DVD
Review | Freeway (1988)
Written by: Kage
Alan
Cashing in on the name of Bill Panzer (one of the
producers of “Highlander” TV series) and boasting a DVD cover that
looks a little like a character may be going through a quickening, out
from the vaults of films long forgotten comes this 1988 low budget
production. It barely made a dent at the box office, so why is it
just now getting released for the home video market? It could be
because actors James Russo, Richard Belzer and Billy Drago are better
known now as well as renewed interest in the “Highlander” television
series that’s now being stocked on store shelves.
Sunny (Darlanne Fluegel, “Slaughter of the
Innocents”) has had a rotten year. She lost her husband eleven months
earlier when a serial killer on the freeway shot him in the head. The
Police were never able to figure out a motive or solve the crime, so
Sunny calls them on a daily basis to make sure they know she’s waiting
for any leads. When she’s not busy busting their chops, she’s a nurse
at one of the local hospitals. Some additional shootings start to occur
on the LA freeways and the bodies come through the same hospital Sunny
works at. Much to her surprise (or perhaps not?) the bullets match the
same one that killed her hubby.
Not content to let his deeds go unnoticed, the
killer (played by Billy Drago, “Hero and the Terror”) calls in to a
local late night radio show hosted by Doctor David Lazarus (Richard
Belzer, “Law & Order: SVU”). The police are desperate to catch the
freeway terror before he kills anybody else on the air, Sunny starts an
investigation of her own that attracts unwanted attention and a
mysterious stranger named Frank Quinn (James Russo, “Deep Core”) has
made it his mission in life to bring the killer down. Do you get the
idea that somebody is going to die?
While “Freeway” isn’t the worst film ever made, it
does tend to play more like a TV movie-of-the-week than a theatrical
release. A little editing of the red stuff (i.e. blood) and this could
easily show on television with little difficulty. Credibility does tend
to get stretched when the killer starts producing more advanced
weaponry, even going to far as to bring out a rocket launcher to use
against James Russo during the finale. The acting is okay, nothing that
really stands out, and the film feels much like it was made just to make
it because the money was there. That’s not necessarily a bad thing,
only it would explain why it didn’t do better at the box office.
Anchor Bay has released “Freeway” in the Widescreen
format. Believe me, if you’re going to pull a film like this one out of
the vaults, better to do it in this format than in Full Screen. I
wouldn’t have given it a first look had it been released that way. In
any case, the film does tend to show its age a bit with some grain,
flecks and specs, but it’s not horrible by any means. The audio is
okay, though not terribly dynamic. As for extras, we’re given a trailer
and that’s it. A commentary might not have been a bad idea for this
film, but that just wasn’t meant to be.
Someone somewhere out there in the world must have
seen this film at some point and really wanted it to be released on
DVD. Anchor Bay takes its releases quite seriously, so there must be a
demand for it. Hopefully those fans will be pleased with it because
they’re likely to be the main target audience. As for the rest of us,
it’s diverting enough to watch once.
Film Rating:
C
DVD Special Features: N/A
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