Highway 395

Enjoyed identifying the different filming locations in Inyo and Mono Counties but quit early on due to lots of foul language. If I ever watch the rest of it, it will probably be with the sound muted! (Plot still hadn't really been established, either, by the time I quit.). It starts with a Mono County Sheriff following (from a distance) a speeding vehicle on 395 up to a cabin in the foothills. Coming in on backroads, he finds a drug lab and a young boy from El Salvador. The speeder sees him and drives off. After getting the boy out of the cabin, the Sheriff shoots his rifle into it, exploding it and all drugs and paraphernalia. He stops the speeder, gives him a good talking to, but lets him go because he is only the younger brother of the real drug dealer. After that, the movie just got worse. I don't have a clue what plot they were trying to establish by the time we gave up on it. I couldn't rate any of the other categories other than language because we didn't watch it long enough.

Fred Dryer really took the reigns of this film and went with it. He did an excellent job of transferring mood, visuals and emotion to the screen in his motion picture directorial debut. I had seen his directing on HUNTER, and was curious to see how he would do with a film. Dryer really did a superb job with this material. It is well worth seeking out and I am anxious to see what Fred Dryer, the Director, has in store next.

Anytime a filmmaker can sum up the films point in just a couple of opening scenes, he's onto something. The camera work stands up against any picture I've ever seen. This is so much more than a road movie or even a thriller. It's a smart, tightly written and directed psychological gem. Every performance is on the money, especially Dryer's low keyed, eagle-eyed cop, and Diane Delano's gun-toting psycho chick. She almost steals the picture. Forget Hunter -- think Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino. Highway 395 has just replaced Fargo as my favorite flick pick.

I've seen my fair share of naff American tv movies, but this one takes the biscuit, the plot was terrible. The story is all over the place to a point you haven't got a clue what's going on, don't even get me started with the highly annoying flash backs which happen constantly throughout the film. I really haven't got a clue where Fred Dryer got these actors from but it definitely wasn't from acting school as it's some of the worst acting I've ever seen apart from Poor Geoffrey Lewis he must have been really hard up to star in this, or he was doing it as a favour for Fred Dryer.

No wonder why this movie is only available on YouTube.

Poor acting. Worse writing. Worse yet editing. Painful to watch. There's a reason that most of the actors in this movie have so few credits. Geoffrey Lewis is wasted in this picture.