Retro Review: Human Highway

When I put together a "worst of 2010" list, the Cop Out section included my list of films I've never finished, which included Horror of the Blood Monsters and the remake of The Wicker Man. Had I thought carefully about the list, I would have included Neil Young's 1982 anti-nuke pastiche of Hollywood slapstick, primitive computer generated effects, and New Wave synthesizers, Human Highway. Until today, I could never bring myself to finish the film, and when I finally did, I really had to ask myself if it was worth it.

In Linear Valley, located between Megatropolis and the Nuclear Power Plant, Lionel Switch (Neil Young) is trying to get his friend Fred Kelly (Russ Tamblyn) a job at Byrd Mechanics, a gas station, auto shop, and diner under the new management of Young Otto Quartz (Dean Stockwell), taking over for his late father (also Dean Stockwell). Lionel also wants to perform in the Nuclear Plant talent show, where music legend Frankie Fontaine (also Neil Young) might make an appearance. Meanwhile, the diner's employees Cracker (Dennis Hopper), Kathryn (Sally Kirkland), Charlotte (Charlotte Stewart) and Irene (Geraldine Baron) are trying to adjust to Young Otto's new cost-cutting techniques, while dealing with the unusual patrons, including a Milkman lothario Earl Duke (David Blue), blue collar workers, obese women, and a sexually dubious Sheik accompanied by his harem. What they don't know is that the Nuclear Garbage Crew (Devo) may have doomed them all while transporting waste through the valley...

My first encounter with Human Highway happened when I worked at Suncoast Video; at the time I focused 90% of my VHS interest in the "Music" section of tapes, and the prospect of seeing a movie by Neil Young seemed too good to pass up on. I bought the tape, brought it home, and made it about twenty minutes in before turning the movie off. A few years later, the tape resurfaced in college and we tried watching Human Highway again, to the same result. I gave the tape to a friend, who I believe then handed it off to someone else, and most of us forgot about Human Highway for years. When I watched Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man last week, I got to thinking about Neil Young (who wrote the score) and morbid curiosity kicked in: why not give Human Highway one more shot? That, it seems, may be a question better unasked.

The nicest thing I can say about Human Highway - directed by Young and Dean Stockwell - is that it feels like a sitcom beamed from the planet Lynch, which is something considering that the artificiality in Blue Velvet was another five years coming. Nearly everything in the film is inauthentic, from the minature sets, rear and front screen projection, or animated augmentation of nuclear waste. Apparently, the film is supposed to capture the characters' "last day on Earth," but I challenge you to work that out at any point in the film. Beyond that, the film is interminably dull, annoying, and feels twice as long as its actual running time.

Believe me, I should have known I was in trouble when the opening animation faded into Booji Boy (Mark Mothersbaugh) warbling through a parody of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" that included lines like "the answer my friend is breaking in the wind." Booji Boy, a shrill, obnoxious Greek Chorus for part of the film, sets an appropriate tone for the mess to follow. Devo's presence as the "nuclear garbagepersons" diminishes as the film goes on, although their song "Worried Man" appears nearly every time the band is on-screen.

There's a totally superfluous, overlong dream sequence that looks suspiciously like a cross between footage from a Neil Young / Devo concert, home movies of shenanigans while Young, Stockwell, Hopper, and most of what I suspect would become the cast of Human Highway fooling around, performing on a Native American reservation, and burning cigar store Indians. But wait, the "dream sequence" isn't done: there's also an extended music video for Young and Devo performing "Hey Hey My My." In all, the dream sequence takes up nearly thirty minutes of the film's 83 minute running time.

Human Highway falls apart after Lionel wakes up from his "dream," and rather than actually go anywhere with the first forty minutes of the story, Young decides to blow up the nuclear power plant, arrange a song-and-dance number of "Worried Man" with the patrons and staff of Byrd Mechanics / Diner, and then drop in some Mutually Assured Destruction before wrapping everything up in a literal "stairway to heaven."

The film is alternately unwatchable and compellingly bizarre, and I can't in good conscience recommend anyone - including die-hard Neil Young fans - watch Human Highway. It's scant 83 minutes drag on interminably, the jokes aren't funny, the music isn't compelling in any way, and the cast is all over the map (the worst of which is Young, who hams his way through every scene in a manner reminiscent of Stephen King's appearance in Creepshow). While it has a strange, deliberately false visual palette, a tone that defies description, and a very long dream sequence that genuinely feels like it came from another film. All of this might seem like a reason to check out Human Highway, even in a "trainwreck" capacity, but I assure you, some things are better left unseen.