[MacBlayne]

THE HITCHER

The Hitcher is one of those miraculous debuts that leaves you with two questions:

1: What on earth was Roger Ebert watching when he gave this zero stars?

That somebody could watch a film this beautiful, this haunting, this well-acted and crafted, that reaches for tone rather than blood, and deem it to be utterly worthless is beyond me as the Hitcher’s actions are. I can only think Ebert was offended by Howell’s lack of a Chicago accent.

As for question 2: What on earth happened to director Robert Harmon?

Harmon has done solid work on other films, but he was operating on God Mode with this. Watching The Hitcher, you’d swear you were watching the next John Carpenter. Harmon takes Eric Red’s lean and mean screenplay, and with John Seale’s tremendous cinematography and Mark Isham’s haunting score, creates a film of poetic elegance.

The film is perhaps closer in tone to European arthouse than the American slashers that the producers were probably hoping to cash in on. Rather that a series of stalk-and-slash scenes, there are many scenes of silence set in dimly lit locations or against dark clouds, with only the wind whistling. Harmon avoids explicit displays of violence and gore, but what he suggests is almost sickening. He is helped by his talented cast that includes C. Thomas Howell, an angelic Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jeffrey DeMunn. Howell is superb, as it is through him that Harmon can sell the carnage. Howell face becomes paler and hollower as the film progresses, the sign of a man who just can’t comprehend what is happening around him.

But it is Rutger Hauer who reigns supreme as the titular Hitcher, who seems less human and more demon. He is terrifying, as the fantastic dolly in as he picks himself off the road suggests. Hauer never overplays it. He brings the right level of impishness to his performance, suggesting that he enjoys what he does. Red’s script does give an element of pathos to his character. In the opening scenes, Hauer urges Howell to say “I want to die.” Howell yells “I don’t want to die,” before kicking Hauer out of his car.

Hauer accepts this, as he never actually seems to try and kill Howell after this. He stalks him, kills those around him, torments him in every way he can, but he never tries to kill him. In body, at least. By the end, he breaks Howell’s soul. Hauer leaves his Hell, but Howell has to stay in the vast emptiness of the desert, and contemplate all that he has lost.

The Hitcher is one of my all-time favourites. Roll on that 4K release!