mickey” Toni Basil) was part of that counterculture friend group, even having a part in Hopper’s Easy Rider. Basil had seen the band Devo play in Germany and told everybody about them. Neil was particularly curious and went to see them in West Hollywood. Blown away by the band’s frenetic stage presence and the crowd’s wild energy. Gerry Casale of Devo said in an interview that the guys in the band had regarded Neil Young as the “grandfather of granola” until they got to know him. Realizing that he fit into Devo’s idea of normal, Gerry described him as a “loopy mad scientist”. Collaborating in the studio with a camera crew, Young and Devo had their experimental jam session, which was to be incorporated into the movie.

Neil dragged a camera crew along with his hippie entourage while he was on the road touring. Becoming overwhelmed with the initial idea of his movie, he felt stuck and unsure of where to go with it, and so the footage was divided. The concert film Rust Never Sleeps was constructed with most of the content from life on the road. The rest was cut down to a 10-minute dream sequence, with the remainder being filmed on the sound stages of Raleigh Studios. Described as a “rock n roll Wizard of Oz”, the scenes were improvised, and the script was being written in tandem with filming.

Members of Devo were shocked by the atmosphere on set, Mark Mothersbaugh remarking that, “We were kind of repulsed by the whole experience.” The lack of sobriety and control, with the motto on set being “today’s plan is no plan”. Imagine a hippie group of friends making a movie together…of course , the cast and crew were showing up to work drunk or high. Most notably Dennis Hopper.

Out of all the film reviews I read, it was unanimously decided that Hopper was out of his mind on drugs during his performance. But that just seems like the parroted opinion from a bunch of vanilla squares. Having known and worked with many eccentric line cooks (becoming one myself), Hopper’s role as a short-order cook named “Cracker” felt incredibly real. Excited about the menu, ignored by the waitresses, and constantly muttering to himself, “Nobody listens to me around here.” Hopper’s gonzo flavor of acting portrayed a traumatized veteran holding down a regular blue-collar gig. Kind enough to feed the strays and local wildlife, wise and all-knowing, but completely out of touch with the world beyond the kitchen. Standing in a hot grease box for hours will make ya nutty eventually.

However…there is the knife incident while filming Human Highway.

Sally Kirkland as the waitress Kathryn, seems to be the only character mourning the passing of Otto Quartz. Bawling her eyes out to a Skeeter Davis tune on the jukebox, with the late boss’s portrait hanging above. A little green under the gills and chugging Pepto Bismol. Most of her time on screen is spent behind the counter with Cracker, as he attempts to comfort her. Hopper and Kirkland were actually pretty close in real life, following Young around like groupies in San Francisco. Some might even say they were connected at the hip, so if he was over-indulging in party favors on set, she was just as guilty. Practicing for a scene where Cracker would perform a knife trick, Hopper was using a real knife instead of a prop. Obsessively repeating the stunt, he started to freak Kirkland out. The knife-play was pretty on brand for Hopper and Cracker, so Young just rolled with the chaos and let him be that character. After a great deal of bickering with Dennis to get him to stop, Sally tried to physically take the knife away! Severing the tendons in fingers on her right hand, requiring years of physical therapy. Despite the incident, Kirkland continued filming, and you can actually see her bandaged hand in the musical finale of Human Highway. She ended up suing Neil and Hopper but lost her case, claiming that nobody believed her story about Dennis being on amyl nitrates.

The Answer is Breaking in the Wind

The big question of Human Highway is “who influenced whom?” First and foremost, this film is in debt to old Hollywood as so many cast members were once part of that machine and some of the first to reject it. From Tamblyn’s slapstick to Stockwell as the Groucho-esque straight man, and even Geraldine Baron as Irene Goodnight, summoning Looney Tunes celebrity.

