Freeway + Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby ( Matthew Bright, 1996, 1999 )
Why Doesn’t This Hurt?
Written by Phoebe Hadaway
1983’s Sleepaway Camp (Robert Hiltzic) is a largely forgettable Friday the 13th ripoff slasher for the majority of its runtime. Every stock character, moment and moral message you can think of exists in the film, hammered to death with lethargic direction, until, preceded by a couple of semi-interesting memory sequences, the bullied child and slasher of the film is revealed to be a trans woman. As the camera pulls away from her face and the shock image of her standing there, hissing and grunting, barely framed as human, reveals itself, I see part of myself as a trans teen in the image. I felt barely human, sometimes, I still feel barely human sometimes. It revealed some sense of interiority not present in any character in the film prior, backsliding into an interesting texture and comment on the lives of trans kids, all entirely accidentally.
Transness as a shock tactic is something seen consistently in genre cinema, feeling as core to the genre as a pervert’s sense of sexuality or Ed Gein’s love of bodily viscera. Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, Dressed to Kill, A Woman Kills (a rare French New Wave example), and the second of today’s double feature, Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trickbaby, all feature on some level an element of transness. When I find myself thinking over these films I come back to one question: Why does or doesn’t this hurt?
Freeway 2, as you’ll see, is an incredibly reactionary portrayal of a trans character, and yet when I watch the film, it doesn’t hurt. Partially I think that’s because the film feels like a conscious act of self-destruction; director Matthew Bright violently killed any franchise potential by making such an acrid, unlikeable film. Going from the prestige of Hollywood royalty, Kiefer Sutherland, to the twitchy and erratic indie darling Vincent Gallo in the villain role, feels like the only choice made to garner some critical attention. Everything else feels like an intense and violent reaction to the very idea of a sequel to Freeway.
In a lot of ways the film is ahead of its time, having more in common with the sequels to 2000s horror films like Hostel and The Human Centipede that spat in the face of their self serious shock reputation. Partially, as well, and this is only slightly tongue in cheek, it doesn’t hurt that Gallo is killing every single outfit he’s in. It’s worth noting that Gallo’s character is never explicitly called transgender but there’s the implication of the character. These trans caricatures are often dressed ill-fittingly at best, or even more frequently, deliberately masculinised (Dressed To Kill is a notable exception for how good Michael Caine looks). Still, shouldn’t it hurt a little? Gallo’s character and their actions, feel like something dreamt up in the minds of the most deranged modern transphobic pundits and yet it doesn’t hurt, not compared to their closest comparison, Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.
Jonathan Demme is someone I've jokingly called ‘Mr Too Damn Empathetic’. He's a filmmaker so concerned with the internal pain and lives of his characters, which should work in his favour when adapting Buffalo Bill but it is, in fact, the core issue. In the novel, Buffalo Bill has no interiority, they are a vessel for genre thrills, for sexual luridness, for violence against women and transgression brought to heel. This version of the character doesn't hurt me all that much. But it's hard to look past all the pain and interiority that Demme and Ted Levine have imbued them with when Demme returns to his Corman roots with scenes of simple genre schlock.
Gallo's character in Freeway feels closer to Buffalo Bill in the novel, there is no interiority there, there's no pain, no hurt, no reality outside of the assorted moments of shock the character exists to provide. I don't see a trans woman, or a cis man, or a non binary character - I just see a vessel. It's hard to feel hurt by something you can't even see a pulse in, nevermind estrogen and testosterone blockers.
The film is still incredibly reactionary but, I think despite that, there's a lot of fun you can find against its grain. Sometimes it's fun to exist in a moment of exploitation shock, that feels too extreme and too far removed from reality to ever hurt in the way something more sincere, empathetic, and well-meaning could.
Phoebe Hadaway is a Manchester-based filmmaker and programmer who organises the film club Speed and Strike which you can find at @speedandstrike on Instagram.
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