Cult filmmaker Phil Herman returns with the electrifying conclusion to his dark Dollars trilogy. With Jacker 3: The Road to Hell, screenwriter Herman and director James Panetta deliver The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly with a body count that’d be devastating if it were a drinking game. For if every time someone met their demise at the hands of the Jacker, and you had to drink a shot, you’d be sauced before you reached the halfway point.
But first things first. Jacker 3: The Road to Hell opens with a glimpse into the Jacker’s past. We are there the night his father, the Jacker before him, cuts up his mother before being shot in the head by an intervening police officer. As the young survivor is taken into protective custody, the evil that inhabited the father now seeps into the son, and a new Jacker is born.
Now we skip ahead thirty years, and there is again a spate of killings, all bearing the hallmarks of the handiwork of The Jacker (Phil Herman). News reports pay homage to former victims and foretell of fresh horrors that may or may not be his doing. A cunning reporter, Chris (Christopher Kahler), is piecing together the trail of clues that leads him to Gloria, the Jacker’s former flame and celebrity seeker who wrote a book about her ordeal and took it on tour. Chris sets up Gloria as a podcast guest, where he digs into the myths surrounding The Jacker while prognosticating on his possible re-emergence.
As the Jacker killings increase, Gloria and Chris compare notes before sharing intimacies. But in the wake of their lusty encounter, Gloria snaps and confesses that The Jacker was the best lover she ever had, and Chris doesn’t possess the assets this Son of Sam-style menace hides behind his tidy whiteys. Disgusted, Chris storms out, leaving Gloria to her mad musings.
“One by one, the Jacker continues his murderous rampage.”
One by one, the Jacker continues his murderous rampage. Yet it isn’t all slash, cut, kill. Jacker 3 comes with a nice variety of complex murders. One of which actually involves saving a woman from a pair of car thieves, and a partially comical, genius encounter with Butch Patrick and his unfortunate lookalike.
As The Jacker draws near, Gloria can almost sense his approach, and Chris tries with the help of another of her former acquaintances, Dennis (Kevin Duffy), to pierce the heart of the secret that links this woman they both know to this embodiment of pure evil that walks the earth, mainly concerned with killing.
Herman and Panetta have created a bloody, supernatural horror extravaganza that has all the right moves for a cult slasher icon. Herman portrays his foreboding creation with a visible maniacal glee as we learn that there are some forces you can’t stop, and The Jacker is akin to Stephen King’s man in black, the rider on the storm, the wandering stranger who brings nothing but doom in his wake.
Jacker 3: The Road to Hell, if it is indeed The Jacker’s final chapter, should thrill those devotees of Herman’s delectably demonic filmography. There’s no shortage of chaos as the dark man of the highway comes back to make sure you know why you should fear what lingers in the dark, and in the dark hearts of those who indulge in homicidal pleasures.
"…has all the right moves for a cult slasher icon."
