Joy Ride

You really don't want to mess with a truck driver who has nothing else to do all day but plot his revenge while driving down those long lonesome highways.

Here, two idiot brothers think it is a great idea to impersonate a woman via CB and luring one "Rusty Nail" to a motel for a meetup. They send him to the room next door. This one, quite handily, is occupied by a first class racist asshole. Talking about killing two birds with one stone. The sounds coming from next door turn a little weird and the younger brother gets a little nervous and reports strange noises to reception. When the night clerk check in with room 17 via phone they get an answer saying that everything is fine.

Except it isn't. The racist asshole gets what he deserves - and then some. He is found lying on the highway with his jaw removed (but, miraculously, he lives and serves as a means to scare the shit out of our two brothers).

From there it only gets worse. Rusty is pretty resourceful and soon knows their car and their names and that they picked a female friend up from college, as well. And he comes after them. He kidnaps the college student's friend as a means to get them. He lures them to a deserted road near a corn field (aren't those fun?) and drives after them with his big-ass truck. In the end, he gets the girl and props her up with a gun pointed at her head that will go off if someone opens the door (room 17!). The brothers come to her rescue and nearly get killed in the effort.

Bruised and battered, they end up sitting in an ambulance when they are told who the guy was. And they are the only ones realizing that the now dead assumed truck driver is not the Rusty Nail that has been after them.

As a last scare in the film he talks to them via the CB of the ambulance.

7/10

The Lost World

This BBC mini series is based on the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle. A group of would be adventurers sets out to find a plateau in Amazon, where Professor Challenger believes to find dinosaurs.

The first travel to a missionary base, run by Reverend Theo Kerr, where the hire a group of natives to carry their belongings and join them on their trip. The Reverend's niece, Agnes, sets off together with the team of explorers. The natives soon get spooked off. As soon as they disappear, Reverend Kerr joins the group, but for rather sinister reasons. As soon as they reach the plateau he blocks what they believe is their only way back down.

The professor and his team do find dinosaurs. First they encounter the friendly, plant eating ones but soon after they are faced with the more deadly variety. But the dangers of the region do not stop there. They are attacked by a group of ape men and in in the middle of their conundrum they are joined by some natives that live on the plateau.

The explorers then stay with the natives and together they face the daily perils of life among wild creatures until one day, Professor Summerlee manages to mix an explosive together, blasting a way through a blocked off tunnel.

They triumphantly return to England, but at the very last moment, in the middle of an event celebrating their discoveries, they change their minds about exposing the people and creatures living on the plateau to the so-called civilized world. They declare the stories and rumors of the dinosaur encounters a hoax.

I don't know how close this is to the actual text, but it was thoroughly entertaining and well cast.

7/10