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It’s summer (for some) and time to head out on a holiday. Where? Anywhere but here amirite? But mind your mirrors, ’cause the streets is real, son.

Whether it be a handsome maniac thumbing for a ride or a sinister stranger in the desolate dips of the outback, road horror provides high octane nightmare fuel for years to come. Very easy to see why too: open road, so little places to hide, no one can hear you scream! Let’s take a trip shall we? Down the dreaded paths, roads and abandoned places. Watch your step, your ass and your friends ‘cause on this trip, no one’s getting out alive! First up:

1980’s Rutger Hauer? Yes, please! I’d be picking him up too. But alas for poor C. Thomas Howell’s character, Jimmy, who’s just trying to take a car cross country and runs into a suave and understated John Ryder and things are going quite copasetic until John reveals a stranded car up ahead contains the remains of a driver that he’s killed, and Jimmy here is headed for the same fate. Extreme cat and mouse game, lil tiresome toward the middle in a why the hell won’t you die sort of way BUT nobody takes us on a terrifying face journey quite like Rutger Hauer. Arguably one of the most sinister villains of road horror film and perhaps horror in general. His uncanny ability to be everywhere and nowhere make this film a tense one.

Fresh off a jampacked year of The Fog, Prom Night and Terror Train (all released in 1980), Jamie Lee Curtis co-stars as “Hitch” alongside Stacy Keach as the curmudgeonly truck driver, “Pat Quid” in this wonky road caper on a hunt for what seems to be a serial killer. Quid is haulin’ meat across Australia, or trying to, when he spots a fellow hotel guest trying to cover up a murder. The victim, a female hitchhiker, he’d passed along the road but didn’t pick up (company by-laws be damned!). On his quest to track down this killer in a green van, he’s put up against some pretty hokey characters like the tropey nagging wife, Frita, whose husband has left her on the side of the road, to the slow-moving boat hauler Quid aptly nicknames “Captain Careful,” to divert him. It’s all done as levity to an already slow start. Enter, Pamela “Hitch” Rushworth, the daughter of wealthy diplomat who just happens to be stranded on the side of the road. Quid throws the work obligations out the window and picks up Pamela and as the two begin discussing the serial killer Quid is following, Hitch shows she’s got the detective bit down. It takes a bit to nail down, but this is a film to watch if you’re into severed limbs and that famous Jamie Lee smirk.

As someone who’s grown up around wine country and having no choice but to drive down streetlight absent, long country roads with tall corn on either side, I can disrespectfully say, fuck them kids. Children of the Corn, Stephen King’s eighth film adaptation (lucky bastard) showed even more signs of King’s keen tendency to show children’s tenacity and power no matter how small or seemingly meek. Wide brimmed and evil-eyed child preacher, Isaac, played deftly by John Franklin, and his second in command, Malachai (Courtney Gains) have coerced the children of Gatlin, Nebraska to murder all of the adults in town and it’s that unease in the front of the film, where the adults are dropping like flies, that you begin to not only fear them but become in awe of them. It’s quite unfortunate that Vicky (Linda Hamilton, also having a great year, here) and Burt (Peter Horton) make a pit stop in Gatlin during their road trip and discover a murder. With all the adults dead, it’s slim pickings on who to report it to and the children make their descent. This film is bleak, which most religious horror is. Sure this god is false, demonic at that, but what fascinates me is these children, indoctrinated under Isaac, see themselves in a sort of stasis of youth. It’s where their power lies in a very Neverland sort of way.