The most frequent name that gets brought up in comparison is David Lynch. Nobody can really say for sure if Lynch took any inspiration from Human Highway. The fact that he ended up casting a handful of the actors in his own projects was probably just a right-place/right-time kind of thing. Charlotte Stewart was roommates with a volunteer at the LA Film Institute where David Lynch was a student. She ended up being cast in the role of Mary X in Eraserhead a few years before Human Highway started filming. Dean Stockwell had said in an interview with Psychotronic Magazine that Lynch had held a screening of The Grandmother at his house, years before he was ever considered for the role of Ben in Blue Velvet. I think David Lynch and Devo have always not-so-secretly been in each other’s orbit. The industrial-noir soundtrack of Eraserhead had imprinted on Mark Mothersbaugh and his journey scoring film and television. There’s also an audio recording from 1979 on YouTube of Devo covering “In Heaven Everything is Fine”. If you’re a Lynch fan, you may have recognized Russ Tamblyn as Dr. Jacoby, the psychiatrist in Twin Peaks. In 2017’s reboot, Jacoby was calling himself “Dr. Amp” a conspiracy vlogger and huckster of golden shovels. The shovel could be a very David Lynch-like metaphor, or it could be a call-back to Tamblyn’s early career as an Academy Award winning actor and choreographer. In the 1956 western, Fastest Gun Alive, Tamblyn performs a shovel dance at a hootenanny, hopping around on them like stilts. A scene that he and Neil Young recreate in the dance number at the end of Human Highway.

Another name that comes up a lot in debate of the movie’s influence is the English director, Alex Cox. A leader in 80’s punksploitation, he’s best known for Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, and Straight to Hell. Cox’s films certainly feel like they could exist in the same universe as Human Highway. Surely , he bank robbing punkers or the glowing 64’ Chevy Malibu would make a pit stop at Otto’s Corners. There’s a lot of subtle easter eggs in the background as if “The Lattice of Coincidence” was unintentionally applied in post-production years before Cox ever put script to celluloid. The largest tie of Alex and Neil is the use of cult film icon, Fox Harris (sometimes billed as Jerry Fox). Eccentric character actor, Harris specialized in wacky supporting roles in offbeat low-budget films like Forbidden World, Deadly Spawn, and Dr. Caligari. He was a frequent player in Alex Cox projects, but best remembered as the lobotomized scientist, Dr. Parnell, in Repo Man. In Human Highway, Fox Harris portrays an Arab Sheik in the diner, struck with desire upon laying eyes on the hunky Milkman Duke. Fawning over his rugged looks, and quite literally trying to buy his “whiteness”.

Folk singer David Blue plays Earl Duke, the type of milkman husbands in the 50s worried about. Blue was an integral part of the Greenwich Village scene but struggled to find his place in music, constantly dogged by comparisons to Bob Dylan. A handsome liminal musician was ideal for the role of a milkman in the Linear Valley. Curly blonde hair, unnaturally white teeth, and perfectly filling out his crisp uniform. Milkman Duke certainly stands out in Glow Town as he whispers naughty nothings to the giggling waitress. Something about it feels a lot like the door-to-door Mr. Eggman of John Waters’ Pink Flamingos. In fact, the milk bath in the dream sequence might be a tribute to Edith Massey sitting in a playpen, smashing eggs into her bosom. If not the milk bath, the character Mrs. Robinson was a tailored homage to Massey as she calls out in the diner “Where’s my breakfast special, Cracker?!” Played by Mickey Fox, Ms. Robinson is a regular at Otto’s Corners, pulling up in a convertible Volkswagen listening to Neil Young’s “Transformer Man”. This character also reminds me of the nosey neighbor, Mrs. Steve, from Peewee’s Playhouse, played by Shirley Stoler.

The Playhouse connection continues as Human Highway was the very first score for Mark Mothersbaugh. A handful of years after the movie was released, Mothersbaugh would go on to compose music for 15 episodes of Peewee’s Playhouse. Also, the googly-eyed scene shared between Charlotte and Lionel was cut right out of the Saturday morning kid’s show. In a series of suggestive close-up shots, Charlotte Stewart channeled her inner Marilyn Monroe while Neil Young tapped into a well of Jerry Lewis. It was almost like Ms. Yvonne, the most beautiful woman in all of Puppet Land, had walked in the room.

