True story: I proposed to my wife at an IHOP. There was a combination of factors for why I did so at that particular place. Part of it was I had never seen one before, and I always thought they were supposed to look like that kitsch Swiss chalet design they apparently stopped using a long time back. I think that was the beginning of the chain’s slide into nondescript mediocrity. The nadir was them changing the name from International House of Pancakes. One doesn’t go into IHOP, a place this sounds like it would be an Apple product, to cry out for diplomatic immunity. I instead want to time travel back to whichever location Beu Bridges and Beverly D’Angelo have breakfast in 1981’s Honky Tonk Freeway.
They are among the characters on their way to Florida from around the U.S., all of whom will eventually find themselves inexplicably detoured into the small town of Ticlaw. You see, a planned new interstate will completely bypass it. The bribe that mayor/inn proprietor/preacher William Devane pays to have an exit added is accepted, yet the interchange never materializes.
Also, I wondered if Devane should maybe try to not wear so many hats. His head must be overheating under all those, given one of his “brilliant” ideas to draw the crowds is a waterskiing elephant. You know the old saying: you can lead an elephant to water, but you can’t make giant skis of sufficient strength, yet light enough weight, to enable it to skim the water’s surface. Another idea, possibly even worse, is to paint the town pink. Finally, he decides “to hell with it”, and just dynamites the overpass and has the townfolk divert motorists to his inn.
This is where the various people we have seen traversing from around the country end up for only one night. I would say it is a magical confluence of oddball characters, except not much happens. A couple of people get laid. A nun decides to become a prostitute, because those appear to be only options she would consider for her life. There is a lot of disco music playing.
That disco was in a movie made as late as 1981 suggests one of the key problems with it, having music which might have made more sense a couple of years earlier. The presence of a large amount of bargain bin country also suggests the same. That legendary Beatles producer George Martin had anything to do with the soundtrack, even if it wasn’t the country music or the disco, makes the mind reel in wonder until it is dizzy and throws up.
Almost all the characters here seem to especially love country music, but of the kind best encapsulated by inexplicable 70s hit “Convoy”. Truck driver Paul Jabara even adlibs songs while using a primitive drum machine he keeps on his dashboard. As somebody comments of one example of his nonsense: “For a song without words, written by a truck driver, it’s excellent.” I’m afraid they’re wrong, even with the bar set that low. Still, it is better than the title track, which we will hear repeatedly.
Jabara is delivering from Utah some additions to Ticlaw’s Safari Park, chief among them a rhinoceros that loves snow, so it seems especially cruel to send it to Florida. Another character here is obsessed with snow of a different kind, and that is Daniel Stern’s hitchhiker, who gets a snootful of the cremated remains of D’Angelo’s mother, since he appears to be under the misapprehension illegal drugs are usually transported in large quantities in funeral urns.
Earlier, Stern had accepted a ride from George Dzundza and Joe Grifasi, who have just robbed a bank back in New York City. Their shtick is Grifasi is a sad sack and Dzundza is always horny. It is not entirely clear why Dzundza seems to have to pay for sex, given these bon mots to different women at the bank during the hold-up: “Cash the check, turkey tits” and “Sit on my face, bitch!” Today, I imagine he would be a podcaster with an audience entirely composed of insecure men.
I’m already tiring of writing about this, so let’s just get to a whole bunch of names you’ll probably recognize: David Rasche, Teri Garr, Howard Hesseman, Deborah Rush, Geraldine Page, Jeffrey Combs, John Ashton. There’s also Hume Cronyn and real-life wife Jessica Tandy, who had already been in several films together and would go onto to do four more after this. I guess if your marriage can survive a picture titled Honky Tonk Freeway, it is pretty much indestructible. There’s also Frances Bay, whom I know primarily from a couple of David Lynch’s films. There’s also a very young Peter Billingsley, who I imagine was grateful to eventually star in A Christmas Story, if only so his most memorable moment captured on celluloid wouldn’t be him pissing on a guardrail.
That is one of the last images in this, in the aftermath of an extensive pile-up of vehicles that makes the allegedly hilarious destruction in 1941 seem tame in comparison. In a desperate attempt to pass this off as humor, the carnage is accompanied by sound effects that would only be appropriate for Hanna Barbara’s most inane shows.
Since watching Honky Tonk Freeway, I have been struggling to meet the picture halfway or at least try to discern its intentions. It is too dirty (though in juvenile ways) to be a kid’s movie. The humor is too cartoony to appeal to all but the most infantile adults. The characters are too shallow for this to be a character study and, despite the number of roles, people do not interact to the extent I would call this an ensemble piece. The humor is largely too broad to be satire, yet is still confined enough to reality to not become farce.
It is hard to believe John Schlesinger, director of Midnight Cowboy, could have helmed a production this stupid. At the very end, the background of the credits is a pink as the shade the residents of Ticlaw had painted their town. If that wasn’t enough of a draw, I wonder if managers at multiplexes borrowed a page from their book, diverting those trying to see other movies to screens showing this film. I know I can’t think of anything but deception that would lead the average person to see this.
Dir: John Schlesinger
Starring…too (way too) many people. The names are in the review
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray