Look man, I told you to bring your ray-bans with you!  Now we look like dorks!”

The movie starts with Colonel Robert Neville, M.D. (Charlton Heston) discovering a vaccine which counter-acts a bio-warfare germ released in a war between the Soviets and Chinese.  Neville manages to inject himself at the last moment, but everyone else dies, leaving Neville alone and really, really lonely for a girlfriend.  Neville spends the next couple of years tearing bikini posters off of walls and indulging his female mannequin fetish.

It turns out not everyone infected by the germs dies; some of them turn into hippie-zombie-luddites.  Yes, they’re hippies with long hair who want to tear society down, they’re mostly undead, and they hate technology.  Just in case 1971 white America didn’t get the point of this movie, they also hate “honkys”.  For reasons that are never really explained, the infected dress up as monks and call themselves “the family”.  They also build catapults and use guns, despite the fact that they’re supposed to be against technology.

About an hour into the movie Neville finds other survivors and wastes no time getting busy with Lisa (Rosalind Cash), who’s infected but has no symptoms.  There’s a really creepy scene where Neville smiles broadly at Lisa and we get a close-up of Neville’s teeth.  Wow, that really should have been edited out.  Hopefully the NRA was able to offer him better dental care.

Inspired by his new found love interest, Neville uses his own “Anglo-Saxon blood” to synthesize an antidote to the bio-warfare germs for Lisa and her brother, who are both African-Americans.  Things are looking up until Lisa’s little brother, fresh from being saved by Neville’s blood, is killed by the zombies.  After that, all heck breaks loose as Lisa turns into a zombie, Neville’s home is burned down, and he takes a spear to the chest while trying to save Lisa.  In the last scene, he hands a bottle of the antidote, an extract from his own blood, to the remaining survivors.  He promptly dies in a pose just like Jesus on the cross, amidst a pool of his own blood.

Charlton Heston, Zombie-Hippies-Luddites, the collapse of civilization, race relations in America, white America as Jesus on the Cross, they’re all here.  In this case Neville represents traditional American values of the time; technical superiority, moral superiority, spiritual superiority, military superiority, masculinity, and guns, lots and lots of big guns, the way god and Uncle Sam meant it to be.  Neville spends roughly half the movie running around without his shirt, armed with a machine gun, drenched in sweat, perhaps in a bid to knock-out the zombies with his personal aroma or bullets, whichever works first.

This film is a moment in time, a reflection of the social and racial paranoia and unrest of the early 70’s.  The zombies are hippies and minorities who have no respect for culture, tradition or the benefits of modern life in America.  They’re ruining everything white Americans worked to build and making the cities scary!  The only way to escape it was to move out and away from the city.  Honey, let’s move to the suburbs, and fast…

- Homicidal Hippie-Zombie-Luddites dressed as monks
- NRA going out of business sale
- Zombie Catapults!
- Mannequin fetish
- Charlton Heston’s teeth
- Saxon Blood super formula – now with world saving power!
- Neville as Christ on the Cross

rated 7.0 out of 10

Check out the trailer for Omega-man

“A game of pin the tail on the donkey goes horribly wrong.”

Since getting rid of cable I don’t get to catch as many of those re-runs of my favorite TV shows like I used to. Cops used to tops on my list. High speed car chases, busting in drug dealer’s doors, police ride alongs, all for keeping the peace. Domestic disturbance calls would always be the most entertaining. Like a Jerry Springer reality show it always seemed to involve the same besheveled guy who resembles a young WIllie Nelson in a beer stained tank-top standing out in front of his double wide while his girlfriend is yelling at him with a broken cigarette hanging out of her mouth. “I didn’t do nothin’, you’re crazy!” He’d be yelling back at her as the cops would have to play referree and eventually throw him against his old firebird still on the cinder block. They’d cuff him kicking and screaming and haul him away to consider his career path in life. That’s reality TV at it’s best right there. There’d also be those episodes where a drug dealer thinks he’s an Olympic gold medalist runner and tries to out run not only the cops, but also a pack of vicious police dogs and a swat helicopter. After jumping over a few backyard fences flo-jo style, they’d finally drag him out by his pant legs from under an overturned kiddie pool. Criminals aren’t always very smart, but they sure are entertaining.

