Motorama (1993)

Admirable film.

Absolutely the worst movie.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I caught this on cable one late night in the early/mid 90's. May have been Cinemax's Vanguard Theatre ( where they would feature cult, B, art house, etc.)but I can't remember.It starts out with scenes of a kid making something wood and metal in what looks like a basement while his parents are violently arguing upstairs. At first, it's hard to tell if the voices are flashback and the metal and wood creation are some torture device of a deranged psycho or perhaps the kid is going to use the device he's building to kill his arguing parents. As it turns out, he is making leg extensions so that he can run away in this candy apple red 60's era Mustang.From there it becomes a surreal road movie where the boy stops at various gas stations to play some long forgotten sweepstakes game. You get a certain number of gallons of gas from Chimera Gas Stations you get a game token and peel off the sticker, you collect letters and if you spell out MOTORAMA, you get a visit and tour of the Chimera headquarters.Along this odyssey, he runs into the freakiest cast of characters to ever inhabit the deserts of the American southwest. He comes across a variety of oddballs at rest stops, diners, gas stations, and roadside attractions. None of which seem to realize, or at least acknowledge, that he's a young pre-teen kid.One of the scenes I remember as particularly bizarre was a married couple pick him up, act overtly sexual towards him, and I believe, drug him. When he awakes, they apparently have given him a tattoo.Eventually he makes it to Chimera HQ but it turns out they want to renig because no one was supposed to make it that far. My memory is a little fuzzy on the exact ending.I have been looking for this movie off and on for ten years and every time I would describe it I would get blank stares as I tried to describe the whacked out plot to people. Apparently it is on DVD now so I can check one more off my wanted list.I urge anyone who is a fan of offbeat black comedy road movies, to find this and watch it!

This oddity contains Bunuel-like touches, but doesn't sustain one's interest. A 10 year old roams a bizarro America in a stolen Mustang, while the usual cult movie suspects (Dick Miller, Mary Woronov, Susie Tyrell) commit malicious acts in the name of comedy. Like his AFTER HOURS and VAMPIRE'S KISS, the screenwriter delights in making you squirm. I remained unaffected, due to the broad acting. You know you're in for it when Meat Loaf and Flea give the most appealing perfs. (And what did this kid's screen test look like? He's insufferable.) Recommended to the dozen or so fans of SONNY BOY ('87).

This has got to be one of the most magnificent things I've ever seen on film. I don't know if it's as serious as it seems to try to be, but that hardly matters. This film is extreme, absolutely wild and surreal. The packaging and the marketing only make it more so because you *know* that ever so often some mother has to reprogram her kid to accept our reality after he checks this out from the video store expecting something completely different. Look at the roadmap, for one thing! And where else in America can you see a ten year old kid swear as much as this one does and then get his eye ripped out by pervert the rival of Pulp Fiction's Zed? And that food inspector scene is the best! The amount of well known to vaguely recognized actors in this film is one of the best things about it: Soon, much sooner than you realize, you too will find yourself saying, "Is that Meat Loaf? Is that Drew Barrymore? Is that the holideck doctor from Star Trek: Voyager? Is that Flea? Is that the sawmill owner from Twin Peaks gassing squirrels with car exhaust? And isn't this guy from the new Rob Zombie movie? He looks an awful lot like Shrek." I think my favorite scene is at the very end, with Phil in a full body cast. I mean, please, why aren't more movies like this shown in airplanes? This director hardly has anything else to his name higher than Return To Salem's Lot, but he displays true stumbling man-child genius in this creation! If you're an intellectual looking for something to p**s away your evening on, I highly suggest this film for satisfaction. This movie's plot is all too ridiculous, but imagine it taken out of context: *boy arm wrestling an over aggressive Meat Loaf, who seems hell bent on taking out his anger at not being accepted into Guns N Roses, looks over his shoulder and sees the doctor from Voyager enter the bar* Can you imagine what any half brained channel surfer active through the last six years would think of seeing that? Now imagine if you actually cared about Meat Loaf or Voyager to begin with! Or imagine if you're a Flea fan. Rocky Horror Picture Show fans, this film contains notable music, mind you, but its soundtrack is more plasticine than Mad Max 3. What does that entail for you? This is the retarded, inverted mongoloid cousin-sister-mother-puppy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. How about when Gus' sleeve flies back onto his arm in an act of cable-access special effects quality mastercraft? When I saw this film, it was on the suggestion of my cousin who had watched half of it in a fit of half-aware childhood in the early half of the nineties and who has since been haunted by vague memories of it, I myself had not slept in three days. It made me laugh! Of course, it's also an anxiety movie. The music doesn't encourage the suspense but it eventually gets to the point where it's been fully established that the American Censorship Committee has obviously missed this film entirely and absolutely anything can happen in it and probably will any time Gus turns a corner or the view so much as changes camera angles. I found myself obsessing over the possibility of those cards flying out his window at any second. Watch this movie. Awesome!

While I rather enjoyed this movie, I'll tell you right now that my mother wouldn't. It's out there. Really warped little dark comedy that reads like a fairy tale gone awry. >Neat treat with all the cameos too. If you want something "different", look no further.