Route 666 (2001)

Absolutely horrible.Firstly, Lori Petti -- whoever she is -- is miscast. She has a way too thin force and passive demeanor to play a Federal Marshal. And her black hair cut in a crew cut is freakish. And not is a kewl poppy good way.The plot is idiotic. There's a chain gang that are sort of zombies and sort of spirits and are attracted to blood, but for some unexplained reason cannot walk off the asphalt.Who knows why? Lou Diamond Phillips cannot act his way out of a paper bag. His role consists of delivering ridiculous lines in straight face.The plot makes no sense.I gave this crapola 2 stars because the black guy, Steven Williams was actually able to deliver a good performance.Everyone else in this film stinks.

Syfy has done it again! Combing intense horror scenes and gripping plot that will keep you on the edge of your seat! I am almost certain that the Matrix was based entirely off of this movie. You have Jack La Roca the chosen savior to bring peace to the zombies and the humans (ring a bell Neo?). His sexy partner Steph who Trintiy is obviously based on, and the fat Hawaiian seems to the original Oracle.Not only do you have these great characters you also get the one and only Martin Lawrence with his best performance since Remember the Titans. His one-liners are classic and will have you laughing uncontrollably and there is nothing like handcuffing a black guy over and over.Also the electric guitar riffs and the cameraman with Michael J Fox syndrome completely fit the mood of the gripping zombie sequences. Only one minor question goes unanswered throughout this movie.... Why don't they just stay off the road?

Lou Diamond Phillips stars as a US Marshal trying to get witness Steven Williams to Los Angeles to testify at a mob trial. At first he and his team which consist of Lori Petty and Dale Midkiff among others have to only worry about a gang of mob hit men who they tangle with outside a New Mexico diner. Then its redneck sheriff L.Q. Jones and his dim bulb sons. Seeing these two I've no doubt that L.Q. was blood relations with mom. He's on the mob payroll as well.But when Phillips and his crew make a turn off on a closed road to save some time, that's when trouble really starts. Lou's got a connection to that road which he finds out. And Jones has an even stronger connection. The road holds a terrible secret, there's a reason it's been closed off for years.Route 666 was a made for television film for the Science Fiction Channel and it's pretty good considering some of what usually comes out of there. Lou and the rest of the cast deliver good performances in a film that glides effortlessly from an action/adventure to a horror flick. For those who like both genres and Lou Diamond Phillips, Route 666 will keep you on the edge of the seat at the end.

In 1988 former cameraman, theater director and Army documentary filmmaker William Wesley made the superbly eerie and grisly living dead horror zinger variant "Scarecrows." Some thirteen years later Wesley finally resurfaced with this snazzy direct-to-video terror shocker which centers on a dry, dusty, desolate patch of remote desert backroads haunted by the lethal, murderous, unrestful eyeless, zombie-like, asphalt-encrusted, crumple-faced spirits of four extremely vicious and dangerous chaingang convicts who were all killed in a brutal roadside massacre back in 1967. Rugged Federal marshal Lou Diamond Phillips, feisty lady cop Lori Petty, antsy mob informant Steven Williams (the tough, determined bounty hunter out to bag Jason Vorhees in "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday"), and several expendable fuzz who include Dale Midkiff (the dumbbell doctor dad in "Pet Semetery") and Alex McArthur (the chillingly emotionless serial killer in William Friedkin's "Rampage") encounter the fiendish undead felons when they make the unsound decision to use the titular condemned, closed-off highway as a shortcut. Meanwhile, a mob assassin pursues our beleaguered bickering bunch.Ingeniously blending a tried'n'true fright film premise with elements lifted from your basic chase action yarn and rough, gritty, noir-leaning crime thrillers, "Route 666" provides loads of crisp, pacy, straight-up grue-slinging creeped-out monstermash fun. Wesley directs in the same taut, spare, stripped-down no-nonsense manner which distinguished "Scarecrows." Philip Lee's sharp, panoramic cinematography vividly evokes a quietly unnerving wide-open feeling of total isolation and vulnerability. Terry Plumieri's countryish shuddery score likewise hits the spooky spot. The cast all turn in sturdy performances: Philips is less stolid and more agreeable than usual, Petty has spunky charm to spare, and Williams delightfully supplies the hilariously whiny, craven and conniving comic relief. Better still, we've got nice cameos by venerable character actors L.Q. Jones as a folksy sheriff and Dick Miller as a gruff, gravel-voiced bartender. In short, "Route 666" is just the place to find plenty of good, gory, neatly streamlined and to the point horror pic kicks.