The Hitcher

Part psychological thriller (with some gore in between) and part relentless road movie: THE HITCHER still is as tense and as shocking as it was in 1986, the film’s original release date. Rutger Hauer stars as the titular psychopath and woe betide those who cross his path…

When Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell), a young man driving along the big, vast West Texan desert during a rain-drenched night, offers a hitchhiker, clad in a long dark coat, a ride, he makes the biggest mistake of his life. In American movies, baddies are always clad either in black or dark colours and it’s no different here. Attempting some conversation, Jim has a hard time getting any information out of the stranger, who eventually introduces himself as John Ryder (Rutger Hauer) but doesn’t reveal where he’s heading for. Jim, hailing from Chicago, then reveals that the car he is driving isn’t his own but he is in fact delivering it for someone else to San Diego. Ryder begins to act weirder and weirder when asked by Jim what happened to the other car by the roadside, which he passed before offering him a lift. To which Ryder replies, with an wicked smile, that the car by the roadside including its driver will be going nowhere anymore, because the driver in question had his arms, his legs and his head cut off by Ryder. Initially unsure whether Ryder is joking, Jim realises seconds later that his passenger is in deadly earnest, especially when he pulls a huge knife and – with an evil grin – remarks casually that he will do the same to Jim. However, upon realising that Ryder is not wearing his seatbelt, he manages to push the hitcher out onto the highway thanks to the passenger door being slightly ajar.

Triumphant, Jim is overjoyed to have rid himself of the psycho and continues the journey. The following morning, the weather has changed from rainy to sunny, he is overtaken by a family sitting in their car, with a boat attached to the vehicle. As the kids in the backseat look through the windscreen and begin to pull funny faces at Jim, who drives behind them, he too starts to pull funny faces back at them in jest. Suddenly, the face of Ryder appears between the two kids, leering at Jim while playing with a teddy bear. Panic-stricken, Jim steps on his gas pedal and tries to warn the parents of the hitcher, yelling and gesticulating at them wildly. Unfortunately, Jim’s frantic attempts have the opposite effect as they think he’s unhinged and drive off. In the process, Jim is involved in a minor accident involving a truck on the other side of the road. Some time later, continuing his journey, he discovers the family’s overturned car and we know from the blood splattered all over it what has happened… He encounters Ryder again and this time round, things are about to get a lot nastier, involving the explosion of a gas station, during which Jim just about manages to escape with his life (though the car is a write-off).

Drenched in petrol, he manages to convince Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a young waitress working at a roadside diner, to let him in despite the diner not being open yet. Feeling sorry for the state he’s in, she prepares a meal (cheeseburger and fries, what else) and excuses herself while tending to the kitchen. As he munches away on his meal, Jim almost bites into a severed finger which is placed between the fries and at once he realises that Ryder must be close-by. As indeed he is… Having called the cops earlier on, he hopes they will arrive before Ryder is able to do any more damage. The cops arrive alright, but it’s Jim who gets arrested for the apparent roadside killings. This sets off a whole avalanche of misunderstandings and violence, with Ryder at the helm (who always seems turn to up whenever Jim is in company either with the cops or others) and brutally killing those in the path. Nash, on a rescue mission to free Jim from the clutches of the cops as she knows Jim is innocent, meets with a particularly shocking demise at the hands of the warped Ryder in a hugely disturbing scene. Will Jim be able to turn the tables and kill Ryder, or is it just a matter of time before the hitcher will kill his prey in this frenzied cat-and-mouse-game….

Comparisons have been made to Steven Spielberg’s 1971 action-road movie DUEL in which Dennis Weaver is chased through the Mojave Desert by a rusty old truck, whose driver is never really seen. Neither do we find out the reason as to why he’s after Weaver. It’s a similar scenario in THE HITCHER though of course here, we know that the culprit is John Ryder, though it’s never explained as to why he is hell-bent on unleashing psychological (and physical) terror on poor Jim. One explanation – and there might be a clue in an early scene when Ryder says to Jim, “Don’t you know why I’m here? You’ll figure it out…” – is that at the beginning, Jim Halsey is seen as a rather naïve young man (a bit of a greenhorn as the Americans would say) who wouldn’t harm a fly and probably sees good in everyone. As the story progresses, his encounter with Ryder not only forces him to grow up quickly but to take actions which he would never have thought he would be capable of doing. In an interview, actor Rutger Hauer had suggested that Ryder might even be somewhat of a supernatural being, given the fact that he always turns up at the very moment when Jim is about and also seems to survive every attempt on his life. Like some sort of demented ghost, whose mission it is to make a proper man out of naïve young Jim. Then again, there are multiple other interpretations and at the end, it’s left for the viewer to make up their own minds. Either way, THE HITCHER is a helter skelter-ride from beginning to end, with great cinematography by John Seale and a chilling performance from Hauer.

Now restored in 4K UHD & Blu-ray, the picture quality is superb and this special release boasts many Extras, including numerous audio commentaries, interviews and trailers. Particularly interesting are director Robert Harmon’s restored 1983 short film CHINA LAKE (in which demented police officer Charles Napier rides around on his motorbike with murder in mind) and TELEPHONE, a 1986 short film by screenwriter Eric Red, in which Bud Cort is at the receiving end when an emotionally unstable woman (Laurie Lathem) randomly dials his number and threatens to commit suicide.