Speaking of unstoppable cops on a mission, the police officer whose face could stop a truck, Matt Cordell is back. Yes, the same cop who got framed and sent to Sing-Sing to get his face carved up a like a Thanksgiving turkey has returned from the dead to dish out some more bulk cans of whoop ass. In the first film he took a steel girder through the chest and ended up pinned at the bottom of the East river but now like Jason with a shiny new badge he returns as a supernatural killing machine with a killing quota. The undead officer Cordell, played by Robert Z’Dar, must be working out a lot or shootin’ up some crazy zombie steroids because he’s a monster of a man. Luaren “don’t call me Hundra” Landon and Bruce “Don’t call me Ashley” Campbell somehow survived the first film through pure dumb luck and are the only people minus a few who had their heads twisted off who believe he’s actually returned. They unfortunately get picked off pretty early by officer pizza face in an unfortunate chainsaw accident and drive-by neck stabbing. Doesn’t it seem like Bruce Campbell always gets killed off early in horror films now. Remember Congo? I think he barely got out 2 lines before being mauled to death by a pack of mutant gorillas. By the way, little known fact the Congo has the highest capita of mutant gorillas in the world. Lost Highway is here to educate.

Anyways, after strippers start showing up dead and cops end up on tow hooks the police chief calls in the big guns, a police shrink played by Claudian Christian who enjoys getting handcuffed to runaway cars, and wearing pants suits and turtle neck sweaters but she’ll always best be known as the stripper who liked to shake her Miranda rights in the sci-fi classic, “The Hidden.” Also on the case is the movie veteran and chain smoking Robert Davi who plays Detective Mckinney. This guy plays either an evil Italian mobster who hates everyones guts or a seasoned New York cop who also hates everyone’s guts. This time he’s re-directing his inner childhood rage at capturing the cool hand Cordell instead.

Cordell crashes in on a stripper’s apartment who already has an unwanted guest,  a grizzly adams looking serial killer who has an affection for collecting strippers like baseball cards. Somehow they end up bossum buddy and he let’s Cordell hang out at his apartment so they can drink Schnapps, eat some fondu and talk about their work day. The psycho hillbilly gets put in jail later that night and Cordell has to go bail out his new BFF with an epic shoot-up rampage at police station. He likely still needs his half of the rent. They escape on a field trip to his old prison stomping grounds dragging along the cop shrink as their hostage. Officer meat head plans to go puts some hurt on the prisoners who sliced him up years before. Lots of torched inmates, shootings, and vehicular explosions round off what I feel is actually a superior film to the original Maniac Cop. How often can you say that about a film in a b-movie trilogy? It also has one of the best car chase scenes ever filmed. Retroman says “You have the right to see this movie…If you give up that right then your opinions about it maybe held against you in a court of awesomeness.”

- 1 tow and go cop on a hook
- 1 police station shootout
- Neck twisting
- Death by stiletto
- Stripper Fu
- Shower Fu
- Chainsaw Fu
- Downhill car skiing
- Prisoner smackdowns
- Shish-ka-cop

rated 8.3 out of 10

I’m alway holding out for yet another sequel in this series. Coming soon… “Maniac Meter Maid…A pocket full of quarters…a pocket full of death.”

Check out the trailer for Maniac Cop 2

“Kmart’s new blue-light special mascot wasn’t very well received. He kept scaring away the customers.”

I know I would make a poor survivalist. When the zombie apocalypse comes don’t expect to find me living off the land in the high hills at my makeshift campsite. No my idea of roughing it  is more in line with a cheap roadside hotel that has hard beds and that don’t have those mini-fridge stocked with those neat little wine bottles. Just for fun I like to pretend I’m a freakish giant when I drink them. Give me a microwave over rubbing two sticks together anyday but mainly going camping is a flash back to those days of being crammed into a leaky tent with my cousin Ted whose uncontrollable flatulence could only be drowned out by his bear like snoaring. It seems everytime we did the family camping trip a terrential downpour would happen in the middle of the night creating a nice mudslide into our tent…mostly towards my side making a wading pool for me and my sleeping bag. I’d awake from my dreams of a buffet breakfast truck coming to save me in to being both soaked and hungry. My dad being the great outdoorsmen wouldn’t pack much food supplies instead opting to be  ”living off the land” by fishing or eating potentially poisonous berries along the way. The lack of fish in the nearby weeded lake didn’t seem to sway his determination either, so after a fine meal of saltines and blue gill we’d take a short hike in the to burn off all those extra calories. Now with as many horror movies as I’ve seen I’d  always halfway expect a masked psycho to jump out from behind a tree or a family of cannibals carrying us away to make us their next meal, but I figured I could just trip Teddy and buy myself some time. The camping trip would usually end with me desperately needing a shower and having a case of poison oak on my butt when I used those leaves for toilet paper. Ahhh those were good times.