Perhaps all the Playhouse familiarity is where some fans speculate that Human Highway held influence over a young Tim Burton. The similarities only seem to be present in his directorial debut, Peewee’s Big Adventure. Adults playing child-like characters and all the bike riding. If you gave it some time, I’m sure Lionel Switch would have built his own version of The Breakfast Machine.

If you watch Human Highway enough times, you’ll start recognizing similarities between other directors like Penelope Spheeris and Paul Bartel. Even maybe a little bit of Mike Judge with his 2006 film Idiocracy when the K-GLO radio DJ advertises the big talent show at the nuclear plant. “Exercise your right to entertainment. The event we crave.”

It’s hard to say “who inspired” when we should mention “what inspired” this atomic comedy. Both Neil Young and Dean Stockwell were well-known environmentalists. Using their platforms to protest pipelines, criticize fossil fuels, and advocate for a response to climate change. They were also outspoken against nuclear weapons and energy. Human Highway feels like a trauma response to repeated nuclear close calls and a disparagement on the rise of 50s nostalgia. In the omnipresent K-GLO radio broadcasts throughout the movie, Biff Rivers reiterates troubling news out of the capital, “The threat of war is even more imminent today than it was yesterday.” A sentiment heard so often that everybody has seemingly tuned it out. In the 60s, nuclear alert was almost a yearly occurrence, and the end of the 70s brought the Three Mile Island disaster and the multiple NORAD false alarms.

There’s also mention of an ongoing gas war in the opening of Human Highway. Suppliers throughout the Linear Valley compete in gouging customers, and Young Otto is no different, immediately doubling gas prices at the station. In late 1973, OPEC increased the price of crude oil by 70%, and Arab exporters imposed an embargo on the U.S. in response to supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War. A temporary shortage led to widespread panic in America; gas lines, rationing, and urging the country to conserve energy. This is where the seeds of today’s ethanol industry were planted. Human Highway folded in unending commercial slogans for the Bird Gas company “It’s good for the planet because birds make it!” An on-the-nose parody of the push to use “corn gas” ethanol because it reduces greenhouse emissions.

Neil’s movie also serves as a warning to nostalgia blinding us for what’s happening in real time. The 70s saw the rise of 50s nostalgia with films like American Graffiti, Grease, and tv shows like Happy Days and Sha Na Na. This fixation on preserving glossy memories of Aunt Bea’s apple pie was a distraction to politicians playing fast and loose with national security. Best summed up in Booji boy’s soliloquy about an ostrich with its head in the sand. The soundtrack remarks on this as well, with Neil Young’s song “I Feel Like Going Back” playing in the dream sequence. And though it doesn’t officially appear on the soundtrack, K-GLO radio mentions The Nukies winning the previous year’s talent show with their own song “Shrivel Up”. An actual Devo song from ’78, it’s a strange and discordant tune about getting older and your body falling apart.

“It’s a god-given fact that you can’t go back. No, you can’t go back.”

Go with the Glow and Go on About Your Regular Lives!

For the last 40 years, lovers of this weird film have wondered why it never got big on the Midnight movie circuit. I believe there’s still hope and ample opportunity for audience participation, with laser pointers and nuclear fallout PPE if you want to go the way of Rocky Horror. Personally, I’d really like to see a stage adaptation of Human Highway. I think it could translate well and if nothing else, the film would make an excellent double feature with Richard Elfman’s Forbidden Zone. Neil Young’s lampoon of corporate devotions and patriotic slogans blended with commercial jingles has become our everyday, all-day reality. The imminent threat of war and economic collapse paired with ravaging natural resources and commodifying whiteness are just as valid today as they ever were. If you continue watching the final credits of the film, you’ll notice at the very end, “Watch out for Human Highway 3!” I reckon you could say this is what we are all waiting for…and I don’t mean a film sequel.

