Quicksilver Highway (1997)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The first must-see film of the year.

The two horror greats combine with Quicksilver Highway... Stephen King and Clive Barker side by side make the... unscariest horror movie ever. But one has to admit it is an amusing watch. The attack of the killer teeth (based on King's short story "Chattery Teeth") and the bloody revolution of hands (based on Barker's short story "The Body Politic") just doesn't scream 'HORROR'...The narrator and part hero of the story is Aaron Quicksilver (played skillfully, if unremarkably by Christopher Lloyd), a quirky collector of the weird side of evil. He presents two tales to two people... with the moral of the story... Quicksilver is no moralist. He is more than happy to leave the preaching to the preachers. But these tales intertwine with the lives of the unwillful listeners and the wacky stories come to life in the most awkward of fashions.The King story is bland and uneventful. Naturally with a story about murderous teeth I don't expect "It" type stuff, but it never really unfolds and really makes you uninterested with watching the much better second half of the movie. And it is worth a watch. The story is undeniably superwacky and on some level just plain idiotic... Oh but it is quite brilliant. And Matt Frewer plays the lead here quite masterfully and really is the biggest highlight of this movie.All in all a tale of two halves... one boring and just dull. The second a real nut-case extravaganza and well worth the 45 minutes.

'Quicksilver Highway' is the collaboration of two of the world's most talented literary horror writers, Stephen King and Clive Barker. It is a rather short anthology of two terrifyingly twisted tales, with an inset story featuring Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future). But do they terrify the average film-goer? A wandering storyteller, Aaron Quicksilver (Lloyd), narrates the tales in two strikingly different locations: Stephen King's 'Chattery Teeth' along a deserted stretch of desert highway and Clive Barker's 'The Body Politic' within the carnivalesque setting of a funfair.The more interesting of the two tales is 'Chattery Teeth', which tells of a psychopathic hitchhiker who falls prey to a relentless and dangerously-sharp set of chattering teeth owned by the travelling salesman driving the car. 'Chattery Teeth' is taken from a short story written by King and first published in 'Cemetery Dance' magazine in the nineties. Similar to the stories found in 'Creepshow' and 'Creepshow 2', it is a bizarre and disturbing story with a twist in the tail (think 'Twilight Zone' and the 'Ray Bradbury Theater').The lesser of the two is Barker's 'The Body Politic'. Here, a hand comes alive, goes completely out of control, and eventually attacks its owner. The story is taken from Clive Barker's 'Books of Blood: Vol 4' and is actually quite an entertaining and intelligent story ... in print. However, attempting to re-create this story on film just doesn't work. The effects are nothing short of laughable, which inevitably ruins a good tale.'Quicksilver Highway' is directed by Mick Garris, who has collaborated with Stephen King on more than one occasion (see 'Sleepwalkers', 'The Stand', 'The Shining' (TV), and the forthcoming 'Riding the Bullet' and 'Desperation'). He is also the man behind some of the 'Twilight Zone' episodes and 'Freddy's Nightmares', the latter explaining his less than efficient effort with 'Quicksilver Highway'.Nevertheless, the cast is well chosen - Matt Frewer (The Stand), John Landis (dir. 'An American Werewolf in London'), Bill Nunn (Kiss the Girls), and Clive Barker - and although the movie does have its tedious and ridiculous moments (check out Lloyd's fetishistic leather garb), it is watchable. Fans of 'Tales from the Crypt' and 'Tales from the Darkside' will certainly want to give this film a look-see.Matthew J Lee-Williams, Review.

Quicksilver Highway starts in a desert deep in the the middle of nowhere as a newly married couple Kerry (Raphael Sbarge) & his babe of a wife Olivia Harmon Parker (Missy Crider) have a flat tyre on their car, Kerry says he will have to walk to the nearest town for help & sets off. Olivia sits in the car for hours waiting for her husbands return, eventually a travelling showman in a Rolls-Royce pulls up, he gets out & offers assistance & company while she waits. In his rather spacious looking trailer he introduces himself as Aaron Quicksilver (Christopher Lloyd), a traveller who collects bizarre stories about the dark side of America. He begins to tells Olivia one of these stories...Travelling salesman Bill Hogan (Raphael Sbarge again) is trying to get home for his sons birthday but is finding the going tough as a huge sandstorm makes driving the desert highways hazardous. He stops off at a road-side store run by Myra (Veronica Cartwright) & her husband Scooter (Bill Bolender) whom give him a pair of large metal mechanical novelty teeth as a present for his son. While there Bill gives a lift to a hitchhiker named Bryan Adams (Silas Weir Mitchell) who at first is polite but soon turns nasty as he pulls a knife & tries to rob Bill, during the confrontation they crash & Bill is trapped. Bryan isn't happy & decides to 'hurt' Bill but help comes in a very unexpected form...Back in the desert & Kerry returns, however it's not a happy reunion...Next we're off to an amusement park called 'Pacific Park' where pickpocket Charlie (Matt Frewer) makes a good living stealing wallets. Charlie comes across an attraction named the 'Exposition of Delightful Horror'. Inside he is welcomed by Quicksilver who shows him the 'Hand of Glory' & tells yet another tale...Dr. Charles George (Matt Frewer again) is a rich & very successful plastic surgeon catering for the wealthy, he is regarded as the best in the business. However strange things begin to happen to Charles as he seems to be suffering from hand spasms. It isn't long before it becomes clear that something sinister is going on as his hands strangle his wife Ellen (Cynthia Garris) & one chops the other off with a meat clever which sets a disturbing plan into action...Back at the amusement park Charlie leaves Quciksilver's attraction & is promptly brought to justice...Quicksilver Highway was a made for TV film that was written, co-produced & directed by Mick Garris that is watchable enough but is far from special. The script is based on two short stories, one by Stephen King called 'Chattery Teeth' & another by Clive Barker called 'The Body Politic'. I have not read either story but unfortunately both of them are very thin & don't translate to the screen that well, unless it's just Garris's poor teleplay. Both stories are too long & feature very little in the way of a twist which is an absolute must as far as these anthology stories go as far as I'm concerned. They both just plod along at a fairly pedestrian pace without much in the way of shocks, surprises or horror. Having said that there are a couple of great scenes, in particular the sequence in which Bill is threatened at knife-point by Bryan which is genuinely quite unnerving to watch & the scene when Charles chops his hand off with a meat clever as you see his face reflected in the shiny steel as it comes down & a pretty good severed hand effect. However these bits are few & far between & the rest of Quicksilver Highway really isn't that great. I also think that it would have been a lot better if the filmmakers had made three shorter stories rather than just two long ones. Garris does little to liven things up, I just don't find a pair of walking false teeth scary & in fact I was trying hard not to laugh. The hand segment features some ridiculous disembodied hands running around exactly like Thing from The Adams Family only with worse special effects & even more comical results, this is all taken & presently with deadly seriousness by director Garris which was a bad move as Quicksiler Highway loses a lot of credibility with it's overall play-it-straight humourless tone. There is no real gore or violence, a brief scene with some severed fingers & a really cool shot of Charles cutting his hand off, other than that forget it. The acting is OK with Lloyd always being fun to watch & a special mention goes to Missy Crider who is one fine looking young lady. Clive Barker turns up in a small role as a anaesthesiologist as does director John Landis in the same scene as a surgical assistant. Technically Quciksilver Highway is better than I expected & at times manages to escape it's TV film origins with some nice cinematography & on location shooting, the music is very cheap sounding though. Generally speaking Quicksilver Highway is a reasonable way to pass an hour & a half but there are much better horror anthologies out there. Worth a watch but nothing spectacular.

Stephen King may be the man behind Shawshank Redemption, Dolores Clairborne and the Green Mile. But he was also the man behind Thinner, Children of the Corn and one of the worst episodes of the X-Files ever. Clive Barker (you could say he is King's English counterpart) was the writer behind Hellraiser, Lord of Illusions. But he was also the man behind the novel Coldheart Canyon. Both writers have talent. But they have pitfalls too; we are all human.And Quicksilver Highway isn't exactly their best.Quicksilver Highway seems like a movie made out of two mediocre stories that came out of the minds of two great writers. Perhaps they were among their worst stories. If that was the case, they shouldn't have made it to television. The first one, the Clattering Teeth, isn't so bad. But it is unoriginal and dull. So dull you just want it to end. But it goes on and on. Eventually it becomes tiresome; since this movie was made for TV, you may find yourself going to the kitchen to look inside the refrigerator before it ends and the other one begins. The second story, the one written by Clive Barker, seems more like the work of Stephen King. Here we have a hand that gets life of its own and turn against its owner. Soon other hands join a revolution. The story could have consumed thirty minutes of your life. But it didn't stop when it should have. Just like the first story, it went on and on. Maybe you can forget about the hands walking around on their own and return to the kitchen. This film may help you gain weight but gets short when it comes to entertaining us. Quicksilver Highway only has two stories. Not five or three like Creepshow I and II. After you watch this film, you feel like you have escaped out of a neverending nightmare. It is obvious that they wanted to stretch the stories long enough to make a film and not another episode of the Twilight Zone.Perhaps it is a good idea to avoid this one at all cost.