Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Very Cool!!!

Load of rubbish!!

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This solid chillfest presents what happens when two ordinary men take an unlucky road trip and meet up with the title character, a merciless killer with a taste for sadism.Collins (Edmond O'Brien) and Bowen (Frank Lovejoy) are war buddies who take off for a planned fishing trip to Mexico when they pick up Emmett Myers (William Talman), standing beside a stopped car. But Myers isn't the owner of the car, whom he murdered some distance away. He's a serial killer who sees Collins and Bowen as his next victims, as soon as he gets clear of the U. S. He wastes no time pulling his revolver and telling them the score:"You guys are gonna die, that's all. It's just a question of when."Director/co-writer Ida Lupino puts you in the car with the two doomed men, making every pit stop into a nail-biting exploration of how people deal with madness-induced pressure.There are three enjoyable anomalies worth considering along the ride. Two of them are much commented upon: the fact a glamorous film actress is at the helm of such a hard film, with no female speaking parts in English and informed throughout by a kind of Hemingway tough-guy sensibility; and the fact the heavy is played so absorbingly by Talman, that future law-and-order foil to TV's Perry Mason.The third: Of the two actors playing the prisoners, the one with the biggest name, O'Brien, who made such an impression three years prior as a similarly put-upon innocent in "D. O. A.", is something of a second banana here. Lovejoy's character is the one who employs patience and courage. He's got a wife and children, and as Myers taunts, "Just keep thinking' how nice it'll be to see 'em again."Lovejoy and Talman, not to mention Lupino, deserved more chances to stretch themselves as effectively as they do here. All three put up stellar work.Lupino and husband co-writer Collier Young set a quick tempo, punctuated by Myers' sneering jibes at his fellow travelers. No attempt is made at making him sympathetic, yet his terse, flat commands keep you riveted.When he relaxes, he's even more unlikable. He mocks Collins and Bowen for being "soft" and even brags later on how one of them might have gotten away if they weren't that way."You kept thinking' about each other, so you missed some chances," he says.You get the feeling Myers enjoys torturing the pair even more than he does the prospect of killing them. His fleering eyes, even with his right eyelid always half-closed, tell all you want to know about him.The film moves even more quickly than its 71-minute running time suggests. Occasionally there are breaks in the action while we see an American fed talk strategy with a Mexican police commander (Jean Del Val, recognizable as the first actor seen speaking in "Casablanca.") This feels a bit canned, though, as do the radio bulletins telling of Myers' progress whenever he tunes in. The climax comes off a bit flat, too.But "The Hitch-Hiker" entertains with its strong tension and its lack of gushiness or fat. This is a man's movie, no less manly for being the product of a woman who knew what men like, and how to deliver same.

Two friends on a fishing trip (Edmond O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy) pick up a hitchhiker (William Talman). That turns out to be a huge mistake as this guy is a psycho who's left a trail of bodies behind him. Now he holds the two men hostage at gunpoint and forces them to drive into Mexico.Based on real-life hitchhiking killer Billy Cook, this is an excellent film noir thriller directed and co-written by Ida Lupino. It might be the best movie she directed, although I'm partial to On Dangerous Ground. Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy are both fine but Lovejoy gets a little more to work with. Which is funny since O'Brien was the bigger star of the two. William Talman, best known as the district attorney who always lost to Perry Mason, is great here. There's a creepiness to his performance that separates the character from just another thug with a gun that was commonplace in movies, even in 1953. It's a taut thriller with fine performances and excellent direction. Short runtime is a plus. Years of more graphic movies with similar plots may dilute the impact of this some but I think it's still a strong film.

Hitch-hiker is a tense 1950s drama involving two sport fishermen in a car that is hijacked by a psychopath fleeing to Mexico. After already committing murders and with the police hot on his trail, the criminal is desperate to escape and becomes more unhinged. Using a gun from the back seat, he forces the two men on a fishing trip to follow his orders. The hitch-hiker Emmett Myers is played by William Talman, who also played prosecuting attorney Hamilton Berger on the Perry Mason television show. Here he shows what a great character actor he is in an earlier role as a psychopath. His acting is superb as he terrorizes and plays cruel games with the two human pawns. This movie was directed by film noir actor Ida Lupino, the first woman to direct a film in this genre. The story was pieced together from newspaper accounts. Edmond O'Brien as Roy Collins and Frank Lovejoy as Gilbert Bowen are well paired with O'Brien acting the hothead Collins and Lovejoy, the cool as a cucumber family man. The drive is one lengthy ordeal and is marked by a few torturous scenes: the William Tell target practice; the psychopath's paralytic eye staying open; the walk across the desert when Collins has an injured leg. I am grateful that TCM brings back to the screen an underrated and well-crafted movie like Hitchhiker that could otherwise be forgotten.

This cautionary tale about the dangers of picking up hitch-hikers was famously the first film noir to be directed by a woman (Ida Lupino) and its story is remarkably tense and gripping throughout. The fact that it has a short running time, a lively pace and a no-nonsense style of delivering the action, adds to the urgency of what's happening on-screen and emphasises that the events taking place have a momentum all of their own and that they're propelling the hitch-hiker's helpless victims towards a dreadful fate that they have no hope of escaping.Roy Collins (Edmond O'Brien) and Gilbert Bowen (Frank Lovejoy) are a couple of guys from Arizona who plan to enjoy a short fishing vacation in Mexico but en route they see a man at the side of the road and offer him a lift. Almost as soon as he's seated in the car, the stranger, who is Emmett Myers (William Talman), pulls a gun on the men and wants them to take him through the Mexican desert to Santa Rosalia where he intends to catch a ferry. It soon becomes apparent that Myers is a serial killer who's on the run from the police and a radio report that they hear during their journey confirms that the police don't know his current whereabouts.When night falls and the men settle down to sleep, Myers informs his hostages that, due to a deformity of his eyelid, his right eye remains open when he's sleeping and so they should forget about trying to escape because he's likely to see and kill them if they attempt anything like that. Knowing what a ruthless killer Myers is, Roy and Gil don't make any attempt to escape that nightThe journey across the desert becomes increasingly difficult and Myers gets very agitated when the car horn starts to blast continuously and is upset again later when one of the tyres is punctured. In his more composed moments he shouts orders at his terrified captives and tells them that they're soft and that he's superior to them because he simply takes whatever he wants. In the rare opportunities that they get, Roy and Gil try to discuss an escape plan but this causes disagreements between them. Because of this and Myers' promise that he's going to kill them as soon as they arrive at Santa Rosalia, their need for some way out of their predicament becomes increasingly desperate.This movie is intended to create an atmosphere of fear and this is successfully achieved because:-1. its story is inspired by real-life events. 2. the ruthlessness of the killer is powerfully portrayed at the very beginning of the film.3. Myers' shooting skills are demonstrated to his victims at an early stage of their journey. 4. his practice of sleeping with one eye open is extremely creepy.Furthermore, locating the victims' ordeal in the claustrophobic confines of a car and the isolation of long empty desert roads highlights the fact that there's no easy escape from Roy and Gil's hellish ordeal.Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy are very convincing in their roles as a couple of ordinary middle-class friends and William Talman is absolutely sensational as Myers, who is the personification of pure evil. With its punchy dialogue, moody visual style and intensely threatening atmosphere, "The Hitch-Hiker" is an incredibly strong, riveting and memorable crime thriller.