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By: Martyn Pedler
Date: 7th Feb 07
Format: DVD
Mood: Rad
What:
Freeway (1996)
Where:
On DVD from Force Entertainment
Watch the trailer:
here
Before Hollywood romances and biopics made her respectable, Reece Witherspoon was Vanessa: a violent, white-trash Little Red Riding Hood who prays that God doesn’t hate her “any more than usual”. It’s been over a decade, but finally Matthew Bright’s funny and disturbing Freeway arrives on DVD.
Despite familiar names like Oliver Stone as a producer and Kiefer Sutherland as ‘Bob Wolvington’, Freeway has the feel of C-grade classic trash cinema. Filmed in flat colours, roughly edited, even featuring a ‘Women In Prison’ sequence… it has all the charms of an old-fashioned exploitation flick. Tarantino would have loved to have made Freeway, but would be too busy winking at the camera about all the films he’s seen to ever pull it off.
Maybe one day we’ll get a release of Freeway that hasn’t had two minutes excised by the OFLC, but for now, this will have to do. Maybe one day we’ll even see Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trick Baby on DVD, a retelling of Hansel and Gretel – which features the genius casting of everyone’s favourite arthouse pornographer, Vincent Gallo, as the Wicked Witch.