Horror House on Highway Five (1985)

Directed by Richard Casey [Other horror films: Horror House on Highway 6 (2014)]

Horror House on Highway Five is a movie I’ve wanted to see for a long time. I never deluded myself that it’d be a good movie, but it’s still something I wanted to scratch off my list for years, and I can say now that I have seen it, and unsurprisingly, I was disappointed.

Which is sort of amusing, because the film is more ambitious than I would have thought, but it’s in that ambition that it lost me. See, all I knew about this film was that there was a killer in a Richard Nixon mask and he terrorized some college kids.

What I didn’t know is that this Nixon-masked killer isn’t the only killer – there’s two other antagonists who kidnap people as part of some unspecified sacrifice, and there’s also some stuff dealing with a Nazi scientist who came to the USA. It’s also moderately comedic, which is something else I wasn’t clear on.

Look, if the film had been just a single guy in a Nixon mask going around and killing college kids, it might have been uninspired, but at least it’s a plot I can get behind. What this movie had was just too out there – I don’t know why they decided to deal with a Nazi scientist, some brothers who were ineffectual half the time, and brain parasites (?) that may or may not be a delusion of one of the characters. It just complicated things unnecessarily.

So with the bizarre plot out of the way, it’s time to talk about what few performances did something for me. Max Manthey was occasionally amusing. Michael Castagnolia worked okay with Susan Leslie, and Irene Cagen could dance with the best of them.

There are some funny scenes here, of course. A man and woman driving by encounter the Nixon-masked killer, leading to some great lines, from ‘Is he giving me the fingeroo?’ to ‘he sure is a big motha.’ It’s partially the delivery, partially the dialogue, but it’s funny. There’s also Gary’s (Max Manthey) dance, which reminded me of Crispin Glover’s classy dance in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. There’s also a character who finds a dead cat in the back of their van, and the other character there literally doesn’t seem concerned at all. It’s just wacky.

I can imagine in some situations Horror House on Highway Five can be a fun movie to watch, but most of those situations involve drugs and alcohol. It can be funny, yes, but personally, that’s not enough, and while I sort of dug the final scenes, this isn’t a movie I particularly enjoyed, and though I’m happy I finally saw it, I can’t say it’s really worth seeing unless you’re into bizarre and possibly drug-influenced movies.

5/10