Christopher Krueger’s The Lone Road proves that running from your problems means running straight into someone else’s. One wrong turn is all it takes to send a fresh start spiraling into a fight for survival.
After losing her job and discovering her boyfriend in a compromising position with another woman, Elizabeth (Denise Woelpern) decides to run away and go on a very long road trip as a massive reset in her life. It’s not even a single day before Elizabeth finds herself in trouble. While staying at a roadside motel, she peers into the window of the room next door and witnesses the town’s physician, Dr. Goode (Jeffrey Kaye), having an affair with a prostitute and, at the moment of climax, choking her to death.
While coming down, Dr. Goode sees Elizabeth’s eyes in the window, and when he goes outside to find her, she’s already in her car crossing the desert. Soon, Dr. Goode bribes the motel owner to find her identity and sends his brother-in-law, Sheriff Taggart, to chase her down…which he does. Elizabeth soon finds herself in the trunk of Goode’s car with the dead prostitute. In the middle of the desert, just before Goode and the sheriff can kill her, she breaks free and finds refuge with Jules (Lexi Moeller), a local waitress. But Dr. Goode is too smart for them and sends his goons, Toto (Jake Jacobson) and Karp (John Hope), after them. Fortunately, Jules knows how to use a gun.
Elizabeth and Jules have to evade half the town that is looking for them. Soon, Jules realizes that running is not good enough. She needs to stop Dr. Goode, his wife, the sheriff, Toto, and Karp if she’s ever to be free again. But Dr. Goode is a formidable foe, driven by his desire to kill women with ample bosoms.
Dr. Goode, Sheriff Taggart, Toto, and Karp gather in the desert in The Lone Road.
“Elizabeth soon finds herself in the trunk of Goode’s car with the dead prostitute.”
The Lone Road is one of the movies that can’t be made today, but I’m so glad it was. There are two reasons for this…boobs. Filmmaker Christopher Krueger made The Lone Road as an homage to Roger Corman and Russ Meyer. We have our damsels in distress trying to escape the evil men who want to do the unspeakable to them. And at the same time…boobs and a cast of women, each with a beautiful pair. It’s almost a call to counter the prevailing sentiment that men don’t get what they want in movies anymore…which is boobs…and hot women taking showers and being tied up.
I joke, but The Lone Road harks back to the way films used to be made. Damsels in distress and bad guys being bad guys. The distress is relentless and never lets up until the end. Our gang of villains gets creepier and creepier all the time, and writer/director Christopher Krueger knows exactly how to build the right amount of sympathy for his female leads. Krueger casts Denise Woelpern and Lexi Moeller as his protagonists, who are always in danger and always looking for a small edge or a moment of weakness to escape certain death or torture.
At the end of the day, The Lone Road is Krueger’s shameless love letter to the drive-in classics he grew up loving, and he never apologizes for it. Go into The Lone Road expecting grindhouse thrills, and Krueger delivers exactly what Hollywood refuses to give you anymore.
For more information, visit The Lone Road official Instagram page.
"…There are two reasons for this…boobs."