A director’s cut and a laserdisc scan are both available on The Internet Archive.

The Repo Man Multiverse

Posted on February 5, 2025 by k.ratticus

Cult-comedy, Repo Man, celebrated its 40^th anniversary in March of 2024. This science-fiction road film, written and directed by Alex Cox, is postmodern pastiche and a seminal entry in punksploitation. A tongue in cheek critique of Reagan’s America with a protagonist that doesn’t fit in the straight world during troubled times. Where everyone is fighting over scraps and crime seems to be the secret ingredient, but choosing to walk the seamy side could get you mixed up with space aliens.

After graduating from UCLA in the early 80s, Alex Cox and a few friends formed Edge City Productions to create low-budget feature films. He wrote the script for Repo Man as a satirical commentary on Reaganomics and a culture of excess and conformity. Essentially the beginning of our modern day ending. The film highlights the malaise of an 18-year-old punk in 1984, Otto Maddox. A young man that keeps getting in his own way while trying to forge his path. Otto’s parents are stoned hippies that sold out his future and are hypnotized by televangelists. He struggles to hold a regular 9-5, has a bum love life, and delinquent friends doomed to end up in jail or dead. Played by Emilio Estevez, Otto gets recruited by Harry Dean Stanton’s character, Bud, a repo agent playing by his own rules in the intense world of repossession. Cox once said in an interview that the movie “was based on my own personal Los Angeles horrors and the tutelage of Mark Lewis, a car repossessor and my neighbour in Venice.” Soon Otto is entangled in a hunt for a 1964 Chevy Malibu with a UFO cult, a lobotomized mad scientist, and a secret government agency.

Perhaps one reason the film is so beloved in the cult sense is because of how brutally relatable it can be even while having such a wacky plot. You watch Otto get hit with a devastating wave of existentialism, realizing how mundane the game of life is. Of course you’re gonna hop in the spaceship when the aliens arrive! Who doesn’t wanna be saved from the milquetoast roles of liminal suburbia?

Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday

In the mid-90s, Alex Cox created a script for a Repo Man sequel titled “Otto’s Hawaiian Holiday”. Universal Pictures owned the rights to any official sequel, so the lead character’s name had to be changed to “Waldo”. Cox was finalizing a deal to begin filming in 1997, but it collapsed when Emilio Estevez pulled out of the project, saying that the script did not make sense. The script remained on Alex’s website where Christopher Bones of Gestalt Publishing stumbled across it and reached out about a graphic novel adaptation. Illustrated by Bones and Justin Randall, Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday was published as a quasi-sequel in 2008.

The story picks up 10-13 years where the Repo Man film left off. ~~Otto~~ Waldo returns from his space travels in the 64’ Chevy Malibu with no memory of where he’s been. It’s now the grimy Clinton-era, a culture choked with hotline scams and chain emails. His parents’ home in Edge City is now a rundown boarding house. Everything is different but still kind of the same? No longer a disaffected youth, Waldo is just another lost soul in the welfare-to-workfare 90s and gets a job in telemarketing flimflams. A cog in the machine is doomed to become a mark, and it doesn’t take long for Waldo to receive a sketchy call offering him a free holiday in Hawaii. But every attempt made to get away to paradise is thwarted by spam-artist bureaucracy and bizarre events. Eventually Waldo realizes that Los Angeles is an experimental self-maintaining prison constructed by Martians.

Though the illustrations are ambiguous, the reader will recognize the supporting characters as they were meant to be played by the original actors of Repo Man. From his girlfriends to his coworkers and even his fellow boarders. The faces are familiar, but they are different people, including Waldo himself. Rather than trying to make sense of it all, he holds onto the hope of going on that Hawaiian vacation.

You can purchase a PDF of Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday on globalcomix.com.

