Rebel Highway

{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}

{{Infobox television

| image = Rebel_Highway.jpg

| caption =

| channel = Showtime

| first_aired = {{start date|1994|7|22}}

| last_aired = {{end date|1994|9|23}}

| language = English

| country = United States

| producer = Lou Arkoff
Debra Hill

| company = Dimension Television

| creator = Lou Arkoff
Debra Hill

| genre = Drama, action

}}

Rebel Highway was a revival of American International Pictures created and produced by Lou Arkoff, the son of Samuel Z. Arkoff, and Debra Hill for the Showtime network in 1994. The concept was a 10-week series of 1950s "drive-in classic" B-movies remade "with a '90s edge".{{cite magazine | author-link=Corliss, Richard| last = Corliss | first = Richard | title = I Was a Teenage Teenager | magazine = Time | date =August 15, 1994 | url = http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981251,00.html | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070930063025/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981251,00.html | url-status = dead | archive-date = September 30, 2007 | access-date = 2007-06-23 }} The impetus for the series, according to Arkoff was, "what it would be like if you made Rebel Without a Cause today. It would be more lurid, sexier, and much more dangerous, and you definitely would have had Natalie Wood's top off".{{cite magazine | last = Fretts | first = Bruce | title = Return of the Killer B's | magazine = Entertainment Weekly | date = July 29, 1994 | url = https://ew.com/article/1994/07/29/showtime-makes-over-1950s-teenager/ | access-date = 2010-04-08 }}

Arkoff originally wanted to call the series Raging Hormones, but Showtime decided on Rebel Highway instead.{{cite news | last = Brennan | first = Patricia | title = Fast Cars, Fast Girls and Raging Hormones | newspaper = Washington Post | date =July 17, 1994 }} Arkoff and Hill invited several directors to pick a title from one of Samuel Arkoff's films, hire their own writers and create a story that could resemble the original if they wanted. In addition, they had the right to a final cut and to select their own director of photography and the editor.{{cite news | last = Rosenbaum | first = Jonathan | title = The Way We Weren't | work = Chicago Reader | date = November 18, 1994 | url = http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/?p=6917 | access-date = 2010-04-08 }} Each director was given a $1.3 million budget and 12 days to shoot it with a cast of young, up and coming actors and actresses. According to Arkoff, the appeal to directors was that, "They weren't hampered by big studios saying, 'You can't do this or that.' And all the directors paid very close attention to the detail of the era. We want these shows to be fun for the younger generation and fun for the older generation".

The series premiered with Robert Rodriguez's Roadracers on July 22, 1994.