When I saw Warner Home Video’s REST STOP last year I remember thinking, “Oh yeah, I loved JOY RIDE when it came out!” The film was a blatant rip-off of the classic thriller written by JJ Abrams (it’s true!) that remains a cult classic to this day. When Raw Feed announced REST STOP II I couldn’t believe it… THIS CRAP is a becoming a franchise and JOY RIDE isn’t? Thank God someone had their thinking cap on because a sequel to JOY RIDE is just what the doctor ordered, but hopefully it wont be the end of the road for the franchise…

With the hopes of reconnecting horror fans to the franchise, Fox Home Video flew me out to Vancouver to check out the production of JOY RIDE: END OF THE ROAD, their second direct-to-video affair. After the monster success of WRONG TURN 2, it’s no wonder Fox has jumped on the straight to home video bandwagon.

As usual, my adventure to the set was an interesting (and complicated) one, so if you’re not into the whole AICN “here’s how my day went” type report, I recommend scrolling down a bit – but you're going to miss one hell of a story.

To be completely honest Im getting kind of sick of all of the travel so I contemplated sending someone else like SpookyDan, but Im a pretty big fan of JOY RIDE so I figured “what the heck.” I have some odd travel karma where something always goes wrong and it’s never a good experience. Everything was peachy until I landed in Vancouver and got to customs checkpoint where the guy starts drilling me about my one-day stay in Canada. I tell him that Im visiting a friend on the set of a movie, which he scoffed at and scribbled all over my sheet with a red pen – I felt like I was back in school. I went with Ryan Rotten who was at another booth and he even starts asking me about him, “Who’s he? Why are you with him? What’s he doing here?” It was completely insane. He gives me the sheet with a dirty look and tells me to go to some room. Ive been to Vancouver a gazillion times and never had a problem, but this guy just had it out for me.

I walk into this room and I’m about 12-to-13 people back in line. There are a few Americans in the front and everyone else was Chinese. There’s one person working at the counter and each person seams to be taking a good 20 minutes each. I start doing the math in my head and freaking out “ten people in front of me, 20 minutes each, that’s over three hours!” My mind begins racing as I start thinking MacGuyver, “Ok, if I go back through customs and pretend I didn’t turn in a card, that might work! But wait, no, what if they see me and get suspicious and detain me even more?” So I lie on the floor aggravated looking at my clock, “should I take a nap? Watch a movie?” Then all of a sudden about 20 more Chinese people come from a flight and cut me in line to stand with their family. This is f-cked, seriously f-cked. I ask some people who work there “what the heck?” to which all of ‘em replied, “oh effin well, get over it!” No way, I refused to spend my entire day and night in this insane line – so I charge one of the American near the front of the line and say “Hey man, what’s up? How have you been? Crazy flight right?” As he makes a weird face I lean in and whisper, “Ill drop you $50 if I can stand with you…” Of course he agreed and an hour later I was golden. How insane is that though that it took me an HOUR to get out of there from becoming the fourth person in line? I was 30th!!! Lesson learned, throw money at the problem. I’ll remember that forever and ever.

So while we’re waiting, it was like being in the TWILIGHT ZONE. There would be only one person working the entire time behind the counter and dozens of people in uniforms walking by over and over. They would walk by realllllly slow, holding a coffee canister and glaring at us with hate out of the side of their eyes. At one point there were five people standing behind the one working. They just stood there joking around and sipping their coffee. It gets weirder as I finally get up to the counter. The lady started drilling me, and when you lie it only gets worse and worse. By the time I was finished I said I was a friend of James Johnston (the writer of the film), I’ve known him for five years, met him at a coffee shop, worked with him on a movie, am visiting him for two days, met him through a friend, I don’t have his phone number because he has a different number on set, he’s on set to oversee the production, he paid for my flight, I work on Sunday at a restaurant in Los Angeles and about 50 other lies. I was sweating like a pig and starting to shake of nervousness. It was the most insane lie ever told, and with each lie I couldn’t go back – I was pretty sure they were gonna send me back. After twenty minutes of sitting there (and everyone waiting) she comes back and tells me “you lie, you wait in THAT line,” pointing to the hell I (should have) went through. Worst day ever.

