Two old army buddies (Edmund O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy) take off on a fishing trip from California to the Mexican coast. At the same time, a fugitive serial killer (William Tallman) is hitch-hiking and killing his way across the country. They intersect in the desert, just before the Mexican border. He hijacks and holds them hostage on an odyssey into hell. We follow them deeper and deeper into the beautiful, but hostile desert as Tallman seems to outwit the authorities time and again. They become more and more terrified as he becomes more and more psycho. He displays a kind of pure malice and cruelty that makes your skin crawl. Example: He forces one of the buddies to shoot the glass out of the other's hand. His evil character has a drooping right eye. While preparing to sleep around a campfire, he dares the captives to guess whether he is awake or asleep. They guess wrong - he kills them. The viewer takes this trip across the desert with them, all the way to their final destination, and the climax of this exciting film. It is easy to see why Ida Lupino, was considered one of the premier film noir directors. Her concept of the fishing buddies, courageous, proud, but terrified reaches right down into our guts. But it is her balanced vision of the evil, intelligent, unpredictable killer that defines the film. This is a keeper. If you like it - and how could you not - try Split Second. There is a curious coincidence between these two films. Both were directed by famous and respected actors. This by Ida Lupino and the other by Dick Powell.
Review of The Hitch-Hiker
