Reviewed by Geno McGahee
In 2001, JOY RIDE came out and it was a very good film. It had a budget and all that jazz. It had relatively big names like Steve Zahn and that sometimes hot, sometimes average looking babe, Leelee Sobieski. It was a good movie. When I heard that a straight to video sequel was being released, I cringed. How many times are sequels made that go straight to video and are a complete kick in the balls to the original? I expected that, but amazingly, this movie was pretty damn good. JOY RIDE 2: DEAD AHEAD brings back the lovable killer truck driver Rusty Nail (Mark Gibbon), but this time around he is a lot crazier. In fact he begins the movie beheading a lot lizard.
I have known a lot of truck drivers over the years and one thing is for sure: they frequent lot lizards. It’s the truck driver way. So, this movie immediately gets credibility there. Rusty Nail represents the typical truck driver with the only difference being that he kills people and loves doing it. Most truck drivers only screw ugly hookers and refuse to shower on a regular basis. Do you know why most truck drivers have dogs with them? Sheep would be too obvious. I like that joke.
Now Rusty Nail needs victims and so we are introduced to Melissa (Nicki Aycox), her soon to be husband Bobby (Nick Zano), her sister Kayla (Laura Jordan), and Kayla’s myspace boyfriend Nik (Kyle Schmid). They are on the way to Las Vegas for a Jack and Jill Party. That’s a party where the future husband is too much of a pussy to have a bachelor’s party and has a collective party with the soon to be wife. What kind of shit is that? Well, they don’t make it there. The car breaks down and they approach a big empty house. Can you guess who lives there?
Yes, it is the house of Rusty Nail and the foursome stumble across his car and take it for a joy ride, which works out well because it is also the name of the film. When Nail comes home and finds his car missing, he is not happy and wants to go on a killing spree again and begins by kidnapping Bobby. Now the threesome has to do whatever the angry driver says in order to save the life of Bobby, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. First, they know his address. Why not just got to the cops and tell them that this fucker lives here and he has kidnapped my friend? But it wouldn’t be a good horror movie if it were only 10 minutes long, right?
Now we go through some games that they have to play including Melissa taking off her clothes and Nik dressing in drag and buying drugs from horny truck drivers. Now, get this. Rusty Nail leaves the near naked Melissa alone, but kidnaps Nik in drag. Typical truck driver!!! They like the “best of both worlds” I guess.
With Bobby and Nik in his lair, and (spoiler) Kayla dead, Melissa has to go down there and kick some ass to rescue her friends and stop the trucking madman. Typically I do not like the woman kicking ass in film, but here it was believable. When her sister is killed, she just stares down the truck. She has nothing left to lose and desperately wants revenge, and that I can buy and deal with. I actually liked Aycox’s performance. It was very believable.
Although not so believable, I have to commend Nick Zano. He made up for his lack of acting ability with ambition. His screams during the tense scenes amused the hell out of me. When (spoiler) Nik is murdered, he screamed over and over again and I have to give props to the director and editor of this film. The editing and directing of the ending scenes with Rusty Nail and Bobby were hilarious and I hope that Zano returns to the horror world with that same vigor that he had here. The guy is fantastic.
Realistically, this movie had very good characters. I liked each of them and they were all distinctive…something that you don’t see that often in horror nowadays.
The ending of this film is very confusing. Now this is a spoiler so don’t read any further but then again, you read beyond the other spoilers and you are still here, so fuck it. Read on mother fucker. Rusty Nail dies at the end. His truck goes over a cliff while on fire and then blows up. He IS in the truck. There is no question about it. He is in that freaking truck and in it when it explodes. He could not have survived it, but he freaking does and at the end of the movie, he picks up another girl. Is he not human? Is he a demon of some sort? Did he come back from the dead and is a ghost driver now? Do lot lizard transsexuals give you super powers? I want to know? I haven’t a clue why this movie ended this way, but we should probably see a third JOY RIDE and although it sounds horrible on paper, I did enjoy this one very much.
Scared Stiff Rating: 6.5/10. Rusty Nailed it.
