Highway Psychos
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Highway Psychos |
| Original title | When Strangers Appear |
| Country of production | New Zealand , Australia , USA |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2001 |
| length | 96 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Scott Reynolds |
| script | Scott Reynolds |
| production | Sue Rogers |
| music | Roger Mason |
| camera | Simon Raby |
| cut | Wayne Cook |
| occupation | |
| |
Highway Psychos (Original title: When Strangers Appear ) is a psychological thriller directed by Scott Reynolds from 2001. The DVD release date was December 11, 2003.
action
Young Beth runs a small restaurant on a remote country road. Shortly before noon on a hot summer's day, a stranger comes into the bar: Jack is wounded and claims to be being followed by dangerous psychopaths. Beth hides him, and when three young surfers show up a little later and ask suspicious questions, the story seems to be confirmed. In the evening, Peter, the leader of the group, takes Beth to the motel, which she also still runs.
Beth brings Jack to Dr. Eric Leonard handling Jack's injury. While Jack is at the motel, Beth drives Jack's car to Dr. Leonard and is followed by Peter and the other two surfers. On the way back, she stops to look around in Jack's car and is surprised by Sheriff Bryce. When Peter and his friends show up there, Beth can drive on and returns to the motel to look around in the room of the three surfers, but can't find anything.
When Beth saw Dr. Can't reach Leonard by phone, Sheriff Bryce goes there at her request, but finds the house deserted. On the way back he meets Jack, who is on his way to the doctor's house, but can persuade him to let the sheriff take him to his office. In the office, Jack knocks down the sheriff and escapes. At the same time, Beth is looking for Peter, whom she meets on the beach and drives with him to the doctor's house. After the two go into the house, they look around there. Peter finds a room full of blood splatters and quickly leaves the house with Beth.
Peter then drives Beth to her restaurant and gives her his cell phone because the device from the restaurant is broken. Since Beth believes Jack killed the doctor, she gives him the key to the motel. When Peter picks up his two friends on the beach to take them to the motel, they are dismantling Jack's car and when Peter opens the trunk of his own car, there is the body of Dr. Leonard half covered by a tarpaulin.
Beth calls the sheriff from Peter's cell phone and is later attacked by Jack. When the surfer trio couldn't find anything in the motel, they drive to Beth's restaurant, where Jack pulls Beth into the toilet room and locks himself in with her. While Peter tries to talk to Jack and Beth and break open the door, Jack is looking for something in a hiding place under the sink and Beth climbs through the ventilation shaft in the ceiling to a mezzanine level. Jack gives her an object wrapped in foil and tries to climb into the shaft himself. As the small sink he is standing on breaks away from under him, he falls to the floor and is electrocuted.
When the sheriff arrives at Beth's restaurant, the trio has disappeared and Beth drives away from the restaurant with the sheriff. In the car she unpacks the item and finds a CD-ROM. The sheriff has stopped in the meantime and while they are looking at the CD he is shot from behind.
Beth escapes from the car and runs across a field into the night while the trio chases her. To distract the three of them, she throws something aside, whereupon her pursuers set out to find what she threw away. When they find it, however, it is just an envelope with a card. They stop looking for it because Beth has already disappeared into the darkness.
When it is light, Beth arrives at a small gas station and a little later Peter shows up with his friends, whereupon Beth escapes to the toilet and tries to open a locked window to escape. Peter discreetly searches for Beth while the gas station attendant fiddles with the trio's car. When Peter enters the toilet room, the small window is open, but he doesn't see anyone.
You pay the gas station attendant and drive on. In the car, Peter pulls a CD cover out of his jacket, which he took off from Beth when he discovered it in one of the toilet cubicles and injured it with a penknife. When they take out the CD, they find that Beth has exchanged the CD-ROM for a music CD from the gas station attendant's CD player, whereupon they return to the gas station.
Since they cannot find Beth, they attack the gas station attendant, clear the cash register and devastate the business. Beth has the tank attendant's key and drives his car around and then straight into a gas pump and the trio's car. Peter and his friends run out of the shop and try to catch Beth. When Peter gets hold of Beth, the gas station attendant comes out of his shop with a rifle, but is fatally injured with a knife himself.
Beth is able to free herself from Peter and climbs forward in his car, where she can use the cigarette lighter. She escapes from Peter and his companion and is able to escape from the car. When Peter sees her on the wall in front of the car, he grins triumphantly, but then notices the cigarette lighter springing back. The car with the two men blows up, as does the rest of the tank system.
Beth goes into the small shop, soaked with gasoline, and finds a pack of cigarettes from which she takes one and wants to light herself, but cannot because the sprinkler system in the shop has switched on.
After the credits you can see two young men rioting in the abandoned gas station some time after the incident and accidentally getting hold of the CD.
criticism
“Intelligently conceived, convincingly played psychological thriller that skilfully delays its narrative tempo again and again. The carefully constructed film is more committed to the genre of the 1960s than today's assembly line shocker, although it does not manage to condense its story into a psychodrama either. "
"Leading actress Mitchell [...] fights bravely against the script, which after a promising start gets lost in a bit of confusion, until the audience is just as in the dark as the heroine. The end, however, is brilliant and demonstrates the dangers of smoking in a sustainable way. "
Web links
- When Strangers Appear in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Highway Psychos in the Lexicon of International Films , accessed August 15, 2008
- ^ Film review , Cinema , accessed on August 13, 2008