Blood on the Highway

“Blood on the Highway” is retarded, and I mean that in the most complimentary, endearing sense of the word. It is a blood-soaked vampire movie that soars way beyond campy and settles down firmly in the realm of total absurdity. Directors Barak Epstein and Blair Rowan (who co-wrote the script with Chris Gardener, who also plays a large part in the movie) aren’t afraid to say things like, “Poor people don’t have any friends,” and refer to a woman’s vagina as a “meat curtain.” There is an overabundance of stabbing, biting, gushing blood, and vulgar humor. It is relentless, like a 15-year-old horror nerd’s stoned subconscious wet dream come to life, which is exactly as much fun as it sounds.

Sam (Nate Rubin, “Mongolian Death Worm”) is a pussy. He’s such a pussy that he has a near fatal allergic reaction to black hair dye. Carrie (Robin Gierhart) is his too-hot-for-him girlfriend that is only interested in the size of his wallet. Bone (Deva George) is the tough guy who wears a wife beater and picks on Sam, though Sam continually asserts that they are friends. Bone is the type of guy that isn’t afraid to throw dog shit as his alcoholic father. Bored with terrorizing the local Indian Reservation, the three acquaintances pile in Carrie’s car for a 15-hour drive to a music festival that promises arson as a chief attraction.

Sam gets carsick in the middle of the night and projectile vomits all over the interior of the car, and when they pull off the highway they find themselves in Fate, where the town motto is “Fate: It’s not Denver”. There is one problem, the town of Fate has been overrun by a bunch of goddamned, blood sucking, night walking vampires. Sam gets bit, and in their mad dash flight from danger, the trio stumbles across polygamy practicing survivalist, and leader of the secessionist nation “Housachusetts”, Byron Von Jones (Tony Medlin); Lynette (Laura Stone), his slutty, white-trash wife (the only surviving wife out of 12); and Roy (screenwriter Chris Gardner), a date-raping, man-whore, frat boy.

From there “Blood on the Highway” descends into a crimson tinged haze of blatant sexual innuendo and all out vampire slaughter. The movie is stupid, juvenile, raunchy, cheap, poorly acted, and over the top every step of the way. It also happens to be a fucking blast.

One of the biggest problems with movies like this is that while they may start out strong, the humor usually drops off somewhere in the middle. As you’re watching you can almost see the point where the writers run out of jokes. Another place where this genre often runs into trouble is when out of the blue they try to get serious. They’ll be trucking along, all dick jokes and blood spray, and then they try to cram in some emotional bullshit that is not only forced, but out of place. That’s when these movies start to suck.

Lucky for you “Blood on the Highway” doesn’t fall into either of these traps. It does stumble a couple of times close to the end when it tries to explain things, and some of the jokes don’t work, but as a rule you never have to wait more than a few minutes for something ridiculous to happen, like a vampire getting caught in a bear trap, that will make you forget about the previous missteps. When it does fall flat, it picks itself up, dusts itself off, and douses something in blood.

There is enough weird shit to keep you entertained between blood geysers, like an empty swimming pool full of carousel horses, and an awesome preparing-for-battle montage set to a sweet ass cock-rock jam that recalls the theme song from “Orgazmo”. Tom Towles (“Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) and Nicholas Brendan (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer) both have small parts for you horror fanboys.

“Blood on the Highway” isn’t one of them classy horror movies that tries to be all psychological and shit. This is as base and immature as you can get, but you didn’t expect to be intellectually stimulated, did you? Released in 2008, the DVD came out last month, and if anything I said sounds like a good time, check it out.