Human Highway

Plot synopsis:
Employees and customers spend time at a small gas station-diner in a fictional town next to a nuclear power plant unaware it is the last day on Earth. Young Otto (Dean Stockwell) has received ownership of the failing business by the Will of his recently deceased father. His employee, Lionel Switch (Neil Young), is the garage's goofy and bumbling auto mechanic who dreams of being a rock star. "I can do it!" Lionel often exclaims. After some modest character development and a collage-like dream sequence there is a tongue-in-cheek choreographed musical finale while nuclear war begins.
At the destroyed gas station-diner post nuclear holocaust Booji Boy (Mark Mothersbaugh) is a lone survivor, but after his cynical prose the opening credits are a return to present time prior to apocalypse. [Some edits of the film place this scene at the end, including the most recent Director's Cut.]
At the nuclear power plant nuclear garbage persons (members of Devo) reveal that radioactive waste is routinely mishandled and dumped at the nearby town of Linear Valley. They sing a remake of "Worried Man Blues" while loading waste barrels on an old truck. Meanwhile, Lionel and his buddy Fred Kelly (Russ Tamblyn) ride bicycles to work. Fred states that Old Otto's recent death was by radiation poisoning. They remain unaware of the implications as Lionel laments it should have been himself that died because he has worked on "almost every radiator in every car in town."
Early in the day at the diner Young Otto announces he must fire an employee for lack of money. He chooses waitress Kathryn (Sally Kirkland) who has a tantrum and refuses to leave. She sits down weeping at a booth that has a picture on the wall of Old Otto (also Stockwell) and chooses on the juke box the song "The End of the World". Later, waitress Irene (Geraldine Baron) overhears Young Otto's plans to fire everybody, destroy the buildings and collect on a fraud insurance claim. Irene demands to be included in the scheme and to seal the deal with a kiss.
Although Lionel has a crush on the waitress Charlotte (Charlotte Stewart), she has a crush on the milkman Earl Duke (David Blue). After an earthquake Duke, dressed in white, enters the diner with a delivery. He flirts with her saying, "Charlotte ...on my way over here this morning I thought about you and the earth moved." She replies, "You felt it too!" He also offers her a milk bath. While he is there a dining Arab sheik offers him wealth in return for his "whiteness."
A limousine stops at the gas station. After Lionel learns his rock star idol, Frankie Fontaine (also Young), is in the limousine he insists the vehicle will need work. After meeting rock star Frankie, who appears to lead an opulent, sequestered and drug influenced life-style, Lionel says to the wooden Indian in his shop, "Now there's a real human being!"
Lionel receives a bump on the head while working on Frankie's limousine and enters a dream. He becomes a rock star with a back up band of wooden Indians. Back stage he is given a milk bath by Irene. Lionel travels with his band (the wooden Indians) and crew (all people from his waking life) by trucks through the desert. The wooden Indians become missing.
During "Goin' Back" (a song by Young) the entourage recreates in the desert near a Pueblo. Native Americans prepare a bonfire to burn the wooden Indians which had been missing. Soon Lionel is playing music and dancing around the bonfire which appears to have become the center of a Pow-wow. "Goin' Back" ends gazing into the bonfire of burning wooden Indians. "Hey, Hey, My, My" is a ten-minute studio jam performance of Devo and Young.
Lionel wakes from his dream surrounded by concerned friends much like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Soon there is the start of global nuclear war. No one is sure what is happening until it is announced by Booji Boy, as "the hour of sleep." He then provides shovels and commands everyone to "dig that hole and dance like a mole!" The cast then enters a choreographed adaptation of "Worried Man". The planet is engulfed in radioactive glow and the cast, still festive, climbs a stairway to heaven accompanied by harp music.

Tags: psychedelic, comedy

Review:
When you've got movies like this to watch!
Seems like Young, Stockwell and co.
Part musical, part comedy, part fantasy, part anti-nuke message film, all filmed on a stylised set somewhere between Pee Wee's Playhouse, One From The Heart and The Wizard Of Oz. You've got Neil Young with goofy teeth, and a supporting cast of solid cult types like Stockwell, Hopper, Kirkland and Tamblyn, plus Mary from Eraserhead and DEVO!
I'm watching this movie in anticipation of catching my two favorite actors, Dean Stockwell & Dennis Hopper, in a couple of offbeat roles....but wait, is that Devo?
And Neil Young, with buck teeth and thick glasses, acting like a kid brother of Jerry Lewis....hold on, this ain't no offbeat movie - this movie is so OFF the beat, it's incredibly hip!
