Thread by @enfilmigult

I have found a horror film starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Lori Petty and seemingly every character actor who’s done horror movies before. It’s the opening scene and they’re talking to both Dick Smith and Steven Williams

This comes right out and gets to being terrible immediately, but it’s from 2001 and I miss when low-budgeters like this were on 35mm instead of video. From the year, the look and Lou Diamond Phillips I’m going to guess this is...Clairmont-Scope

Anyway so Lou and Lori are federal agents and so is Dale Midkiff, who shows off his versatility by driving a car while wearing sunglasses *and* talking. Williams is a witness they just snatched to take to a trial, which I guess means he has the Sondra Locke role

Apparently the deal with this movie is that the highway is haunted by dead bikers and/or their reanimated corpses. But after an opening gunfight, we’re in for a lot of exposition as we watch the three basic angles you can film a car’s front seat from. See you on the other side

Lou has “flashes” about the dead chain gang (whoops, not bikers. Maybe both).

Showing a piece of film in reverse can be a good way to experiment if you’re lacking a reaction shot you need, but it’s problematic when the person is driving down a road

Oh boy. Was just wondering if we’d find out if one of these ghost zombie guys was Lou’s dad or something (to explain the flashes, you see), and right on schedule he’s mentioned he grew up right around here and doesn’t know what happened to his dad.

They’re now on the dreaded “Route 666,” and the exposition must be over because there’s now Tarantino-esque patter about whether Farrah Fawcett counted as a supermodel. Local fuzz went after them & I think is going to play the role a crazy old man at the gas station usually does

Yep, “nobody is allowed on this road 👻”

But they just flip him off and continue. The guy who wants to kill the witness is also tailing them, and I’m sure will be dramatically killed by the ghost of Lou Diamond Phillips’ dad at a late moment

Poor Steven Williams. They forced him to stay in this movie instead of back at the bar with Dick Smith, and all he can do is sit there in cuffs saying “DON’T GO DOWN THE ROAD WITH A HANDPAINTED ‘ROUTE 666’ SIGN, HOW ABOUT IT” and “FOR CHRIST’S SAKE DON’T STOP AT THIS GRAVEYARD”

They’re at the roadside graveyard, which is where the chain gang is buried. They actually notice right away Lou’s last name is on one of the headstones, so that’s that. Dale Midkiff is displaying his versatility by sneering while talking slowly

The assassin dude has caught up with them. If my eyes don’t deceive me, this is the guy from ‘The Running Man’ to whom Richard Dawson shouted “what, do steroids make ya DEAF?”

Two of the federal marshals are seriously a horny couple that’s now pawing each other, since they’re the only ones still in the car

Lou and Dale had a fistfight in the graveyard and Lori Petty was bored and said why not just shoot each other, and I knew where she was coming from

Yeeeow, the assassin started firing and then the marshal he shot popped back up and knifed him. Not an elaborate effect but yikes, good jolt. Meanwhile Steven Williams is asking the reasonable questions

Ah, the assassin was only here to bleed on the road and awaken the (presumably) vengeful spirits. The editor has snuck in another reversed shot and no one’s the wiser, and suspense builds to this immortal line of dialogue

They are apparently both ghosts and zombies and are going to kill the hell out of that agent now. Lou and Dale Midkiff are still fighting, which means one two-minute fight scene is being stretched out real far as occasional cutaways

Oh my, they jackhammered him to death

Williams is now stuck by himself with a crappy gun, handcuffed to a car as sledgehammer-wielding zombies closed in, yelling the names of various federal marshals who are busy either punching or making out with each other

Finally they notice the commotion; there is a lot of shooting and searching for car keys. Lori IDs the prison uniforms and yells to Lou “watch out, it’s your dad,” which of course makes him freeze up. Night of the Living Dad grabs him, but just takes his dog tags and tosses him

Can’t quite tell who’s playing Dad, he’s got the fake eyes like John Travolta in ‘The Devil’s Rain’

I have so many questions

How weird, night begins to fall and they cut right to morning. This may be one of those rare daylight-drenched horror films, like ‘Tenebrae’ or ‘Even Cowgirls Get the Blues’

Lou is in a cave after driving off by himself, awoken by a friendly local who quickly slips him peyote and forces him to have a vision about how the chain gang killed their guards, because he is The One who can help put them to rest. The vision is unhelpful, if you ask me

Everyone else is at an abandoned drive-in. Male Horny Marshal looks so familiar but it’s not clicking. He’s going off for a smoke, which seems like a bad idea. Steven Williams continues to act exactly like someone being dragged around the desert and hancuffed to stuff by idiots

Yeeeow, he just got his hand slammed in the car door by a sledgehammer zombie, who then sledgehammered him. This movie is good at making you clench at certain moments, can say that for it

Lou has shown up, and EVERYONE has left Steven Williams alone again to look for him. Sigh

And he gets attacked by Pickaxe Zombie and yanks the entire pole he’s handcuffed to out of the ground and runs with it, screaming everyone’s names again. He really has the patience of a saint under the circumstances, this is his story as far as I’m concerned

It’s one of those scenes where the camera circles a knot of people arguing. Dale Midkiff displays his versatility by yelling while tilting his head

They’ve gotten in touch with the local PD, who pretended they were going to call for federal backup but have shown up instead

Dale Midkiff is trying to swing on a swing

The two local cops are now holding them at gunpoint, talkin’ all smug and mysterious-like, and it’s not entirely clear why they want to keep the secrets of the road, since if they killed the chain gang they also buried them with big headstones with their names on them

Hey wait a minute, that’s the SAME COCKADOODIE SHOT AS BEFORE

Lou has outsmarted the father-son cops. Steven Williams got to blow away the son, so altogether not a bad trip. Lou is beating the hell out of the older one to get the last, finally-it-all-falls-into-place flashback

Ah. Older Cop killed the chain gang—including Lou’s dad, who was innocent—by steamrolling them underneath the newly...paved...ROAD

I think basically just feed the older cop to the zombies, and things will probably work out after a touching moment with The Walking Dad

Huh. Instead of that, Lou’s dad turned good and killed the other zombies before the touchinh farewell. Then the old cop popped up again, collapsed in the road and, like, hallucinated an oncoming steamroller, except he actually died. Okay, that is also an ending I guess

This was quite enjoyable trash and I’m so sorry this thread is THIS long, but there’s even more Steven Williams and his bracing logic unmentioned here so it’s totally worth the watch

Ah, not Clairmont-Scope. Ultravision.