Road Movie

Sporadic stops and plenty of obstacles: the road becomes a metaphor for life, a path bristling with pitfalls, and along the way, the travelers change, mature, achieve new awareness. Along with existential themes, we find a distinctly social commentary that envisions "the road" as an escape from bourgeois conventions, a rejection of the established order, a rebellion against the norms and values of a given reality. Those are the loftiest core values of the road movie, a genre whose key elements are the road and the journey. A broad label that cuts across traditional categories, the "road movie" meshes perfectly with most traditional film genres: adventure, action, comedy, drama, horror, thriller, etc.

When it comes to horror films, the combination has been particularly fertile, since the road movie format makes it possible to exploit the inherent potential for agoraphobia in vast open spaces (difficult situations, lack of nearby assistance, absence of landmarks, etc.), or likewise to play on the good old concept of the "unknown", an inexhaustible source of menace and peril. When it comes to road movies, certain scenarios - with some natural variations - are fairly common:

• the sadistic/insane driver and the possessed vehicle: from "Duel" (1971) and "The Car" (1977) to "Christine" (1983) and "Maximum Overdrive" (1986), the asphalt is practically teeming with berserk vehicles...;
• the sketchy (basically psychopathic) hitchhiker: first appearing in classic film noir - cult favorites such as "Detour" (1945) and "The Hitch-Hiker" (1953) - these films seemingly exist to dissuade us from giving rides to strangers. Some examples that might do the trick include "The Hitcher" (1986) and "Midnight Ride" (1990), not to mention a benchmark like "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974);
• taking a wrong turn: these movies see the travelers getting lost in backward locations off the beaten path, places that are sometimes surreal and/or Kafkaesque, such as in "Highway to Hell" (1991) or even "Dead End" (2003), for example.

 
Less common - at least on the big screen - is sci-fi with an "on the road" theme. This combination tends to be found mainly in the B movies of the 1950s and '60s, with Jack Arnold and the American desert landscape being major players. In these films, the road's chief function is as a stage where supporting characters (usually fated to meet a sad and grisly end) encounter the alien/mutant du jour. In other words, the road serves as a pretext to show the viewer the serious threat that's coming.

Finally, we should mention that wave of dystopian/post-apocalyptic works - typical of the 1970s and '80s - where dusty highways and eye-catching vehicles play a starring role. Prime examples include classics such as "Death Race 2000" (Paul Bartel, 1975) and "Mad Max" (George Miller, 1979).