I couldn't stop watching the damn thing....yep, Neil is really singing "Tonight" from West Side Story while wiping the windshield, 'cause, you see, Russ Tamblyn is his buddy, and, oh forget it.....Then, to find out Dean Stockwell and Russ Tamblyn helped write this production...and, what, you say Stockwell directed it?
New wavers and hippies get together and make weird movie..
Why don't they make movies like this any more?
Best part is forced perspective set and Devo deconstructing "My My Hey Hey!"  Plus, look for Neil doing a one of a kind "shovel dance!".
The performances range from surprisingly decent (in the case of Devo) to ridiculously over the top (Neil Young) to barely coherent (Russ Tamblyn and the ever bizzare Dennis Hopper).
The highlights are a song-and-dance finale reminicent of Monty Python's Life of Brian and a brilliant deconstruction of Young's classic Out Of The Blue (performed by Devo and Young) which starts as a fairly straight ahead rendition and quickly devolves (so to speak) into a frenzied, chaotic "Screw You" to the fans of Young's sixties and seventies hits.
By all means, this is only for big fans of Neil Young and/or Devo.
Not to say it is painful to watch - at times its combination of hokey special effects, screwball comedy and pointless plot is somewhat interesting.
And the scene where Devo's mascot Booji Boy runs through a searing version of "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)" with Young on guitar and the rest of Devo behind him is as surreal as it is amazing.
This is clearly a movie the cast enjoyed making, but they didn't stop to think if anyone would enjoy watching it.
After seeing it I learned the film was only made possible because Neil Young fronted the budget.
I think if in the writing they fleshed out the wonderful bizarre characters a little more, this thing could have been a masterpiece.
As it stands, it has a wild surreal bent, with Neil Young and company not being afraid to fall on their collective face.When the cast does the final WORRIED MAN number, it is rousing and strangely moving..
Neil Young and Dennis Hopper wrote this movie during bouts of drug use...
Like that unintelligible waste of film, this movie is practically unwatchable.
"Good" bad movies are supposed to be entertaining.
When hearing about Human Highway I had some doubts about a film made by a musician.
If my life has a purpose, it is to watch Human Highway 1000 times.
When seen at face value the film looks like an absolute piece of crap, but when seen in context with the subtext and style it is one of the most powerful movies in existance.
The acting is top notch, the greatest surprise was the versitilty of Dennis Hopper playing 4 characters each played with masterful skill.
Neil Young's acting displays the trials and hardships of the little man, never is it patronising.
Makes the three stooges look like total normalcy.
Neil Young and the Devo members are in this a lot.
This is a musical comedy, but not like one you have ever seen.
Dennis Hopper plays two or three different characters.
But the main focus is on Neil Young as a goofy, not too bright, very incompetent auto-mechanic.
Walk inside the diner, and it looks bigger on the inside- like a full blown regular diner with sexy waitresses and a grumpy but amenable cook (Dennis Hopper) and all the usual eclectic customers.
The band Devo works and plays music at the local Nuclear Power Plant down the street from the diner-gas station-garage.
They wear day-glow radiation orange work clothes and strange looking nose tubes instead of masks.
Please-please if you do not have a very strange sense of humor, do not watch this movie.
For some strange reasons I can hardly fathom (not), this film has not been available except on a rare laserdisc or OOP VHS not usually seen around much.
These guys are so aggressively strange, anything they are in is worth watching at least once and this is no exception.
The movie does ramble on and on with not much holding it together, and there are some weak romantic subplots, but I was looking forward enough to what came next so I kept watching.
I loved "Booji Boy" and although the dream sequence with Young and DEVO seemed tacked on to give them an excuse to "Rok Out", Rok they do.
And am I the only one to think Neil looks like he's on drugs?
This movie is easily whack enough to be worth seeing, especially if you are a DEVO or Young fan..
Neil Young's Human Highway is probably a gem just for his musical fans.
Some funny scenes, but too uneven and boring to be enjoyed by the casual viewer.Highlight for Young's fans: Young and Devo playing Hey Hey, My My during a dream sequence..
A vomitorium is a passage situated below or behind a tier of seats in an theater, through which big crowds can exit rapidly at the end of a performance.In the case of this movie, during the beginning.
I am a DEVO and Neil Young but this was a total waste of talent.
Well I have just spent more time in this review than I did the movie.
Young spent $3,000,000 of his own money on production of this movie.
Those aren't spaceships, those are nuclear missiles ...A treat for Devo fans, as well.
This came out at the time that Neil Young was experimenting with the New Wave musical style himself with his album "Trans", several tracks of which can be heard in the film.This film displays a very unselfconscious Punk/New Wave aesthetic.
