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Director: Matthew Bright Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Kiefer Sutherland, Brooke Shields, Amanda Plummer, Brittany Murphy Screenplay: Matthew Bright Country: USA

We're introduced to Vanessa Lutz (Witherspoon, in what most sleazeballs and exploitation connoisseurs would argue is her best role), a fifteen-year-old illiterate delinquent who lives with her drug-addled prostitute mother Ramona (Amanda Plummer) and her molesting stepfather Larry (Michael T Weiss). When Ramona and Larry are pinned in a police sting for their respective crimes, Vanessa finds herself left at the mercy of the government care system again. After deceptively handcuffing the child services agent who comes to pick her up to her steel bed frame, Vanessa makes a run for it. Taking her mother's car and her boyfriend's gun, Vanessa bids her old life adieu with the intention of driving to her grandmother's to start afresh.

Things, as they do, go awry when Vanessa's car breaks down on the freeway, and she is forced to hitchhike. She is picked up by Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland), a psychologist who begins to gently shrink her from the driver's seat. When night falls, his questions become more pressing and more personal, and Vanessa wants out. Too late, it seems – Bob reveals himself as the prolific I-5 serial killer, a deranged pedophile psycho, and Vanessa is set to be his next victim.

Not if she can help it, though, and after a hysterical turn of the tables, Vanessa deals Bob a headful of bullets and leaves him to die. The gravely wounded killer makes it to a hospital, and Vanessa is caught – her uneducated lack of repentance positioning her to the investigating detectives as a cold-blooded killer. Bob is hideously deformed and is left wearing a colostomy bag ('I hope you think of me every time you shit in that thing, motherfucker!' Vanessa taunts in court) and getting around in a wheelchair. Along with his devout wife Mimi (Brooke Shields), Bob makes numerous televised pleas for justice and vehemently denies his crimes while Vanessa languishes in a female penitentiary. However, Bob is far from finished, vowing revenge on the little bit of jailbait that ruined him.

Forget the self-referential antics of Grindhouse, Freeway may well be the greatest neo-exploitation film ever made. This thoroughly mean-spirited adaptation of the oft-told children's story closely follows its source material, down to the hilarious cartoons of an overly promiscuous Riding Hood during the opening credits. Perhaps, though, this is the most accurate 'fairy tale' there is – modern day stories such as Red Riding Hood told to the French aristocracy in the 18th century were allegedly rife with violence and sexual depravity, and were merely watered down for kiddy consumption.

At its core, and above being a psychological thriller or an exploitation movie, Freeway is a comedy, albeit of the blackest kind. Despite being a genuinely creepy character, Bob provides some of the best laughs. Witherspoon is also great, delivering some cracker lines ('My dick may not function, but I still have not lost my smile') and playing upon her character's lack of education and trash roots for maximum comedic, not to mention exploitative, effect. And, like all exploitation films, there is some seriously jaw-dropping stuff here. Bob's threats to screw the underage Vanessa post-mortem are puerile, and Vanessa's inherent racism (she calls an African-American detective a 'shit-skinned motherfucker', despite having a black boyfriend) recalls some of William Sanderson's worst epithets in Fight for Your Life. The film's rapid shift from roadie thriller-cum-police procedural to a fine example of the Women-in-Prison film is great, and Witherspoon having to fight off the advances of Brittany Murphy's weirdo lesbian prisoner and the abuse of testosterone babes is a grateful nod to the best of the WIP cycle. It's pretty clear that Bright never really intended Freeway to be something super-serious or make any social commentary, and the comedy and hysteria comes across very well. Oliver Stone, fresh off his own homicidal teen road trip opus Natural Born Killers, is on executive production duties here and his influence is pretty clear.

Freeway suffered from a number of censorship issues in Australia and was banned outright upon its initial release. The OFLC's reasoning was allegedly the assaultive sexual dialogue between Vanessa and Bob, as well as a lingering shot of a corpse towards the end of the film. The ban was eventually revoked and the film was released on VHS. Force's DVD is totally uncut.

Freeway received relatively good reviews in a response that was atypical for a picture of a film of its kind. At the time of writing, the film stands at 74% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with some glowing appraisals. In 1999, Bright filmed a sequel to Freeway, subtitled Confessions of a Trick Baby, with Natasha Lyonne and Vincent Gallo in the lead roles in a take on the Hansel and Gretel tale. Bright's later films included a Ted Bundy biopic and Tiptoes, a 2003 romantic comedy (!). The director's next film, The Manson Girls, is currently in pre-production, proving that there might be some life in him yet.