Nothing says early aughts horror like a bunch of beautiful people going through it! I do love me some Eliza Dushku who plays Jessie in the film, alongside Chris, (Desmond Harrington), Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui), Scott (Jeremy Sisto), and Francine and Evan (Lindy Booth and Kevin Zegers), so you see? Gorgeous. Dumb, but gorgeous. I don’t how many times we have to tell people, STAY OUT OF WEST VIRGINIA’S WOODS!!!!! Screaming Jenny is in there, The Flatwoods Monster. Mothman for God’s sake. But of course a group of good looking twenty-something hikers and a young med student collide in the most uncoincidental way possible. The hiker’s car tires got caught on barbed wire (hmmmm) and the good almost doctor’s car slid into their parked car, so of course it’s high fives all around and we decide to split up and look for help which is always the best idea. What follows rivals any run-in with a ghostly apparition or Lepidopteran-man like creature. It’s cannibals, but better yet, inbred cannibals! The practical effects on this film are pretty on point due to the incredible work from Stan Winston Studios (Predator, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Pumpkinhead, Alien). If you’re down for who’s gonna get it next escape horror with a hefty side of flesh-eating – its advisable you take a peek.

Australian Outback torture horror sold me. Just like French country-side slasher sold me on Haute Tension, but we’ll talk about that next time. This one scared the absolute piss out of me and not just because John Jarratt’s nefarious and just fucking evil Mick Taylor is my worst nightmare, but because the open road should be a place where you can spot a mad man following you for literally MILES. But regrettably, not the case for Liz (Cassandra Magrath), Kristy (Kestie Morassi) and Ben (Nathan Phillips), two British tourists and their friend from Sydney who just wanted to backpack across the country. Big mistake. After stopping at Wolf Creek Park the crew realize their car won’t start. Enter Mick Taylor – (tadaa) who comes to tow them back his garage and helps save the day – sort of. After giving them some drugged water the trio wake to find themselves on the receiving end of Mick’s maniacal torture games. This is a brutal one and it delivers one the best paralyzing cuts I’ve even seen in a horror film. IFYKYK. Taylor’s character is so disquieting and altogether menacing that it spawned a Wolf Creek television series. Which leads me to a few of my past favorites…

This sci-fi horror series was a bit of nightmare fodder for me as a child. It’s entire run can be found on YouTube and if you get the chance to sneak a couple of eps, it’s worth it. It’s early 80s so bear with a couple of the episodes that just don’t fit the genre but episodes like “Lost Vows” and “The Curse” are some of my best-loved. But what I do love is the mysterious Hauer-esque hitchhiker and his loose and rugged Twilight Zone framing which has been copied myriad times.

What this episode did to my psyche as a ten year old child, I can never fully unfold. But I’ll tell you something it did do: it made me want to tell scary stories as opposed to just read them. The episode begins with unfaithful wife Annie Lansing (Lois Chiles) leaving her gigolo lover to return home via a winding dark road. Distracted by a mix of guilt and post-coital elation she speeds down the road causing her to hit and kill a hitchhiker. Annie gets out of the car to inspect and stares down an empty road.

Noting that no one saw her, she hops back into her Mercedes and speeds off, leaving the man on the road. But her conscious gets the better of her and she pulls over to think as the mangled hitchhiker appears outside her window and mutters, “Thanks for the ride lady.”. Absolute chills. This terror continues and exacerbates her entire ride home (arriving before her husband as planned) but the night is not over for poor Annie.

The open road holds many challenges: breaking down, getting lost, getting tired, running into mass murdering cannibals and the like. The highways connect us, creating a direct route to loved ones, to new experiences and sometimes to our absolute limits. Highway Horror as a genre has spawned more checks in the rear-view mirror and the backseat than we need it to but what a rush it is!

Mo Moshaty is a horror writer, lecturer and producer. As a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist and life long horror fan, Mo has lectured with Prairie View A&M Film & TV Program as a Keynote, BAFSS Horror Studies Sig , Cine-Excess, Nottingham University, Final Girls Film Fest Berlin and The University of Sheffield. Mo has partnered with horror giant, Shudder Channel, to co-produce the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Festival 2021 and 2022 with Nyx Horror Collective and has also established the Nyx Horror Fellowship with Stowe Story Labs with her team.  Her literary work “Love the Sinner” was published with Brigid’s Gate Press in July of 2023 and her short story collection, “Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment” will be published in the Spring of 2025. Mo is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine and founder of Mourning Manor Media.