A Texas Tale of Treason

As mentioned before, the Waldo script had been left untouched on the director’s website for years, prior to the graphic novel adaptation. In the early Aughts, a group of old punks from Texas reached out to Cox with the idea of making a low-to-no budget version of Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday. With Alex’s permission, the motorcycle mechanic Stuart Kincaid with his team of Antstuie Productions, set out to honor the beloved 84’ cult film with a DIY sequel made by punks for the punks. Over the course of 3 years of filming, anything that could go wrong did go wrong. Beyond the crew being hassled by cops and blue-collar scheduling conflicts, delays crop up from dodging hurricanes Rita and Katrina. There are casting setbacks, and actors are paying their own way as a labor of love. Kincaid was selling off rare motorcycle parts to continue funding the project and even destroyed part of his own house to build the sets for his vision of Waldo. But Antstuie Productions soldiered on with their collective passion until issues between Kincaid and Cox reached a boiling point. Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday was a hair shy of being completed when Cox rescinded the rights to his script, and the film is to never see the light of day.

That’s when Antstuie decided to make a documentary out of their tumultuous experience to salvage something from their effort. A Texas Tale of Treason -or- How I Learned to HATE the Bomb with a tagline that reads “The ALMOST Making of Waldo…” Featuring clips from the film and interviews from cast and crew, it seems as if Antstuie’s Waldo were to play out exactly as Gestalt Publishing’s graphic novel later would. Several members of punk bands like The Hickoids, Angry Samoans, and The Rhythm Pigs give their accounts of the roller coaster ride that was the filming of Waldo. Kincaid lays the documentary out as a cautionary tale to diehard Repo Man fans and anyone with interest in micro-budget filmmaking. Hopefully inspiring a renewed disgust for the nature of the Hollywood beast and its demi-gorgons of entertainment. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is not to meet your heroes and to think outside the standard definitions of punk rock. Alex Cox declined to be interviewed for the documentary and never publicly gave his side of the story. A Texas Tale is an honest representation of the blood, sweat, and guts that the crew put into this project and the devastation of being left hanging out to dry.

In 2024, there doesn’t seem to be any simple way to view the documentary. No online video, no downloading, streaming or purchasing. It seems as if A Texas Tale of Treason has become just as lost of a film as Antstuie’s Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday. The trailer for the documentary can still be found online and the YouTube user “ant stuie” seems to be the only online presence of the original production company. But the account offers several clips from the documentary and raw footage of Waldo.

Repo Chick

While Alex Cox shares the rights to Repo Man with Universal Pictures, neither can produce a true sequel without the other’s consent. Twenty-four years after the original film, he writes and directs a “spiritual sequel” in 2009 called Repo Chick. A cynical exacerbation of the 2008 economic crisis. In an interview with ScreenDaily, Cox admitted to being inspired by how things had gotten worse.

“The repo business has expanded to everything from boats, houses, aeroplanes, small nations … children.”

Repo Chick utilizes surreal green screen backgrounds and animations. An aesthetic reminiscent of Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly that gives the post-apocalyptic satire a gritty, contrast blown appeal. It may have even inspired the art direction of 2023’s popular Barbie movie. Though Repo Chick makes no references to Repo Man, Cox was able to recruit a lot of the same actors from the 1984 movie. Olivia Barash, Zander Schloss, Jennifer Balgobin, Del Zamora, Tom Finnegan, Eddie Velez, Biff Yeager, and Miguel Sandoval return in Repo Chick, but in completely different roles. Any fan of the original will find these familiar faces in the corners of the film a real treat. The goofy brute in Duke’s punk gang, Archie, now plays repo management that idolizes John Wayne and has the cool attitude of the character Bud. Once again, familiar faces but very different people.

