Highway to Hell (1991)

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2022) As far as high concepts for a horror movie go, retelling Orpheus and Eurydice in a late-1980s context is not bad nor that original – it’s not that big a surprise to find that well-known filmmaker Brian Helgeland came up with the screenplay of Highway to Hell. It helps that the film doesn’t take itself all that seriously despite its classical inspiration, and that it all starts from Las Vegas. As a young man goes to rescue his girlfriend from having been brought to hell by a zombie cop, we get a tour of a satirical vision of the netherworld mocking 1980s society. While the two lead actors remain little-known (well, depending on how you feel about Kristy Swanson), there are a few cameos in supporting roles, including pre-stardom Ben Stiller and Gilbert Gottfried, as none other than Hitler. Unfortunately, despite an imaginative premise and some occasional wit in the execution, Highway to Hell remains limited to cult-movie status: it doesn’t quite have the budget (or the special-effects sophistication) to do justice to its ambitions and must settle for an evocative approximation. Even its best moments almost do it a disservice, highlighting how much better the film could have been had it had the budget, time or additional motivation to do better. But the result is still quite a bit better than you’d expect from a little-known 1991 horror comedy.