Sure, it's disjointed and nonsensical, but everyone's obviously having a lot of fun, and the set design is quite effective, and some of the special effects are interesting as artifacts of the time it was filmed.Can you identify the four cast members who have also appeared in David Lynch films?.
The movie's primary setting is the last day on Earth at a small gas station-diner in a fictional town located next to a nuclear power plant.
The characters are diner employees and customers including Young Otto (Dean Stockwell) who has received ownership of the failing business by the Will of his recently deceased father.
One employee, Lionel Switch (Neil Young) is the garage's goofy and bumbling auto mechanic who dreams of being a rock star.
"I can do it!" he often exclaims.The song "Breaking in the Wind" highlights the opening scene set in a post-apocalyptic world.
Devo are bizarre in this film as radiated garbagemen, not surprisingly.
Booji Boy is especially strange, with his mask, squeaky voice and gasoline-tasting.Dennis Hopper who played the addled cook (among other roles) was performing knife tricks with real knives on the set.
Hopper has admitted to drug abuse during this time period.The version of this film I watched was a VHS transfer, and as far as I know there has been no real attempt to bring this film out on DVD.
I am not a fan of Neil Young, and I found this movie largely boring and pointless, but for the fans, a good transfer would work wonders: improved sound would be nice, but if the grainy picture could be cleaned up, this has the potential to become a cult classic.If you're a die-hard Devo fan, or a Neil Young fan, try to track this one down.
Another review from a hardcore Devo fan, you know what to expect....
I find that most of the comments ever said about Human Highway tend to say that it's horrible, save the fact that Devo makes an illustrious appearance.
Well, prepare for more of the same.I won't say the movie was horrible, for I have watched it more than twice, and stayed awake for the duration.
A strange appearance by Dennis Hopper tries to brighten things up, but he's not a villain out to destroy things, he's a short order cook.
The final scene where all characters dance in formation can be described as a "surrealistic" romp, in a movie that can be summed up the same way.Now on to the Devo performance in the film.
"It Takes A Worried Man", a Kingston Trio song from a long ways back, performed here by Devo (with resident Mothersbaugh alter-ego Booji Boy), is more than likely THE high point.
A close second is the jam with Devo and Young himself, banding together to make some organized noise in a dream sequence.If you're not into Neil Young or Devo, please refrain from checking this out.
The movie can be described as "bad", but you have to be on a Young-Devo level to understand it (or make any sense out of it for that matter)..
Human Highway: The Neil Syndrome.
Despite its clunkiness Human Highway is one of those films that is sprinkled with touches of humor, even though it focuses more on the harmful effects of radiation...much like in The China Syndrome.Too many comparisons exist between Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove, the ultra serious and the comical, both released in 1964, at the height of the cold war.
Yet, the overlooked Human Highway is more than one of these post apocalyptic films.
It was released in 1982 when a slew of serious themed films were distributed about the horrors of nuclear war and accidents, i.e., The China Syndrome, the highly hyped and overblown The Day After and the brilliant and ultimately forgotten, Threads.
Yet Human Highway stands on its own as a satire and is clearly one of the most bizarre films ever made.I have unfathomable respect for Neil Young as an artist, but his films have never received the proper distribution they deserve.
Rust Never Sleeps is a brilliant, exquisitely filmed concert document, despite its clunky touches of odd humor, oversized stage props and bizarre road crew (dressed like the Jawas from Star Wars).
Neil also utilizes some amazing bits of rear projection and the sets have a stunning surreal quality to them very reminiscent of the 1954 musical Red Garters and Paul Schrader's Mishima.
But it simply doesn't work, for the humor is quirky, dry and riddled with bizarre, undeveloped characters.Not much goes on in the story line.
The Rock Group Devo portray employees at a nuclear power plant in a desolate town, who have been so exposed by the radiation that they glow bright red.
Dennis Hopper plays the drug-addled chef at the rest stop, complementing a mish-mash of odd characters.
Neil Young and Russ Tamblyn play incompetent mechanics at the establishment.
Neil is obsessed with a Sinatraesque crooner (also played by Young), who is giving a nearby concert and can barely hide his excitement when the crooner unexpectedly shows up at the station in his limo for an oil change.
It is at this point where Human Highway comes to life and blends elements of the surreal and incoherent.
Neil's character imagines himself a folk music star, touring the desert in a bus with his motley crew of friends.
It is also here where Neil decided to utilize state of the art video techniques and incorporated them to the film's warped imagery, while snippets of classic Young songs are heard on the soundtrack.
