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Question

I watched a movie probably like 15 years ago or so that I want to find again, but I can't for the life of me remember the name... The basic story line is this: A family passes through a (desert?) town and runs out of gas; the problem is that the town hasn't had a delivery of gas for some time so they're stranded, staying at some crummy motel. Then there's this psycho kid that likes the daughter of the family and wants her to stay there, so he tries to kill the parents when they finally siphoned some gas into their car by putting a lighter on a radio-controlled car and driving it underneat their vehicle to set it on fire. Can't remember much more, except that the pscho kid lived in like a radio or water tower or something like that... Any help would be much appreciated!! Thanks! :-)

Answer 1

I don't know the movie, but try www.imdb.com. They have message boards and the members have always been quick to come up with titles for me.

Answer 2

Most of it sounds like Desert Blue.. but there isn't a scene where the guy tries to kill the parents.. there is an explosion.. and there is a case of a deceased parent.. (killed in a housefire.. sort of)

"Boredom is toxic in writer-director Morgan J. Freeman's follow-up to HURRICANE STREETS. Fatuous TV star Skye (Kate Hudson)is taking a road trip with her dad Lance (John Heard), a pop-culture scholar who insists they stop in Baxter, CA, to see the twon's "famous" giant ice cream cone. When the neighboring soda-pop factory accidentally releases potentially poisonous gases into the air, both visitors and native Baxter-ites — including sensitive Blue (Brendan Sexton III), explosives-obsessive Ely (Christina Ricci), all-terrain-vehicle racer Pete (Casey Affleck) and chubby Cale (Ethan Suplee) — find themselves quarantined by the FBI. Aren't those names a red flag? Blue, already laboring under the curse of being a teen in a rinky-dink town, is also pursuing his late father's impossible dream, a water park called Ocean Park. That's right: A water park in the middle of the desert, fed by the aqueducts that channel water to L.A. Alas, geoeconomics have condemned Baxter to barren obscurity, which is where this movie will doubtless end up. It's clearly meant to be a charmingly daffy but perceptive romantic comedy about kids bored out of their gourds, but it all too often falls flat. Christina Ricci is her usual delight as a pyrotechnic delinquent who goes so far as to explode FBI agent Michael Ironsides' car, and Kate Hudson wisely underplays the insipid role of Skye, who starts a romance with Blue (is oafish Brendan Sexton anyone's idea of a movie star?). But Freeman's slack, stale script strangles their sharp performances. Honestly, we don't need independent cinema for products as boring and sub-par as this film: We have Hollywood for that. You come away haunted by the thought that this dull young director personifies a generation who have nothing to say, but will keep talking anyway. --Sandra Contreras"