Customer Reviews

Route 66 Collection [VHS]

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Having lived in a small town along Route 66, I took great offense at this dark, sometimes gory depiction of former times along this highway. If you want to scare people away from Chicago to LA, then buy this and show it. If, like myself, you wanted a reminder of the charming cities and small town life that flourished along Route 66, I suggest you look elsewhere.

The film rarely had narrative voice-over describing the towns and scenery along the Route, but rather had old radio clips, bar scenes and radical religious services intertwined. In the attempt to portray Texas as the cattleman's center of the Route, a gruesome display of a slaugherhouse was shown which would be inappropriate for children and made me want to become a vegetarian.

Having grown up in one of the very small towns along old Route, I saw charm and small town innocence. I wanted a reminder of the beautiful country that Route 66 spanned, not a gruesome depiction of its underbelly.

This was a heartless, cold depiction of life along Route 66, had very little of the beautiful scenery along the way. It also seemed to concentrate on people at the extremes. Why the producer of this work found it necessary to have snippets of the "local folk" talking politics and their own personal brand of bigotry is beyond me. I wasted my money on this one, but moreover, I witnessed a horrible view of life along Route 66. No wonder people on the East coast think we are all country bumpkins out West.... don't believe everything you see .. and don't get this film unless you want to take a walk on the dark side.

Most Route 66 videos (and goodness knows, I own most of them) focus on a nostalgic history of the road and an upbeat look at the recent resurgence in interest in what has become an American icon. And that's great; for myself, too young to have driven the road in its most vital days, Route 66 is now something of a 2,400-mile amusement park for adults, who want to get out on the open road and really see the United States.

This isn't one of those videos, but there are a couple of things you have to consider when assessing it:

1) Although released in 1997 by White Star video, this documentary was actually made in the mid- to late-'80s. This was shortly after the last of the route was bypassed and before the renewed interest in the route heated up, with the publishing of Michael Wallis' "Route 66: The Mother Road," in 1990. It was a time when there was little nostalgic feeling and a lot of fear that these small towns would dry up and blow away.

2) Central Independent Television, which produced the documentary, is a British production company. These were people coming to a foreign land, theoretically without any preconceived notions, and were just going to present what they came across. Those who don't like this video would likely say that the United States was being shown in a bad light. You can tell that the director and editor are drawn to the surprising or odd, and there's nothing scientific or representative about how they chose their interview subjects. And yet, they allow to seep through the spirit of Middle America to tough it out through the bad times.

This really isn't as much about Route 66 as it is about America in the mid-'80s, and in that sense, it's better sociology than any other Route 66 video. There is no narrator; everything is authentic snippets from an AM car radio (local news, religious programming, Paul Harvey), or interviews with individuals, or music either discovered live on the road or matching the region being traveled. You may cringe at some of the things being said, but no one can accuse the producers of sugar-coating their trip from Chicago to Los Angeles.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a more nostalgic look, try Pacific Communications' "Route 66, An American Odyssey."

If you're interested in the Mother Road and want a tape to inform and let you know how the road and people are today, you do NOT want this tape.

Filmed in the mid 80s, this tape is NOT an accurate depiction of the road as it is today.

As the road is always changing, restaurants and motels opening and closing, buildings being torn down, etc. - I found this tape useful in providing a view of 66's roadside as it was in the 80s, and not much else.

This video was actually filmed in 1985. The film focuses only on the unpleasant side of Route 66. The video overwhelmingly focuses on Christian fundamentalists "healing" each other and shrieking on the radio. The people we meet on the route are mostly religious extremists, overweight barflys, tramps, alcoholics and other assorted losers. I felt sympathy for some of these people like an unemployed, bearded man and his wife, but the video takes a patronizing view of these people. The leftist bias of the European filmmakers clearly comes through in a scene showing cattle being killed in a slaughterhouse intercut with nuclear test warnings. In Texas the filmmakers focus on a man who wants Texas to seceed from the U.S.; in New Mexico on an alcoholic Indian; in Arizona on a damaged Vietnam veteran. Chicago is shown only as a collection of hovels. Los Angeles is skid row with alcoholics and drug addicts passed out in the gutter. Nothing more. All these things exist but the video is all one sided and negative. The filmmakers apparantly were more interested in reenforcing European prejudices about America than giving us a true portrait of Route 66.