Speaking of grizzled survivalist, Jack Palance is living off the land and is out to kick some alien butt in “It Came Without Warning.” This little 80’s made for TV sci-fi homage pits humanity against flying fanged frisbees that look like like vomit novelty props. A camouflaged dad and his hippy son are out hunting in the woods one day when suddenly super suction alien discs attache to their backs tossed at them from an unseen alien disc golfer. This particular part of the woods seems to be pretty popular for both disc golfing and camping as later that day a group of boy scouts and their troop leader also show up. The super trooper gets a dose of alien frisbee-fu and all the kids run away screaming from a shadowy lurking figure…well except for one kid who sort of just mosseys along instead. Just about that time a mystery van of college co-eds driven by Tom, a young David Curroso in mini shorts are heading towards the same wooded area for a relaxing camping trip. Beth (Lynn Theele), Greg (Christopher S. Nelson) and Sandy (Tarah Nutter) are along for this CSI miami camping trip of terror. If only Tom had some sunglasses he could cooly take off to indicate his disdained interest in this Camping Scene Investigation.

Once at the campsite Beth and Tom go off into the woods to perform their own “body frensics” leaving Greg and Sandy to better get to know each other. The couple mysterously doesn’t return so Greg and Sandy go off in search for the missing lover and their feathered hair. They eventually find them strung up in an old water shed along with the puss filled hunters and gooey camp scout trooper. High tailing it out there as fast as their wood-paneled van can carry them and wiping off aliens on their windshield along the way, they stop at a redneck bar for some help. The bar dwellers are already used to plenty of southern tales of alien abductions and don’t believe their story but then the crazy vet Sarge (Martin Landua) starts spouting off about the impending alien invasion and in his paranoid outburst shoots the Sherriff at the door (luckily he didn’t shoot the deputy.) Taylor played by Jack “my skin is 100% real leather” Palance shows up at the bar and tells the two about his own encounter with the alien years before and thankfully leaves out any of the alien probing stories. So they all head back to the alien love shack so Taylor can try to put a shot-gun slug in the predator wanna-be and add it to his trophies of alien kills in pickle jars. Taylor gets a vomit-disc to the knee and Sandy and Greg say asta-la-vista Taylor and run away screamin’ like little girls. Fleeing down the highway they get picked up by the crazy Sarge whose stolen the dead sheriff’s Police car and believes that they’re aliens too. The guy is definitely off his prozac. They go along with his delusions just long to  escape by a quick jump into the river and hide out in someone’ abandoned  house, post foreclosure. After a nap and a light snack Sandy wakes up to find Gary has been disced to death in a barcolounger with a little alien suction disc still sucking on his face. Sandy’s so jealous, oh and there’s a horrifying bubble headed alien hanging out in the living room too. The house party is just is getting started as Taylor shows up again limping but more grizzled then ever to help Beth escape. He then takes her back to the shed, the obvious safest place to go, where’s he’s rigged up the building with dynamite for his own fireworks display and a chance to yell “ALLLIEEEEN!!!” at the top of his lungs. Hey Jack Palance won oscar, who knows why he does these things.

This movie is a great example of b-movie cult 80’s TV. The tension ramps up towards the end and having Landua and Palance both in this type of b-movie is a rare treat. Retroman Steve says check it out but watch out for flying fake vomit.

-Alien disc golf
-Windshield wiper-fu
-Cat lynchings
-David Curros in 80’s shorts (more horrifying than the alien)
-Landua looniness
-Extreme Palance grizzliness
-Kill and store watersheds
-Fanged frisbees fake vomit

rated 8.6 out of 10

as Jack Palance would say “I crap movies better than this.”

Check out the trailer from It Came without Warning

Follow us on Twitter and win fabulous prizes! Impress your friends or just go make new ones.

Time for some slash and suds fun on the Lost Highway. We know the dusty road can get your car filthy so we’re giving our loyal readers a chance to win this handy-dandy Bikini Bloodbath Carwash kit. This grand prize includes real carwash soap to try to wash away your shame, a yellow sponge (minus the square pants), and of course copies of both Bikini Bloodbath Carwash and the original Bikini Bloodbath that started all this scantly cladded carnage. Both DVD’s are autographed by the director and contain hours of blood, breasts, and bad acting. What more can you ask for in a B-movie?

