Vicki, Sara, Tim and other guy are trucking along for a camping weekend.  Inexplicably, Sara pulls over to offer a ride to a hitchhiker.  She thinks Andy the hitchhiker is cute, so maybe other guy is her brother.  Or maybe Tim is her brother and other guy is just some other guy.  I’m really not interested enough to diagram this out.

They pull into the titular Rest Area.  While Vicki goes to see a man about a racehorse, Sara checks out a swap meet.  Andy picks up a bracelet and tells Sara it would look nice on her.  Uh, am I the only one here who thinks this thing is made of teeth?  Am I the only one here?  ECHO Echo echo . . .

When the gang comes out of the shitters, they see that the swap meet was also a swipe meet and they have made off with our heroes’ car.  Yellow-hat guy goes back in and is attacked after taking a drink directly from the faucet in the Men’s Room.  Sara and Andy find that he has been paralyzed, but really how long could he have survived after that grotesque act?  At least the scene established that he was Chuck.  So, we know the other guy is Tim, and I’m pretty sure Tim and Vicki are siblings.

World’s worst tanning bed

Tim and Vicki try to flag down a passing car for help, but the car nearly runs them over.  Then the driver chases them through the woods.  Now there’s a guy who knows who to treat hitchhikers. Only Vicki makes it back to the Rest Stop.  She quickly disappears.  As Sara searches for her, she finds a trap door in the floor and goes exploring.

Sara finds Vicki paralyzed in the world’s worst tanning bed.  Chuck is there also and seems to have been given a full-body Brazilian.  No idea what happened to Tim.  Andy shows up, but turns out to be one of the swap meet gang.

The gang does a little surgery to come up with material for their arts & crafts.  They cut off Sara’s hair to make a scarf.  Hey, there’s Tim — they cut a loop of skin from his upper arm to make a . . . thing . . . but worth $50 because it has Tim’s tattoo on it.

I think a lot of the problem here is the bad transfer again.  It has many good elements. The cast is good, once I figured out who was who.  Who isn’t creeped out by Rest Stops?  The gang was suitable creepy with their piercings and dreadlocks.

Real rest stop horrors

Post-Post:

• Katherine Isabelle (Vicki) starred in Genre Snaps Ginger Snaps.
• Jerry O’Connell (Andy) was the fat kid in Stand by Me.