In college, my best friend Evelyn and I came up with the “Extra Person Rule for Road Trips.”

The Extra Person Rule stated that no matter how many people we were traveling with, we would always remember to invite one extra person, someone who was pleasant but to whom we really didn’t really have a particularly close personal connection. That way, if we got kidnapped by a serial killer, we would have someone around who could heroically sacrifice herself while giving the rest of us an opportunity to escape. She needed to be likable so she wouldn’t get on our nerves during the trip but also not someone who we would feel guilty about losing if worst came to worst.  We quickly learned that the secret to making the Extra Person Rule work was to make sure that the extra person didn’t know she was the extra.  As such, you would usually have to invite a decoy extra as well.  It could get complicated.

Fortunately, Evelyn and I never actually got abducted by a serial killer whenever we went on a road trip but it was still something for which we felt we should be prepared. It’s a scary world out there. You have to be ready for anything.

I found myself thinking about the Extra Person Rule while watching 2009’s The Turnpike Killer. Jon Beest (Bill McLaughlin) is the film’s title character, a serial killer from New Jersey who crosses into New York and kills several people over the course of 88 minutes. If I ever ran into Jon Beest, I would definitely want to have an extra person around, though I’m not sure it would have helped.  Jon Beest is about as determined a killer as a big bald man named Beest can be. As for why Jon Beest is known as the Turnpike Killer, he apparently dumps some of his victims’ bodies along the New Jersey turnpike.

What to say about The Turnpike Killer? It’s an odd little film.  It has too much of a misogynistic streak for me to recommend it but, at the same time, I do have to admit that it is effectively filmed and acted.  It creates and maintains a convincing atmosphere of grit and sleaze. The images are grainy and the gore is often disturbingly realistic. There’s a twist at the end that comes from almost out of nowhere and it’s hard not to wonder if that twist is the reason why this otherwise simple film has two credited directors.  Almost despite myself, I appreciated the weirdness of it.

I will give the film unreserved credit for one thing. Bill McLaughlin is absolutely terrifying as Jon Beest and the film wisely does not turn him into a Freddy Krueger-style quip machine. He’s not some clever, erudite man with an amazing, if twisted, brain. Instead, he’s …. well, he’s pathetic. The same can be said of most real-life serial killers. If you look at most real-life serial killers, you’ll see that they’re much more likely to be someone like Jon Beest than Hannibal Lecter. When the film works, it’s because Jon Beest seems like the killer that you actually could find waiting for you on a dark road or in the shadows of a New York apartment.

And if you do run into him, you better hope you have an extra person.