I finally make it to the hotel and all I want to do is nap, but the sheets smell like B.O. So I work a bit and then meet everyone down in the lobby at five. After an hour drive to the set we go into a tent where I make another major realization… it’s November in Canada. I’m pretty much an idiot and packed like I was going to winter in California. It was FREEZING and my feet were so cold. Oh well, I’m a moron so I had to tough it out. Once we get onto the set things were pretty sweet as they were shooting a kill sequence that night.

Everything was moving at a furious rate because apparently the leading lady Nicki Aycox had an allergic reaction to something and missed the entire day before. Everyone was behind schedule and looking forward to insanely long night shoot. Set up we got to stand and touch Rusty Nails’ black truck, which was like touching Freddy’s glove or Jason’s machete. This truck is an extension of Rusty, which made it all that much cooler. Star Nick Zano was tied up by his wrists inside the truck in the drivers seat. He was extremely dirty, bruised over his right eye and looked liked he’d been through hell.

Outside the truck was some bald guy who we were told was the bartender of the Armadillo Bar, which was located to our right. He was all bloodied up and had something coming out from the sides of his mouth. We discovered that it was his chain wallet that apparently Rusty Nail used to saw off the bartender’s jaw with. It looked disgusting hanging down both sides of his face. The special FX work was done by Bill and Maureen Terezakis - who did fantastic work on FREDDY VS JASON and other notable genre favorites like WRONG TURN 2. This was a great sign that we’ll be seeing some amazing gore FX in this film and most importantly the consistency of the blood was extraordinary - it looks like the finale of FREDDY VS JASON right there in front of us.

Once the shot was prepped they called out Mark Gibbon – your new Rusty Nail. He was much leaner from the first film and had painted yellow teeth. He was wearing a dirty brown jacket and matching hat. To set the shot up, Rusty Nail is standing behind the bartender holding the two ends of the chain wallet. When action was called he would saw left and right as the bartender spit blood all over the truck window. Inside Nick Zano (Bobby) is freaking out and trying to unlock the door.

After watching various version of the sequence shot, Ryan and I snuck off to find some food where we discovered “shawarma” wraps. I have no idea what the hell shawarma means, but I like to say it… shawarma. After a tasty shawarma (love it) we watched a little more of the shoot where I decided that I really liked the way the shot was lit. Obviously things will be color corrected and changed in post-production, but I will say that what I looked very high end. Overall I found myself getting more and more reassured that this will be a great DTV affair.

Inside the Armadillo Bar they were setting up a place for us to do our video interviews. The bar wasn’t anything unusual, just your typical dive with peanuts on all of the tables. Once finished with all the prior interviews it was about 11:30 and we had still had to chat with star Nicki Aycox. They tell us she’ll be on set round 12:30 and do some make-up and will be ready to rock. We figure 1AM the latest… cut to 3:30, she finally arrives. She’s in good spirits, but Im draining quickly and getting pretty pissed off. At this point I had been up for 24 hours and wanted to go to bed. Her “people” spend another effin 30-minutes screwing with her make-up. Im pretty out of it, cant remember my questions and don’t even care anymore. I just want to do this and leave. She sits down around 4AM and they start screwing with the camera, to which ended with “let’s just do audio interviews.” I was fuming, but then it clicked (in my half brain dead state) that she had an allergic reaction and her lip was all messed up, which is why she didn’t want to do the video. It’s completely understandable; it just sucks that we could have done a quick audio interview in her trailer around 1 instead of waiting until 4 for no reason. Anyways, she’s a sweetheart and was fun to talk to even though I was sleepwalking (who doesn’t have Red Bull on set?!)

All in all it was a pretty fun trip that gave me some cool new stories to add to my repertoire. I got the feeling that the movie is in good hands, but at the same time they sounded like they were way behind schedule and rushing to catch up. Obviously it’s impossible to make a recommendation on a single day of shooting, but I was convinced enough that there will be something here for every gore hound. Watch this spot for video interviews in January.

Watch for an interview with star Nicki Aycox.