In the first movie, it is a 1985 Peterbilt 359EXHD. However, the year of the truck is different. Throughout the three movies, the make and model of his truck remain the same, a black Peterbilt 359EXHD. Previous “After Midnight” columns can be found here. In Joy Ride 3, his full appearance is finally shown throughout. And while it’s hardly inspired, Joy Ride 3 does still convey the eerie, unsettling experience of driving down an empty stretch of road, and feeling both unbound and unprotected by law. When one victim is being strapped to the top of a semi and driven under a low bridge, or another is having his hands and face pushed into a fan, the crunch of bone and the flap of sheared skin is impressively disgusting.

But O’Brien has enough of a budget-and a sick enough imagination-to make the violence wince-inducingly gory. The roteness of Joy Ride 3 is disappointing, especially given how cleverly twisty the first Joy Ride is. The youngsters don’t offer much reason to like them during the first half-hour or so of the movie when they’re not being killed by Rusty Nail, and O’Brien doesn’t bother to make them clever enough to pose much of a challenge for their murderer. A team of street-racers make the mistake of crossing paths with Rusty Nail (now played by Ken Kirzinger), who then plays the homicidal Bugs Bunny to their Elmer Fudds. Only content that has been downloaded can be watched outside of UK, Republic of Ireland and Channel. Joy Ride 3 is in some ways the most gimmicky of the lot, working as a hybrid of Duel and The Fast And The Furious. For the most part, Joy Ride 3 sticks to that point.Įach of the Joy Ride movies has been a little different even the series’ big trucker boogeyman, Rusty Nail, has been played by a different actor each time. The whole point of the Joy Ride series is to set a bunch of dopes against a killer trucker, who tortures and slaughters them in creative ways.

And I’ll say this for O’Brien’s work here: Joy Ride 3 does what it means to do, and unapologetically.

After Midnight digs through the glut of new and old genre films arriving each week on DVD and Blu-ray, singling out the horror, action, smut, and cult items that stand out from the schlock.īefore taking on Joy Ride 3: Roadkill, writer-director Declan O’Brien made Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings and Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines-which must mean that he’s become the go-to guy for direct-to-video sequels to movies about ill-fated road-trippers.

Joy ride 3