Federal agents Jack La Roca (Lou Diamond Phillips) and Stephanie (Lori Petty) track fugitive Fred Smith (Steven Williams, from JASON GOES TO HELL) along the desolate desert highways of the American southwest. Fred (who likes to be called Rabbit) is an Ivy league-educated former mob accountant who was put into the witness protection program and set to testify in court against his employers, but fled before the trial could begin. After he's apprehended, some mob goons show up for a brief shoot out and the trio are bailed out by four U.S. Marshall's (David Keith as the obligatory macho jerk of the group, a wasted Alex McArthur, Mercedes Colon as his girlfriend and some other guy who looks familiar from TV commercials). The seven then hit the road and need to get back to California in a hurry, so they take a shortcut off Route 66, despite the fact that it's blocked off and has a "cursed" reputation.
Route 666 turns out to be quite cursed indeed, as they make a stop at a peculiar graveyard containing four graves that read like a Who's Who of the most infamous murderers and criminals of the 1960s. Soon, after, a quarter of supernatural, eyeless, blood-drinking zombies pop out of the road to kill. One is a former serial killer who cut out eyes and tongues, another happens to be Jack's bank robber father and each even has their own special weapon (a sledge hammer, chain, pick axe and jackhammer) to use against victims. If things couldn't get any worse, one of the mobsters follows them and some local corrupt police officers want to cover their tracks. Jack has visions that explain why the dead chain gang member's souls were unable to rest in peace and ends up separated from the group, where in a completely pointless subplot, he drinks peyote tea with a pipe-smoking Indian (Gary Farmer).
Veteran character actor L.Q. Jones turns up in a supporting role as the evil/elderly town Sheriff, who is first seen sitting behind a desk reading The Tell-Tale Heart and also turns out to be the one responsible for shooting and then running over the four chain gang members with a steam roller in 1965! He blows a hole in one woman with a shotgun, pistol whips Keith and threatens to blow Petty's tit off before poetic justice comes, uh, rolling over him. Dick Miller is also here, but wasted in a nothing cameo. He's in the very first scene as a bartender and has only two lines. The acting (particularly Phillips and Williams) is pretty good, the story is acceptable (even though the subplot between Jack and his dead father doesn't come off at all and helps turn the end a bit silly), the desert and run-down drive-in theater locations are used fairly well and there's a good sense of humor and some witty dialogue.
It's not a bad movie, but I had to deduct a couple of points for several reasons. The most irritating aspect of the story is that you can only be killed by the ghouls when you are standing directly ON the road. Everyone finds this out about midway through and the characters still continue to go on it, as if they're asking to die. One guy even dies because he goes to get his friggin' cigarettes! Much worse than that is the overuse of irritating "shakycam" camera-work (just as it sounds, the camera just jiggles around all over the place for no apparent reason), which helps to ruin most of the action/horror scenes.
Route 666 turns out to be quite cursed indeed, as they make a stop at a peculiar graveyard containing four graves that read like a Who's Who of the most infamous murderers and criminals of the 1960s. Soon, after, a quarter of supernatural, eyeless, blood-drinking zombies pop out of the road to kill. One is a former serial killer who cut out eyes and tongues, another happens to be Jack's bank robber father and each even has their own special weapon (a sledge hammer, chain, pick axe and jackhammer) to use against victims. If things couldn't get any worse, one of the mobsters follows them and some local corrupt police officers want to cover their tracks. Jack has visions that explain why the dead chain gang member's souls were unable to rest in peace and ends up separated from the group, where in a completely pointless subplot, he drinks peyote tea with a pipe-smoking Indian (Gary Farmer).
Veteran character actor L.Q. Jones turns up in a supporting role as the evil/elderly town Sheriff, who is first seen sitting behind a desk reading The Tell-Tale Heart and also turns out to be the one responsible for shooting and then running over the four chain gang members with a steam roller in 1965! He blows a hole in one woman with a shotgun, pistol whips Keith and threatens to blow Petty's tit off before poetic justice comes, uh, rolling over him. Dick Miller is also here, but wasted in a nothing cameo. He's in the very first scene as a bartender and has only two lines. The acting (particularly Phillips and Williams) is pretty good, the story is acceptable (even though the subplot between Jack and his dead father doesn't come off at all and helps turn the end a bit silly), the desert and run-down drive-in theater locations are used fairly well and there's a good sense of humor and some witty dialogue.
It's not a bad movie, but I had to deduct a couple of points for several reasons. The most irritating aspect of the story is that you can only be killed by the ghouls when you are standing directly ON the road. Everyone finds this out about midway through and the characters still continue to go on it, as if they're asking to die. One guy even dies because he goes to get his friggin' cigarettes! Much worse than that is the overuse of irritating "shakycam" camera-work (just as it sounds, the camera just jiggles around all over the place for no apparent reason), which helps to ruin most of the action/horror scenes.