The Road Is Lava
And the concrete too: Route 666 (2001)
Some films just live rent-free in my head. For many years, I’ve had a vague recollection of a strange movie that used to air on the Sci-Fi channel when I was a kid. I knew it had three things:
Scary chain gain ghosts.
A road that would summon them when traveled upon.
Lou Diamond Phillips.
What burned the movie into my head was the appearance of the chain gang: terrifying eyelessness, the pale gray skin, deeply scarred faces, and that one with the jackhammer who looks so happy when he hammers his victims into the pavement.
What I felt on a visceral level was the tension the characters felt when the prisoners were summoned. It’s a classic “the floor is lava” situation, making it an easy memory as a kid at the time. So I recently decided it was time to unpack that memory. A few quick searches (movie where a desert road is haunted with the La Bamba guy), and I identified the film as Route 666, readily available on Tubi.
The film is an escort mission. Phillips plays Jack La Roca, a US Marshal with one hell of a resume (former CIA operative and Navy SEAL). He’s accompanied by his trusted partner Steph (Lori Petty) and some red shirt marshals as they locate a former mob accountant named Rabbit (Steven Williams), to bring him in as a key witness against his former employers. Hired assassins intervene on the mission, leading to a necessary escape and detour through a “bad idea” road named Route 666.
What follows is a series of starts and stops, complicated by the pursuing ghosts. These guys are completely bulletproof, with the only way to get away from them is to get off the road (and concrete in general). This would otherwise be an easy problem to solve, if it weren’t for the fact that they were in the desert in the middle of nowhere without a signal to call for back up. Add to that the fact that the only people who know the area and the curse are redneck sheriffs who don’t give a shit about what happens to anyone out there. This redneck, I don’t give a fuck attitude is played well by L.Q. Jones as Sheriff Bob Conaway. I’ve always enjoyed his appearances, especially as Pat Webb in Casino. Here he fits a similar mold as another cantankerous good ol’ boy, except here the approach is appropriately less subtle.
The real thread of the story isn’t the escort mission, but the supernatural journey that La Roca takes.
Spoilers onward
La Roca’s dad is one of the ghosts. Throughout the film, he has psychic visions of his dad working the chain gang with the other prisoners, which eventually reveal that the sheriff killed his dad, a man simply trying to serve his sentence in peace, along with the scumbag prisoners who also worked that road. Being killed out there brutally is why they are haunting the road. They were fixing the road, so it only makes sense that they have their tools at the ready to murder people unlucky enough to find themselves on it.
Why is Jack a psychic? No reason given, just deal with it. Despite the thinness of this element, I like it for the simple reason that it gives Jack’s journey a deeper drive than simply survival. It’s ultimately about Jack repairing his relationship with his dad and freeing him from the cosmic binding to the road, resulting in his release to the after-life. It’s only this journey that can stop the chain gang, as his father eventually comes to his senses to protect his son from the other prisoners, unwilling to watch his son die as he pleads for help from his father. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s the final act of Return of the Jedi. As a kid, I was a sucker for this and always will be.
What stood out to me the most was the strength of the leads. Philips is great, this is one of those cases where the big name actor isn’t carrying the entire film on his back. The film also gets a boost from the performances of Petty and Williams. I really enjoyed the chemistry between the three. They have no difficulty in getting into a comedic rapport with each other. Phillips and Petty do more than the page demands by giving an impression that they’ve been working together as partners for a long time. I can’t help but enjoy Petty’s sass. Williams as Rabbit loves to make light of every moment as the comic relief, but he’s charming and mixes nicely with the others without being excessive, even if most of the humor often doesn’t land. I’d have no problem watching a road trip movie with just the three of them.
I can easily say this film is not terrifying. I don’t think I even felt that terrified when I was younger. What this film makes me feel is nostalgia for a time when the ritual of watching B-movies on the Sci-Fi Channel was a habit, before it devolved into insincere trash efforts like the Sharknado era. No one phones in a performance (shout out to Dale Midkiff for bing unexplainably unhinged). I appreciate how sincere the production and direction is, helmed by director William Wesley. It’s far from the best of the “floor is lava” genre, but it will always be honorably mentioned by me for the effort.
Just remember, if you see a gated road that’s named Route 666, take a moment to think things through, yeah?