The Hitch-Hiker This Could Be You! Review By Bruce Cantwell The sensationalistic title card that opens Ida Lupino's film noir classic states that this is the story of a man and a gun and a car. The gun belonged to the man but the car could be yours! Boy, maybe, but it's hard to imagine the circumstances. There's no way I'd be picking up a guy who looked like Emmett Myers (William Talman) in the daytime. He's creepy looking. The folks in the movie picked him up at night. Seeing a guy like this on the side of the road at night is the stuff nightmares are made of. Once you swallow the idea that not one but several folks have picked this scarecrow up, it's not hard to believe that they met with unpleasant ends. Gilbert Bowen (Frank Lovejoy) and Roy Collins (Edmond O'Brien) are getting away from the wives for a fishing trip when they run into Myers near the Mexican border. His car appears to be stalled on a deserted road, so they offer their assistance. D'oh! They spend the rest of the film taking orders at gunpoint, bearing the full brunt of a psychopaths twisted whims. It's not easy for a lone gunman to hold two hostages over the course of several days. You figure he has to sleep, right. Except Myers has a paralyzed eyelid so one of his eyes is always partially open and Bowen and Collins have to guess whether he's awake or asleep. Their lives depend on guessing right. Ida Lupino's lean production stays close to Myers and his two captives throughout the film. The focus is on the uneasy relationship of the gunman and his two hostages. Even everyday situations like putting gas in the car or picking up groceries are made perilous by Myers paranoia about Bowen "speaking Mexican." The tight budget cheats us out of such essential scenes as flashbacks to Myers's childhood, inventing occupations for his early victims, the heartwarming scene where Bowen and Collins say goodbye to their wives: in other words, nothing. This is solid 71-minute film noir in the DETOUR mold.	Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/hitch_hiker.php3 on line 30 Warning: include(http://myenvoy.com/movies/side.php3) [function.include]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/hitch_hiker.php3 on line 30 Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'http://myenvoy.com/movies/side.php3' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/bruce20/public_html/myenvoy/movies/reviews/hitch_hiker.php3 on line 30
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