But wait there’s so much more! Also in the kit you’ll get a limited edition 16 by 20 illustrated movie poster lovingly designed by RetroDC Designs. You’ll also received an autographed photo of the movie’s scream queen herself Debbie Rochon and a “I Brake for Bikini Carwashes” Bumper Sticker to let the world know you support women in the car cleaning work force.

2nd place will received both the Bikini Bloodbath and Bikini Bloodbath Carwash DVD’s.

3rd Place will get a copy of the Bikini Bloodbath Carwash DVD and if we find something else in in the trailer’s couch cushions we might as well throw that in too.

So How do I win this cool stuff so that my life might have more meaning?

All you have to do is follow us on twitter. Simply follow @losthighway (Sign up for Twitter and then follow us if you don’t already have an account. Trust us, Twitter is addicting.) We’ll randomly select from all twitter followers by drawing your name placed in a bag of ravenous raccoons (just to keep things fair.) We’ll then message you what you’ve won. Sounds fair? No? Tough. We’ll be picking the winners at the end of the month. U.S. Residents only.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us. Sorry the bucket isn’t included. We’re using that to keep our used chewin’ tobbacco in.

“The chef’s brutal killing of the Kool-aid man was originally censored in theaters”

Well I finally did it I made the ultimate sacrifice as a red blooded male. I terminated my cable service. My TV’s cable is now gone to that big ComCraptic place in the sky. It was the less vestige of where I am king of my domain, master of my destiny, wielding the remote control like how an artist uses a brush, but my paranoia that the government was watching me through the TV screen finally convinced me in to turn it off. Besides my tin foil hat was starting to chaff. Really though it was paying the $70 a month to watch crappy re-runs of Law and Order and American Idol Rewind that I couldn’t endure any longer. I think waterboarding would be a welcome relief compared to that. One thing that I will miss however is the food channel. it’s sort of like porn for us snack lovers. “oh yeah baby…add those diced onions. Saute it, oh yeah fillet it, now peel pack those potatoes…” They create delicious plates of things you’ll most likely never get the chance to eat or can even pronounce. Sure, they claim the meals are easy to fix at home but only if you have your own staff of 20 getting all your ingredients together and you don’t have kids hanging on your leg while the phone is ringing and the dog is chewin’ on your work shoes. Martha Stewart I am not. Shoot my kids are lucky to get macaroni and cheese and on those special occasions we add chopped up hot dogs. Now that’s redneck dining at it’s best.

Speaking of cooks with bad attitudes, the French ZZ-top cook returns for another night of slicing and dicing and lightly sautéing with Bikini Bloodbath Carwash. The soapy sequel to Bikini bloodbath has more bikinis but a little less of the bloodbath. Ms. Johnson played by Debbie Rochon has miraculously  healed from her previous axe to the chest wound to return and run a bikini carwash business. Any women that can come back from an axe impalement is one lady you just don’t mess with. Ms. Johnson tests new employees through interpretive MTV video re-enactments and inviting them over so she can watch them hang party streamers or demanding them to fetch her beers to pickle her liver some more. I think had that same dream once.

The gang of  generic brand college guys show up at the carwash business for some impromptu break dancing and to ogle the gyrating actions of the employees and I believe at some point some cars even got a bit of soap and water on them but I was a little distracted. Later that evening the girls bring out the old trusty ouija board and tell stories of the killing spree in their neighborhood  and wouldn’t you know it, the Chef starts a Ouija chat session. You simply can’t repress the French so he busts out of his make shift grave to track down more fresh ingredients for his souffle of death and revenge.

Ms. Johnson invites the girls over to her house for a long night of alcohol consumption and verbal abuse when the Generic brand college guys decide to crash the party including  the mop headed generic German exchange student hoping to get a Farvenugen for his Schwanznuggen. The Chef starts picking them off one by one until getting eventually done in by a baseball bat because we all know the French can’t play sports. Home team 2, Killer Chef 0 and now I have the urge to get some German waffles. Retroman says check it out and bring a sponge.

- Professor shipwreck
- Community college cobra commander
- Impromptu college breakdancing
- Borat-like foreign exchange students
- Beat-it boobs dance of death
- Intestine munching
- Extreme Camel Toe liquor drinking
- Violin solos
- Nipple cutting
- Gratuitous Jaws references
- Salad spooning
- Jacuzzi-soup

rated 7.1 out of 10

Check out the trailer for Bikini Bloodbath Carwash