Director David Del Rio and writer Justin Xavier, the duo who gave us the twisted Christmas story Sick for Toys, are back with Road Head, a bizarre, raunchy, and occasionally bloody, horror comedy with a distinct LGBTQ element. Can this tale of a road trip from hell bring you satisfaction? Or is this one time you should actually decline road head?
Bryan (Clayton Farris, Foster Boy) and his boyfriend Alex (Damian Joseph Quinn, Nazi Overlord, The United States vs. Billie Holiday) just wanted to go on a road trip to Isola Lake out in the desert. Unfortunately, Bryan’s bestie Stephanie (Elizabeth Grullon, Killing Lazarus) got dumped by her boyfriend and decides to play third wheel despite the fact she and Alex don’t get along.
To make matters worse the lake turns out to be dried out. Worse still are the two severed heads laying on the ground. Then The Executioner (Adam Nemet), the reason those heads are severed, turns up looking like a bargain basement Scott Steiner and sounding like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Stephanie ends up the prisoner of a strange medieval cult run by Carl (Paul T. Taylor, Hellraiser: Judgment, Shifter) and his sons who need a queen to produce new members. Actually, this Camelot already has a queen, a drag queen named Felicity Fellatio (Misty Bones) who isn’t much help in that department.
Unfortunately, Road Head has two glaring problems. The opening act with not one but two incidents of road head, endless jokes about butt sex, decapitations and heads in the road is enjoyably over the top. But then it focuses way too much on Stephanie and Alex bitching at each other.
It’s supposed to be funny but it just got on my nerves. Even more so than when she hallucinates her ex, David (Clay Acker, Attack of the Southern Fried Zombies) showing up to argue with her. The main problem is she’s so annoying it’s next to impossible to care if she lives or dies. And in the case of Road Head, that’s a bigger problem than it usually would be.
The whole idea of The Order out there in the desert, and the way Xavier and Del Rio play it for laughs and shocks had great potential. It’s like a cross between Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Hills Have Eyes with a touch of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. But the film spends way too little time with any of them except The Executioner. And honestly, he deserves his own movie.
That is the best part of Road Head though as it bounces from the snarky comments about the cultists’ stamina, or lack thereof, to a dick being bitten off and spat out. The tonal shifts are jarring but enjoyable and if the film had finished out like this I would have liked it a lot more. And Stephanie is a lot easier to deal with when she’s being a bitch to characters who deserve it rather than Alex.
Sadly, rather than ending on an obvious high note, Road Head gives us another ten minutes of dull talk and a final few minutes that feel like they came from another movie entirely. I can see what they were trying to do and if they had stopped after the first twist it might have worked. But they try to do too much too abruptly and it feels like a cheat.
Terror Films will release Road Head on VOD and DVD on June 4th. You can check their Facebook page or the film’s for details. I’d recommend waiting for it to come to Tubi and just fast-forwarding through the dull spots though.