Written by: Jase Marsiglia
One terrible night in Las Vegas on September 29, 1978, a 15-year-old girl named Mary Vincent hitched a ride to her grandfather’s house to escape her abusive stepfather. What followed was the stuff of nightmares. Lawrence Bernard Singleton beat, raped, and mutilated Mary, chopping off both of her forearms with a hatchet before throwing her over a 30-foot cliff along Interstate 5. Miraculously, she survived. Somehow, she climbed back up the embankment with no arms and flagged down a newlywed couple, who rushed her to a hospital in time to save her life.
On a cold night in March 1970, Kathleen Johns was driving with her 10-month-old daughter when a man flagged her down, warning that her rear wheel looked loose. The supposed Good Samaritan appeared to fix it, but moments later, the wheel came off entirely. He offered to drive Kathleen and her baby to a gas station. Instead, she found herself trapped in a car with a man many believe was the Zodiac Killer. Only by leaping from the moving vehicle with her infant did she escape with their lives.
And then there are Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, known as the Tool Box Killers, whose horrific crimes against hitchhiking young women in Southern California were so brutal that an audio recording of their final victim, 16-year-old Shirley Ledford in 1979, has reportedly been used to help prepare FBI recruits for the grim realities of violent crime.
A pattern runs through these stories. Most of the time, the danger is not the person hitching the ride, but the one behind the wheel. Once you are in someone else’s car, you are on their moving turf. The decision to trust a stranger can shift from harmless to life-threatening in seconds. A driver who picks up someone who appears harmless probably has better odds of a quiet evening than the person standing roadside, trying to read a face through rain-streaked glass and glare.
But it is the opposite scenario that fuels a lean, mean little thriller from 1986, when a teenager named Jim Halsey is driving through West Texas on a rainy night and makes the choice to pull over for a stranger.
The Hitcher (1986)
⭐⭐️⭐️1/2
It has been a long haul from Chicago, and Jim, played by C. Thomas Howell, is fighting sleep. Rain pounds the windshield, and the highway ahead is a black ribbon stretching into nowhere. Whether out of boredom or kindness, he stops and picks up a hitchhiker named John Ryder, portrayed with icy precision by Rutger Hauer.
The good deed curdles almost immediately. Ryder is calm, soft-spoken, and utterly unhinged. He makes it clear that he intends to torment and eventually kill Jim, unless Jim can somehow “stop him.” Ryder is not just a drifter with a knife. He is a calculating predator who seems to crave confrontation as much as bloodshed. There is even a strange sadness to him, as if he is daring someone to end his rampage.
Jim manages to force Ryder out of the car and speeds away, but that only deepens Ryder’s interest. What follows is a brutal cat-and-mouse chase across desolate Texas highways, leaving wreckage and bodies in its wake.
Director Robert Harmon and writer Eric Red waste no time plunging viewers into a roadside nightmare. Hauer radiates menace on a near supernatural level, arguably rivaling his performance in "Blade Runner". On the surface, "The Hitcher" resembles a stripped-down highway thriller in the spirit of "Duel", but it quickly becomes something stranger.
How does Ryder always seem to be in exactly the right place? How does he frame Jim for crimes with almost no evidence? Why does he repeatedly spare him when killing him would be easy?
Harmon and Red seem less interested in realism and more invested in something existential and unnerving. Characters drift into the story almost as if summoned, including Nash, a waitress played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who appears at pivotal moments. Coincidence, or something more?
If you are watching "The Hitcher" for the first time, consider this. Imagine yourself alone on a vast highway at night. No headlights behind you. No taillights ahead. The desert stretches so far into darkness it might as well be the surface of the moon. You fight sleep. You invent stories to stay awake. Your mind wanders.
“Stop me,” Ryder says.
But you are the one driving.
Did Jim nod off at the wheel and dream the whole ordeal? Is this a purgatorial landscape? A nightmare stitched together by exhaustion and fear? Or did it all really happen?
Either way, the film thrives in emptiness. It is barren, bleak, and stripped of comfort. And in that desolation, "The Hitcher" becomes a gripping and unexpectedly complex thriller.
HOME VIDEO
For years, Momentum Pictures’ two-disc Special Edition DVD from 2003 was the definitive release, featuring a commentary with Robert Harmon and Eric Red, scene-specific commentaries with cast and crew, short films by Harmon, screenplay excerpts, and an episode of "How Do These Movies Get Made?"
While the United States has not seen a major upgrade, UK distributor Second Sight released an impressive edition in 2024. The set includes material from the earlier release, new commentaries, interviews, a Projection Booth podcast with Harmon and Hauer, short films, and a new 4K restoration from the original camera negative approved by Harmon. The Limited Edition also contains a 200-page hardback book with essays, interviews, Eric Red’s screenplay, and collectible cards. If you can track it down, it is well worth it.
BITS ‘N’ PIECES
Traum A Meter:
2 out of 4.
Most of the violence resembles standard action fare, with gunshot wounds and physical scuffles. The most disturbing moments are the ones left off-screen, particularly the infamous trailer hitch sequence.
Today’s Jam: “All the King’s Horses” by The Firm was climbing the charts as Jim cruised through West Texas.
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