“There’s a sucker born every minute,” is the slogan for the film. That includes anyone who pays good money to buy this DVD. You’ll get more laughs out of an old Bela Lugosi Dracula movie than from this poor parody of vampire films. If you’re expecting a clever satire of the monster hoard genre, such as Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland, be warned that cleverness has left the building.
The film wants to be the Young Frankenstein of vampire films, but it’s so unoriginal, insipid and low budget, it’s more like the Plan 9 from Outer Space of vampire flicks. The humor in Blood on the Highway works on such a lowbrow level that it makes The Howard Stern Show seem cerebral. The movie attempts to create humorous violence, such as in the Troma Studios cult classic The Toxic Avenger, but dual-directors Barak Epstein and Blair Rowan (Rowan also co-wrote the film) haven’t got the knack for finding the humor in blood and dismemberment. Every gag in this film falls flat.
The film seems to merge vampires and zombies, blending the characteristics of both, but it somehow makes them less fun instead of more. Every killer blood sucker in this film is an inept, bungling hillbilly boob. They get together in a town council meeting and it’s supposed to be hilarious when they discuss vampire matters as casually as most town councils discuss local zoning laws, but the laughs just aren’t there.
The story follows the annoying teen trio of stuck-up Carrie, ultra-nerdy Sam and a crude, rude white-trash jerk called Bone. Material girl Carrie (Robin Gierhart) is dating Sam’s credit cards and uses her feminine wiles to get Sam to buy her whatever she wants. Sam (Nate Rubin) is the geekiest of geeks but he comes from a well-off family and so has the dubious honor of being abused and manipulated by his pretty but callous arm candy. And Bone (Deva George) is a chain-smoking macho man who still lusts for Carrie, ever since a drunken one-night stand with her.
The mismatched threesome set off for the Mr. Fire rock concert (and if that makes you think of “the Burning Man” festival, you got the joke) and not surprisingly get lost. After an early sequence that has more vomit than any scene since the restaurant sketch in Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life, they end up in the tiny Texas town of Fate. What our hapless, witless trio don’t realize is that a new Consumart superstore opened the night before, and the whole town was invited. Why was the grand opening held at Midnight? Take a guess. Suffice it to say, the customers didn’t last long enough to buy a flat screen TV.
No sooner have they gotten into town than the vampire/zombies target them for a late night snack. The teens are soon befriended by a semi-competent survivalist named Byron Von Jones (Tony Medlin) who hails from “Houseachusetts”, a house that seceded from the United States. (The “Houseachusetts” gag was the only potentially funny aspect of the film, but sadly “Houseachusetts” is conquered before the teens arrive, so the film never gets the chance to ring any laughs out of the house/country that allows Byron to have a harem of wives.)
Byron brings the teen trio to the last refuge of humans in Fate, where we met Byron’s trailer-trash wife Lynette (Laura Stone) and cowardly frat boy Roy Jackson (Chris Gardner.) The human survivors of Fate aren’t a terribly bright lot either, since Byron is convinced that the vampires are killer robots sent by the government. When the whole town of vampires converges on the human’s hide out, a bloody and supposedly funny battle for survival begins.
The no-name cast tries valiantly to drag some laughs out of a script which is as lifeless as the nosferatu creatures of Fate, Texas. The biggest name present is Nicholas Brendon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame. This bit of stunt casting does little to energize the script because the novelty of “Hey, there’s the guy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer” wears off quickly.
This film has the same title as an old driver safety training film and it’s just about as interesting. The idea of including self-conscious movie clichés is not new and it can be done well, as in Scream or Scary Movie. It is not done well here. The ham-fisted satire hits you over the head with the subtlety of a Mr. Fire rock concert. Near the end, it makes a desperate effort to be relevant by mocking big corporations (paralleling corporate expansion with vampire propagation) but it’s too little, too late.
Many people have lamented the way Vampires have been reduced to emo wimps in recent years, but after seeing the gross, brainless blood suckers of Blood on the Highway, emo vampires don’t seem so bad any more.
DVD Bonus Features
There are several extra features on this DVD but sadly none of them are any more entertaining than the film itself. There’s a 'behind-the-scenes' featurette called “12 Days in Fate” and a “Consumart Employee Orientation" video, telling vampires how to deal with customers, and finally a visual FX reel.
"Blood on the Highway" is on sale June 29, 2010 and is rated R. Comedy, Horror. Directed by Barak Espstein, Blair Rowan. Written by Blair Rowan and Chris Gardener. Starring Deva George, Nate Rubin, Nicholas Brendon, Robin Gierhart.
