Friday, May 12, 2006

Quicksilver Highway (1997)

One of my less academic "projects" is my current mission to watch all of the horror videos at our local cheapo video store. I think I can pull this off because they don't get any new VHS tapes and I've already seen half of them. The downside is, there are some movies that I have never rented because I'm pretty sure they're terrible. Do I really want to see Octopus?

Anyway, Quicksilver Highway was apparently shot for television and later released on video. It stars Christopher Lloyd as the creepy narrator and has one story each from Stephen King and Clive Barker. Actually, I wanted to see it because the Clive Barker story, "The Body Politic" is fantastic, a tale of a revolution of severed hands trying to escape "the tyranny of the body". Very clever.

So, if you rent this one, fast-forward past Christopher Lloyd, and actually skip the Stephen King story "Chattering Teeth", which is really stupid, and go straight to the Clive Barker story. I think there are two kinds of horror stories that work well- the first is ones that are geniunely scary. But, if they're not scary, then the really bizarre and over-the-top stories work well too. Barker's story is pretty strange- a surgeon's hands decide that they want to be free of his body, so they stage a coup, and attempt to recruit other hands for their revolution. It's a great example of surrealism, and pretty entertaining. What more can you ask for from a $1.25 video rental?

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