Texas Chainsaw Massacre

10 Horrible Horror Movie Road Trips

If you’re lucky, the worst thing you’ll ever experience on a road trip is a flat tire, or maybe you’ll get pulled over for having a lead foot. Neither is ideal, but things could certainly be worse. For example, you could find yourself on one of the horribly ill-fated road trips on this list, in which case your worst case scenario gauge will need to be adjusted.

Here are the 10 of the worst road trips the horror genre has taken us on – as well as some lessons learned from each you can use to stay safe next time you hit the open road:  

10. Dead End

Trailer NSFW

  • Reason for the trip: Frank Harrington, his wife Laura and their kids are on the road to another Christmas Eve with Laura’s side of the family. In order to keep himself from nodding off, Frank takes a different, more isolated route.
  • Why it sucked: Frank immediately falls asleep and nearly gets in an accident. From that point on, the family members are plagued by visions of a ghostly woman in white and black hearse. The family members start to disappear, the road seems to stretch on endlessly and worst of all, Lin Shaye (who plays the wife) turns into a complete raving lunatic.
  • Lessons learned: It never hurts to have a gun-nut uncle. His presents come in handy in a pinch.

9. The Hitcher (1986)

  • Reason for the trip: Jim Halsey is looking for a change of scenery so he takes a job driving a car from Chicago to its owner in San Diego.
  • Why it sucked: Jim picks up a hitchhiker to entertain himself for part of the long and lonely trip. Turns out, that hitchhiker is unhinged and is also looking for some entertainment. However, his definition is a little different: He prefers to psychologically torture and random outbursts of violence.
  • Lessons learned: Jim tells us right at the start his mother told him to never pick up hitchhikers. He doesn’t listen and look what happens. Listen to your mothers.

8. Wrong Turn

  • Reason for the trip: Chris Flynn is driving through West Virginia on his way to a job interview. While traveling along a scenic alternate route, he collides with a car full of attractive young people which is stopped in the middle of the road because it ran over some barbed wire.
  • Why it sucked: The barbed wire was put there by the family of inbred cannibals who call the woods home and who don’t take kindly to attractive, young city folk. The cannibals use their superior knowledge of the woods and old-timey, folksy weapons to do their cannibal thing and pick off our heroes.
  • Lessons learned: Nothing good can come from driving through the woods of West Virginia.

7. House of Wax

  • Reason for the trip: A group of friends – one of whom is Paris Hilton – are on their way to a college football game.
  • Why it sucked: One of them is Paris Hilton. Beyond that, the group wakes up from a night of camping to find that one of their cars has been damaged. They split up and become prey to a pair of lunatics who run a local wax museum – which is apparently in need of some new, eerily lifelike, exhibits. Also, one of them is Paris Hilton.
  • Lessons learned: Judging by the cast of some of these movies, look at your group of friends. How attractive are they? If the answer is very, stay home. 

6. Carriers

  • Reason for the trip: A viral outbreak has decimated most of society. Good guy Danny, his bad boy brother and their respective lady-friends plan to wait out the apocalypse at a beach the brothers remember from their childhood.
  • Why it sucked: The group meets up with a father and his sick daughter, things go down and before you know it people are getting infected left and right. This forces multiple agonizing decisions to be made which will greatly impact future family functions.   
  • Lessons learned: If some tape and plastic wrap is somehow enough to stymie a global pandemic, don’t push your luck. Just thank your lucky stars 3M does such good work.

5. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

  • Reason for the trip: Five friends are traversing Texas on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.
  • Why it sucked: The gang stops and picks up a bloody, incoherent hitchhiker who promptly kills herself. They report this incident to the local police and that puts them in the cross hairs of a very-well-connected family of cannibals, one of whom has an affinity for masks made of human skin, chainsaws, hacking off limbs and then rubbing the wounds with salt.
  • Lessons learned: Calling the police didn’t work? Um … be a jerk and keep driving? That sounds awful. How about: Good luck!

4. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

  • Reason for the trip: Reports of grave-robbing and vandalism draw a brother/sister team and three of their friends out to the family plot to investigate.
  • Why it sucked: They pick up a stringy-haired hitchhiker with a weird birthmark who loves knives and won’t stop talking about slaughter houses. There’s a falling out and the group finds itself targeted by a family of cannibals, one of whom has an affinity for masks made of human skin and chainsaws, another of whom is a very old – possibly dead –man who might just need a little blood to perk back up.         
  • Lessons learned: If you absolutely have to pick up a hitchhiker – not the best idea – profile. If he/she looks crazy, keep going.   

3. Wolf Creek

  • Reason for the trip: A pair of British tourists and their Australian buddy are partying their way across the land down under.   
  • Why it sucked: Car troubles land the group in the clutches of the world’s worst good Samaritan. Instead of getting them back on the road, he kidnaps, imprisons, tortures them and educates them on the meaning of the quaint Australian phrase “head on a stick.”       
  • Lessons learned: Go ahead and apply West Virginia wilderness rules to Australia.

2. House of 1000 Corpses

  • Reason for the trip: Four friends are writing a book about offbeat back roads attractions.
  • Why it sucked: Clown, gas station owner and “Museum of Monsters & Madmen” curator Capt. Spaulding puts them on to Dr. Satan, a famed murderer and sadist who was supposedly hung in the area. They go to track down his grave, but instead they find out where Capt. Spaulding’s museum gets its “monsters” from and they get to meet an entire family of murders and sadists (including the good doctor himself) up close and personal.
  • Lessons learned: Never trust a clown.

1. Hills Have Eyes (1977/2006)

  • Reason for the trip: Bob and Ethel are celebrating their wedding anniversary by loading their whole family up into a camper and heady out Californey way.   
  • Why it sucked: In the desert, the family is set upon by another family, a family of savages (1977)/mutants (2006). From there, the members of the normie family are burned alive, sliced up, raped and tortured until, led by the family dog, they fight back.     
  • Lessons learned: The year doesn’t really matter, almost the exact same thing happens. The only differences being 1) the mutant/savage distinction and 2) if it’s mid-2000s, what happens is going to be way gorier and more disgusting. Either way, it seems like road trips are a horrible idea. Books. Let’s all read more books.

Colin

Contributor

Colin is a long time fan of horror movies, books and TV shows. Thanks to a childhood viewing of "The Shining," he still always checks behind the shower curtain ... just in case.