The plot follows Pixxi, a spoiled heiress of a wealthy family in LA. After yet another tabloid scandal, her family disinherits her. To reclaim her fortune, Pixxi is expected to get a real job on the same day her car is repossessed, and her entourage begins to fall away. That’s when Pixxi learns what a booming and intense industry repossession can be during times of widespread credit collapse. As a thrill-seeker, she is immediately successful as a repossession agent. Now gainfully employed, she tries to reconcile with her family, only to find they have given her inheritance to televangelists. Determined to rebuild her wealth, Pixxi finds a wanted poster promising a $1,000,000 reward for the successful return of an antique train with a glowing caboose. She tracks the elusive California Zephyr with several prominent figures aboard and joins them on a tour of a proposed energy pipeline–but actually, they’re eco-terrorists! Threatening to use weapons of mass destruction unless the sport of golf is banned nationwide (I fully support this) , and all members of the federal government become vegan.

Repo Chick references with a sneering humor the cult-like figures of organized religion, local politics, and the prioritizing of luxury for the elite over sustainability for the masses. Like a snake biting its own tail, everybody repeats the cycle of just doing what they think they’re supposed to be doing. Simulacrum trapped in a tabletop experiment, it’s the same story just a different dimension.

Looking for the Joke with the Microscope

Alex Cox returns for another plate of shrimp by announcing in early 2024 that he’s directing yet another sequel. Repo Man 2: The Wages of Beer is considered a reimagining and a continuation of the original 1984 film. Backed by Buffalo 8 Productions, it’ll star Kiowa Gordon as the lead role of Otto. Returning from his 40-year-long intergalactic joyride, Otto finds himself in a modern timeline ruled by internet, social media, and hi-tech scamming. The film promises to “deliver an enthralling mix of punk energy, existential comedy, and unconventional storytelling, navigating the chaotic world of repo men into a new age of nuclear brinkmanship and driverless cars.” Filming is set to begin in the summer of 2024.

Alex Cox’s Repo Man and the trilogy of “non sequels” fit together perfectly 40 years later. They contain running gags and themes within themselves and relating to each other. When paralleled to reality, everything is vaguely familiar but a slightly different flavor as society really is just that boring and predictable. Yet they find the absurd humor of being doomed to repeat history, which I suppose is the punchline to the cosmic joke. Lastly, the Repo Man multiverse is a credit to the desperation of the malcontents and the endless search for meaning. We can all only hope to be offered a ride in a time machine shaped like a 64’ Chevy Malibu.

– K. Ratticus

*Originally printed in Cathode Ray Mission #3 Fall of 2024

Red Asphalt: Examining Road Horror

Posted on June 30, 2022 by k.ratticus

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the role of vehicles became highly important. Serving as a symbol of freedom, one can simply get behind the wheel and control your destiny by roaming the open highways, Joining the ranks of celebrated wanderers like Jack Kerouac. However, these liminal byways and ley lines that connect us to the rest of the world are also capable of leading danger directly to us. One wrong turn can guide a driver directly to their own doom. It comes as no surprise that so many filmmakers hit the pavement for inspiration when it comes to their horror movies. Personally, I have developed a healthy fear of vehicles being raised by a long line of mechanics. So buckle up, as we assess a variety of horror tropes associated with car culture.

The Twilight Zone ep.134 “You Drive” 1964

Picking Up Strangers

Hitchhiking, whether by circumstance or lifestyle, is a classic trope in horror. Life on the road is dangerous. The vulnerability of needing a lift to civilization and the gamble of peril we place ourselves in when someone stops. Or a good Samaritan pulls over to help a stranded commuter with the best of intentions that may or may not pave the road to hell. When was the last time you invited death into your car?

