HIGHWAY TO HELL (1991)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*


Not having seen HIGHWAY TO HELL for many years, I didn't remember that it had enough comic elements to qualify as a comedy. That itself is something of a giveaway: upon seeing HIGHWAY again, I found hardly any of the humorous content really funny, despite its broad nature.

HIGHWAY, rather than taking the farcical approach of many supernormal comedies, plays its main story fairly straight. Charlie (Chad Lowe) and Rachel (Kirsty Swanson) are young, in love, and on the elopement path, driving to Las Vegas for a quickie marriage. Brian Helgeland's script doesn't devote any time to the reasons why Rachel's parents didn't want her to marry. The entire focus is on the trope of the eloping lovers, who find that the desert plays host to many roads, including the "highway to hell."

A grotty police officer pulls the young lovers over and promptly abducts the blushing bride. Fortunately, before encountering this denizen of Satan's domain-- generally addressed as "the Hellcop"-- Charlie receives some assistance from Sam (Richard Farnsworth), an old desert-rat who for many years has dwelt in the wilderness, because years ago his bride was similarly stolen from him. Apparently it took Sam so long to learn the byways of hell and to accrue some supernatural weapons that he grew too old to make an assault on Hell himself. However, he donates his arsenal and his intel to Charlie, who drives into the unholy domain-- most of which still looks like the barren desert. The weird-looking inhabitants range from MAD MAX-like bikers and various pathetic condemned souls, one of whom is Clara, Sam's former love, who surrendered to the blandishments of the realm's Satanic ruler (though I didn't quite follow what she got for signing away her soul). Moving from the pathetic to the ridiculous, there are also a few more noteworthy sinners hanging around this version of hell, the most memorable being Adolf Hitler as played by the acerbic Gilbert Gottfried.

Helgeland's version of Hell has almost nothing to do with standard Judeo-Christian concepts, and thus Satan (Patrick Bergin) has more in common with the Greek Hades. He's a supernatural "snatcher" who can abduct virgins to be his brides, though for unspecified reasons he'd really prefer to have his brides surrender themselves willingly. In fact, there are few if any references to the Other Side, and at no time does Charlie get any help from the servants of Satan's opponent. Charlie isn't able to overcome the Hellcop or Satan's other minions by force alone, so he resorts to that beloved device of road-movies everywhere: the climactic race.

The base concept of HIGHWAY is a lot stronger than the execution, but it's refreshing to see a protagonist who's somewhat maladroit without playing the fool, while Bergin makes a persuasive, borderline-tragic devil-figure. It's worth a look, but not two.