The Hitch-Hiker Puts You In The Driver's Seat...of Terror!

Ida Lupino's seminal 1953 feature The Hitch-Hiker has been referred to as a Desert Noir by many film scholars, an apt description given how it shifts the tone and style of a traditional film noir from its conventional city setting to a more isolated desert area. But for my money, The Hitch-Hiker was also evocative of those torture horror films that were all the rage in American cinema in the mid-2000s, the likes of Saw and Hostel that were all about the grotesque horror experienced by normal people at the hands of sadistic individuals. The Hitch-Hiker, thanks to Haye's Code era restrictions, can't even begin to be as gruesome as your average Eli Roth movie but its emphasis on the misery of its two lead protagonists evoked those grisly modern films to me anyway.


I've never really been a fan of that kind of horror fare, so it's a testament to how exceptional writer/director Ida Lupino (who wrote the screenplay alongside Collier Young) is with her work here that The Hitch-Hiker managed to engross me despite being evocative of torture horror fare. The titular antagonist is a psychopath by the name of Emmett Myers (William Talman), who is going across America and hitching rides with people before murdering them. The newest people to be unlucky enough to cross his path are Roy Collins (Edmond O'Brien) and Gilbert Bowen (Frank Lovejoy), two buddies traveling through Mexico on a vacation they've kept secret from their wives.

Those plans are put on hold once Myers gets in their car and holds them hostage. Myers is a sadistic figure who always feels like he's two seconds away from killing Collins and Bowen and just him being present on-screen is enough to get you to hold your breath. Though he's handy with a gun, Myers doesn't just make his intimidating presence known through a weapon, Lupino and Young's script also creates scenes where tension is created through him driving a kind of wedge between Myers and Bowen. This is especially apparent in the best scene of The Hitch-Hiker, a pulse-pounding scene where Myers forces one of his hostages to try out some target practice on a can the other hostage is holding mere inches away from his head.

It's a gripping scene that leaves you on the edge of your seat and then some as the multitude of possibilities for how this scene could go run through your head. Will both men just get shot? Will one of the hostages shoot the other? There are no good endings here and both Lupino's direction and the editing by Douglas Stewart do a remarkable job in maintaining that level of breathless tension throughout the whole gangbusters sequence. Though that's the apex of The Hitch-Hiker's intense sequences, it's certainly not the only impressive instance of this thriller putting one on edge with a chase scene between Myers in a car and his two hostages on foot being similarly enrapturing in the anxiety it induces in the viewer.

Similarly impressive in The Hitch-Hiker is its story structure, which actually manages to cut away from the plight of Roy Collins and Gilbert Bowen without diluting the intensity of their situation. Typically, thrillers get maximum chills by confining their story to just one location, but in the case of The Hitch-Hiker, frequently cutting to sequences showing American and Mexican law enforcement officers narrowly miss catching up to the titular killer actually proves to be a boon rather than a hindrance to the creepy experiences of Collins and Bowen. In these digressions, we see how forces meant to help them just can't keep up with the shrewd and quick nature of Emmett Myers. Help is always just out of reach for these two individuals.

Playing the important role of Emmett Myers is William Talman, an actor whose performance makes it no secret that Myers is a malicious man in every regard. The way Myers composes Talman's body language and speaking patterns make it seem like the hatred in this man's soul has soured every pore in his body, cruelty emanates of him like a foul odor off of a pile of trash. This utterly convincing portrait of human depravity is complimented by Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy doing wonderful work portraying understandable fear in the face of such a massively intimidating figure. All three actors, not to mention the writing and directing of Ida Lupino, make the misery fueling The Hitch-Hiker an appropriately terrifying sight to behold.