[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Hitcher (1986)

Once you look past the brilliantly menacing performance from Rutger Hauer as the fearsome John Ryder, The Hitcher as a film doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

For a psycho killer movie it's undefined and motiveless, it's also surreal due to plot developments which are random rather than connected, the whole thing feels like a nightmare in the head of unlikable victim C Thomas Howell who simply careers from one sequence to the next rather than actually waking up. Why would Ryder frame Howell for murder after murder then protect him from the police when things look at their bleakest? How can Ryder seemingly be everywhere at once, how can he down a helicopter with a single shot from a hand gun? How can he lay waste to an entire police station in silence? So little makes sense which again adds to the dream like feel. I realise that killers like Jason Vorhees seem to be everywhere at once but that's generally in a fairly confined space such as Crystal Lake, Ryder is everywhere yet it takes place across many miles of desert highway.

It's a grisly film with the viewer witnessing shotgun attacks, fingers on plates and so on, yet the films best set piece - Jennifer Jason Leigh tied between two trucks then torn apart is not shown on screen, so whilst there is violence there's also a lack of violence as well, again adding to the dream like nature of it all... perhaps Howell wakes up at the moment the trucks move apart.

Having said that, The Hitcher is still a decent film and quite enigmatic and also ambiguous - is it all so easily explained that Ryder simply has a death wish and wants it taken care of by someone worthy of the job? The scene where Ryder places the coins on Howell's eyes. Is he simply 'paying the ferryman' to end his life - it certainly appears that way. but i don't go along that it's a great film, due to it being a bit, well, nonsensensical.