FREEWAY (1995)

Reese Will Tear You to Pieces

In Freeway, Reese Witherspoon is Vanessa Lutz, an illiterate teen living with her addict mother in a Riverside County motel. When a bust sends her mother and abusive stepfather to jail, Vanessa escapes child services to hitchhike to her grandmother’s trailer in Stockton. After she’s picked up by guidance counselor—and serial killer—Kiefer Sutherland, Vanessa uses her survival skills to escape him, and later on, jail.

Written and directed by one-time Oingo Boingo member Matthew Bright, Freeway is a satanically dark riff on Red Riding Hood (Sutherland’s character name is, ahem, Bob Wolverton).  It struggled to find a commercial release, even in the most screen violence-friendly days of 1990s. Now restored, Freeway is a historically interesting freeze-frame that captured the moment Reese Witherspoon went from family film child actress to indie star. (And eventual megastar.)

Unlike most commentaries on Cinema Dirtbag that are based on films we’ve seen at least twice, if not more, Freeway is…