1953’s The Hitch-Hiker is American film noir shot through the eyes of a woman, director Ida Lupino. Serving as an early entry in road horror, it follows 2 fishing buddies on a trip to Mexico. Picking up a hitchhiker that happens to be a spree killer, the men are terrorized and humiliated by their captor on the lam. The movie was inspired by events surrounding the real-life mass murderer, Billy Cook. What followed is a string of hitchhiking thriller movies, though 1986’s The Hitcher sticks out (its thumb) the most. A young man driving from Chicago to San Diego picks up a roadside traveler, hoping it would help keep him awake. Instead, he’s stalked and tormented by a serial killer, thriving on the fringes of society and evading capture. The very reason your mother tells you not to pick anyone up. Of course, not all who wander the highways are murderers looking for a ride, some sit behind the wheel of a tractor-trailer. The granddaddy of the road horror chase is Steven Spielberg’s 1971 Duel. The script was adapted by Richard Matheson from his own short story. The inspiration of which came from a personal experience of being tailgated by a trucker the same day Kennedy was assassinated. An influential cult thriller of emasculation and gas lighting, Duel follows a salesman antagonized by a tanker truck on a business trip. The film established Spielberg as a director and lead a convoy of entries in a subgenre of anonymous truckers terrorizing commuters. The best representation is 2001’s Joy Ride. A cheesy but thrilling road horror of friends driving cross country. Making crank calls on a CB radio, they decide to have a little fun with a trucker who happens to be a psychopath.

Hitchhikers and truckers have their supernatural counterparts. Four lane folklore shared at truck stops and roadside diners across the globe. Ghostly hitchhikers are picked up by motorists, only to vanish without explanation from the car seat. Variations have been traced as far back as the 1870s, Resurrection Mary being more modernly recognizable. On the flip side of the coin are travelers picked up by truckers, only to discover that they hitched a ride with the dead. “Phantom 309” is a spoken folk song about a trucker that gives a lift to a stranded wanderer, who later discovers his ride was a spirit. Based on a true event, different variations of the story circulated in modern culture including Large Marge.

Haunt My Ride

Though television had its first evil car in an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1964, the first movie was 1977’s The Car. A seemingly possessed vehicle stalks and runs down the residents of a sleepy desert town. The car itself is a customized Lincoln Continental with blacked out windows, no plates, no handles, and no driver. Though never referenced, it bears a similar appearance to the Soviet Union’s GAZ Volga. Only manufactured in black, this model was the center of urban legends across Europe. The Black Volga, an evil vehicle kidnapping adults and children alike. Some versions claim the Volga is possessed while others insist it’s driven by the secret police, priests, or Satan himself. The most widely recognized subject of paranormal road horror is Stephen King’s 1983 novel, Christine. Followed with a film adaptation directed by John Carpenter, in less than a year. Awkward teen buys a Plymouth Fury as a fixer-upper, transitioning to manhood and automotive spirit possession. Themes of Arnie’s unnatural love for his car was further explored in the film and may have been provoked by J.G. Ballard’s 1973 novel Crash. Though neither can compare to Isaac Asimov’s 1953 short story, “Sally”.

Though the vehicle as a vessel for disturbed souls or infernal imps remains constant in the ever-evolving road horror trope. The film The Toybox gives the audience a RV camper containing the spirit of a serial killer. Loosely inspired by the real-life events surrounding David Parker Ray, better known as the “Toybox Killer”. A man who had converted a tractor trailer into a soundproof torture chamber. China’s 2008 film Ju-On Car (Killer Car) puts the disembodied soul of a crash victim under the hood. Making the car sentient and angry. Even the time traveling Delta 88 from the Evil Dead franchise is prone to demonic possession in season 2 of Ash VS The Evil Dead. South Korea must have a problem with undead Ubers prowling city streets at night. In the road horror comedy, Gongpo Taxi (Terror Taxi), a young cabbie is killed in a hit & run accident. Only to return as a phantom taxi driver doomed to haunt the roads. Along the way he meets others like him that actually enjoy their work of terrorizing humans in ghost rides. 1986’s The Wraith follows a teenager murdered by car racing street-toughs. Returning to this world for vengeance with an invulnerable Turbo Interceptor. Super Hybrid is an Australian sci-fi road horror film about man-eating, shape shifters. Having studied humanity’s obsession with car culture, they choose a vehicular form to stay at the top of the food chain. Killdozer! the sci-fi/horror novella by Theodore Sturgeon. Originally published in Astounding magazine in 1944. An ancient alien energy is unearthed at a construction site in which it possesses a Caterpillar D7 bulldozer, affectionately referred to as Daisy Etta. The 1974 film of the same name features an unearthed meteorite that possessed the bulldozer and joys rides on a murder spree. Thus, bringing us to more science fiction elements of road horror.