It's very hard to determine what is actually taking place in the story line, but one can guess that it is all a series of in-jokes known only to the cast and crew.The dream like quality of the images and music are stunning and it almost makes one forget the action prior to this sequence.
Almost immediately the serene tone of this sequence is interrupted by a warped version of "Hey Hey, My My" performed by Neil with the rock group Devo.
However it's not Neil who sings his classic anthem, but Mark Mothersbaugh in his alter ego of Booji- Boy (basically an oversized mask of mongoloid child's face) in a fractured voice.
However, it is the most fascinating sequence in the film, for I'm sure that those who actually got a chance to see the film wished the whole thing was like this: more noise, feedback and rock and roll.
In the end it symbolizes Neil's character coming out of his dream of being a rock star, and when he does the viewer is left with the thin, mundane plot.To make matters more confusing, or even worse, there is an endless musical production number at the end of the film, in which all the characters dance with shovels.
Even though it doesn't work, it is a great piece of inspired lunacy and in some ways makes up for the rest of the plodding film.I guess Neil scrapped plans to make Human Highway 2, as announced at the end of the film.
But with Neil, you never know..
After the almost universal panning this movie received I did not have the bar set very high for this one.You will probably not like this movie if you are expecting a concert film or the ads that MTV and VH1 have stuck in high rotation.
And I suppose you have to be enough of a Neil Young fan to appreciate and understand his dark humor.
I was surprised by the amount of screen time the normally reclusive Mr. Young enjoyed.I found myself laughing out loud several times through the film.
This film warrants a DVD release (and I hope to be able to see "Journey Through the Past" some day).Normally I am tolerant of other's taste in film, but those who describe this film as a painful ordeal or attribute it to drug (ab)use should stick to HBO.Thank's, Neil, for this wonderful, visionary and hilarious "trip.".
This is a great movie!!.
Don't believe the negative reviews, this is a very clever movie with great music by DEVO and Neil Young.
Well, neither had I but her performance here as Young's character's 'love interest' is perfectly flaky; all of the roles are played very well, from Hopper's deranged cook 'Cracker' to Stockwell's sleazy 'Young Otto'..
Excellent anti-drug movie.
It's pretty obvious that Young and Stockwell and probably everyone else involved was hopped up on goofballs during the whole production.
Who needs 'em?" The low point comes during a dream sequence which is actually a live jam between Devo and Neil Young.
It's one of the saddest displays I've ever seen of an aging ex-hippy desperately trying to be hip and "punk." (In the 70s sense.) Meanwhile Devo, who was at perhaps their most creative and virulent point in their career (I think this sequence was actually filmed in 1979) is relegated to being Neil's back-up band, playing the same four chords over and over for at least 10 minutes while he makes noise on his guitar.
After many years of searching i finally managed to pick up the VHS release of this utterly bizarre movie.
I've always been a huge fan of Neil Young and was a massive fan of Dennis Hopper until the early '90s when he started coming back into mainstream Hollywood rubbish.
Young was experimenting with new age music at the time and many of the songs from the underrated Trans album turn up during the movie.
Those who followed Hoppers career won't be surprised by his appearance here being good friends with Stockwell and Tamblyn.
Hopper was in full melt down at this stage and his performance here shows it, he was actually sued along with Young by Sally Kirkland who claimed he cut her with a knife under the influence of drugs.
Best for me is the brilliant musical number (choreographed by Tamblyn no doubt) at the end and the one of a kind shovel dance!!!!
See this movie if you're into Young and Hopper in full gonzo mode.....
I didn't even know this movie was available!
I was probably in a similar state to Neil and Russ, et al, who wrote it and played in it.
Similar line today and for similar reasons, different "terrorists".A good movie to watch for a glimpse of the birth of the culture of fear..
The box for this movie says something like 80 minutes.
That's odd, because whenever I watch it it seems like upwards of four hours.This movie will suck your soul, though I don't know why.
Having experienced the whole film, you can on later occasions just fast-forward to the Devo parts without feeling guilty.Neil Young's acting is a lot like Stephen King's acting in Creepshow.
Great curiosity for Neil Young fans.
The music is very good, especially the Devo/Neil Young "Hey Hey, My My" during the dream sequence.Not for everybody.
Basically for hardcore Neil fans and fans of "bad" cinema..
For hard core Neil Young and Devo fans only....
This movie has no plot and a simple message:  Nukes = bad.
But if you're a Neil Young fan, I'd recommend buying the video if only out of curiosity.
There is a very cool jam session wherein Neil jams with Devo in the middle of the movie where they play "Hey hey My my (into the black)."  The sound quality in the movie is quite good, but the acting is minimal at best.