I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Psychotic Arthur Miller(James Courtney), who butchered his mother and her lover, escapes an insane asylum(yawn)and becomes the titular character after executing the institutions' many staff members. Beautiful model, Linda(Loren Winters) returns from a trip to find her boyfriend, Mannie(Frank Jasper) screwing around, infuriatingly taking to the road for a spin, getting lost in the country, her car breaking down. Coming in contact with the maniac at an auto shop, Linda narrowly escapes certain death, responsible for his recapture when she hits him with her car, sending him plunging forward. While being transported to a maximum security facility in San Diego, Arthur gets free yet again, this time setting his sights on Linda for revenge. Meanwhile, outside of LA, Linda is participating in a terrible, cheap sci-fi movie called ASSTRONAUTS, which the killer will obviously interrupt. Linda doesn't know that Arthur is on the loose because the director, writer, and her agent conceal this information from her. Arthur pretty much kills everything in sight, those he comes in contact with in the desert while trying to find Linda. Bottom of the barrel slasher flick has thrill-less off-screen kills by way of chainsaw, hammer, and punches among other means for Arthur to dispose of his many victims. Arthur even pounds rattler with a stone, devouring the snake meat! Probably the best scenes are vehicular deaths as one victim is run over by a truck, another by motorcycle. Dull and pointless, I can't see why anyone other than fans of rancid cinema would want to waste quality time on this turkey. Acting and dialogue are good for some laughs. The ending as Arthur finally has Linda in his clutches is as clumsily staged as they come.

Freeway Maniac (1989) ** (out of 4) By 1989 the slasher genre was pretty much drying up and dying off as even mainstream fair like Friday THE 13TH and HALLOWEEN were turning up dead numbers at the box office. A few films still snuck onto video and here's one example that I still have fond memories of renting when I was around ten years old. Young Arthur sees his mom getting nailed on the kitchen table so he takes a butcher knife to her and the lover. Years later he (James Courtney) escapes from the nut house and goes on a killing spree that takes him to an actress (Loren Winters) who stops him and send him back to the nut house. Have no fear as he escapes yet again and goes after the actress who is now making a sci-fi movie out in the desert. I remember renting this thing so much as a kid that the video store owner finally gave me the store's only copy because he said I was the only one who ever rented it. It had been at least fifteen or more years since I last watched this thing but I gave it another viewing and I must admit that I respect this film a lot more now and I understand why I loved it so much as a kid. This film certainly belongs in the group of such films as MANIAC (1934), REEFER MADNESS and TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE as all-time disasters that are so incredibly horrid that you can't help but laugh and be entertained by how bad everything you're seeing is. This movie has an awful production value, a horrid story, horrendous acting, bad special effects and everything else is just as worse. Everything in this movie is so bad that you can't help but laugh at it and just take a look at the first escape sequence when our maniac body slams a guy by jumping off a three or four story building. It's also funny that after each murder sequence we see the dead person lying there yet nearly every time they're still breathing. It looks like someone would have caught this at some point. This film was released by Cannon who were well known for delivering trash and this certainly fits that bill. This isn't as good as some of their other horror films like HOSPITAL MASSACRE but fans of the weird are going to love this. The movie is rather tame in terms of violence, blood and nudity but it makes up for that in the sure brilliance of the awfulness of everything. The body count is pretty high as people just seem to come out of no where for our maniac to slaughter. The title comes from the fact that our killer is constantly having to hitchhike or kill people for their vehicles in order to track down the actress. Fans of art house pictures aren't going to find anything entertaining here but if you love bad movies then this here is certainly one of the all-time greats.

This movie is bad, but it is aware of how bad it is. At first, it is just hilarious such as when the killer, as a child, stabs his mom's lover in the back with an obviously plastic knife and he clutches his stomach as he falls over dead.Later, it gets a bit more interesting. The killer gets obsessed with this girl and follows her. He gets imprisoned, she lands a role in a movie after she becomes well known due to her victim status. The killer breaks out and follows her to the film set where the producer wants to make a horror/porn film and the director doesn't. This shows the director's awareness of what goes on in the slasher genre and allows some interesting commentary, but it also shows that Freeway Maniac is self aware and intentionally bad. That badness makes this possibly the funniest movie I have ever seen.

If not for the cheesy killing, watch this movie for its superb use of bad lines. It's a hard one to explain. The killer is the "Poor Man's David Hasselhoff". It's awesome. Just watch it.