The evil GRX engine. Speed Racer “The Fastest Car on Earth Part I” 1967

Dystopian Driving

Too many times popular culture has been warned about The End coming in a cloud of dust and exhaust. The Mad Max film franchise and Tank Girl comics reinforce this apocalyptic vision of the future. However, Maximum Overdrive is an excellent unconventional apocalypse film for those nostalgic for Y2K. Adapting his own short story “Trucks”, Stephen King directed this movie of the Earth crossing the tail of a comet, resulting in all machinery becoming sentient and destroying human life. A small band of blue-collar humans are trapped in a truck stop, hunted down by big rigs one by one. The premise was reimagined in 1997 with the USA original tv-movie, Trucks which runs closer to King’s short story.

The punksploitation comedy, Repo Man feels like an alternate timeline. Sci-fi Western meets road flick set in the Radioactive Reagan-era, a rookie repo man gets mixed up with car thieves and a UFO cult. All the while hunting down a mad scientist’s Chevy Malibu hauling nuclear cargo. The synchronicities in the background remind the audience that society is about as insignificant as a plate of shrimp. In another antiquated future, bloody motorsports are a high form of entertainment in Roger Corman’s Deathrace 2000. Based on the IB Melchior short story “The Racer”, this brutal film has a totalitarian regime running the country. Holding a transcontinental race where points are rewarded for running down pedestrians, politics collide with reality tv and population control. Australia offers a wide variety of retro futuristic road horror cinema.

1974’s The Cars That Ate Paris was never intended to be a not-too-distant-future film but surely wouldn’t surprise anyone in current times. Set in the rural town of Paris, an isolated community with an economy completely based on car crashes. Greaser punk youths & their customized doom-mobiles set fatal traps for tourists passing through. Wreckage is scavenged for barter, from luggage to auto parts in a manner reminiscent of The Hills Have Eyes or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Survivors are subjected to lobotomy experiments in the town asylum or adopted by townsfolk to replenish numbers. The concept was lightly revisited in 1986’s Dead End Drive-In, where cars are a commodity in a collapsed economy. Roving gangs of car-punks and tow companies scavenge parts and drive-in theaters are converted to concentration camps. Killing Cars is 80s cyberpunk from West Germany. Neon-noir thriller of corporate espionage trying to stop an environmentally friendly car from reaching the masses. Complete with violent squatter punks, it takes the idea of road horror from monster cars to monstrous corporations. 12 years later would come the real-life inventor, Stanley Meyer. He claimed to have created a water powered motor by equipping a dune-buggy with a fuel cell that split water atoms to burn hydrogen and release oxygen. Mysteriously, he died in a parking lot in 1998 with the last dying words “they poisoned me”. His water-powered car was stolen one week after his death.

Car-nage

The bubble of security within a vehicle can quickly dissolve into a mere facade within unconventional road horror films. A mother and son are forced to take shelter in a Ford Pinto in 1983’s film adaptation of Cujo. A suffocating prison of temporary safety, the same scene was set in 2016’s The Monster. A mother and daughter cower in their car from a beast in the woods about to devour them like a can of sardines. Let’s not dismiss the suspenseful sibling spree in Ari Aster’s Hereditary. Certain to suck the air from your lungs for the film’s most iconic 15 minutes.

Park It

While the car is a tool of liberation it also can place its driver in a position of vulnerability. Whether a couple on lover’s lane is approached by a maniac with a hook or an innocent drive through the countryside quickly turns into a chainsaw massacre nightmare. The open freedom that comes with traveling brings a terrifying unknown around every curve. So as gas prices continue to soar during the peak of road trip season, perhaps we should rethink our relationships with automobiles. Buckle up and drive safe.

Weirdo Du Jour

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