Hell's Highway is a 2002 American horror film written and directed by Jeff Leroy.
Four college friends take a fateful road trip. They pick up Lucinda: A hot young hitchhiker, full of sexual deviance and lust for the bloody kill. After being terrorized and nearly killed, the group manages to turn the tables. They thought they killed her, but around the next bend—around every bend— she appears like a mirage ready to murder again. Is she the devil? Can anyone stop her killing spree?
Tropes:
- Alliterative Title: Hell's Highway
- An Arm and a Leg: Lucinda cuts off Chris's hand with a chainsaw and he eventually dies from blood loss.
- Auto Erotica: Lucinda starts giving Jack a hand job while he is driving, before cutting his dick off with a knife.
- Bad Habits: A Serial Killer who dresses as a priest picks up Hostile Hitchhiker Lucinda and takes her into the desert to murder her, in what turns out to be a case of Mugging the Monster.
- Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts: A sexy but homicidal goth chick hitchhiker who keeps coming back after being killed, though the twist ending reveals she was the subject in a government experiment involving cloning, and escaped with several of her duplicates.
- Car Fu: Lucindia catches up with the college students, who run her down; beheading and disemboweling her.
- Cavalry Betrayal: A group of government agents shows up in the nick of time to save Final Girl Sarah from Lucinda. However, he takes her to a military installation, where it is explained that there were four equally delusional Lucindias and that they were the result of cloning and accelerated growth experiments. The staff tells Sarah that she is going to become their new test subject.
- Chainsaw Good: When the video ends, Lucinda appears, and attacks and mortally wounds Chris with a chainsaw.
- Darkness Von Gothick Name: Lucinda
- Dead Man Honking: The video shows Julie trying to start the car when Lucinda appears at the window at shoots her. The video keeps rolling as Julie pitches forward and plants her head on the steering wheel, causing the horn to start blaring.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: Assuming that the explosion in the lab killed everyone present, then every character in the film is dead by the end of it.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: Jack's car crashes into a gas station and everything immediately explodes.
- Gas Mask Mooks: The government agents who save Final Girl Sarah from Lucinda are dressed in coveralls and wearing gas masks. Exactly why is unclear, as they knew there was no possibility of a gas attack.
- Groin Attack: Lucinda murders Jack by slicing his penis off with a knife as he is driving.
- Hostile Hitchhiker: A sexy homicidal hitchhiker, calling herself Lucinda, commits acts of gory mayhem against unsuspecting people who pick her up off the road to help her out.
- Made of Explodium: Jack's car crashes into a gas station and everything immediately explodes.
- Mugging the Monster: Lucinda's first victim is a Serial Killer masquerading as a priest who poisons her and takes her into the desert; planning to kill her.
- No Party Like a Donner Party: The group watches the last few minutes recorded by the camera, which shows Lucinda shooting all of their friends during a botched séance. Lucinda then turns to the camera and tells the story of a settler couple that became trapped in the valley; to try and save his wife (implied to be Lucinda), the husband killed himself so that she could consume his flesh. Her husband's body was not enough to sustain her, and in her last dying hours, the woman cursed God and prayed to the Devil for salvation, and received it in exchange for a steady stream of victims.
- The Place
- Serial Killer: Lucinda's first victim is a serial killer masquerading as a priest who poisons her and takes her into the desert; planning to kill her. This turns out to be a case of Mugging the Monster.
- Shovel Strike: Lucinda kills the preacher by splitting his head in half with the shovel he used to bury her.
