Le autostoppiste

One of the many very bad hippie , biker, deadbeat generation movies of the late 60's early 70's . You get some crappy acting and a bunch of nude white trash hygienically challenged free love whores but it still cannot save this bad trip . It really has nothing going for it. If you have ever actually been around this type of people in that era all you will remember is that nasty smell of unwashed armpits and genitals along with bad breath. If you want to see a bad movie tune in .

OK, this movie isn't very good--but it IS the early 1970's. It has the hippies, the free love, the short-shorts, and not a bra in sight. It has the groovy, pleasantly awful early 70's folk-rock music. It is meandering, amoral, and ultimately completely pointless. It's a road movie that doesn't really go anywhere. Like many movies of the time it tried to exploit the infamy of the Manson family, but its anti-hero "Benson" is not nearly as crazy or vicious as the real-life Manson, and his "family" consists of only a few under-dressed women whom he uses to hold up horny male motorists, all to finance his evil master plan of buying a broken-down school bus. Misty Rowe stars as a teenage runaway and "Benson's" main squeeze, and she demonstrates all the raw talent that would later lead to her unforgettable work on "Hee Haw". There's some (mostly Misty-related) nudity, but there's very little sex for this kind of flick and even less violence. But if you have a soft spot in your heart for early 70's drive-in Americana, you could do worse I guess.

THE HITCHHIKERS stars Misty Rowe as Maggie, who, upon discovering that she's pregnant, goes on an odyssey of sorts on the open road. This is a rough journey for Maggie, who is both robbed and sexually assaulted along the way.

This all leads to a desert ghost town, where Maggie is taken by a man named Benson (Norman Klar). She's introduced to women who work with Benson in his criminal enterprise, involving the movie's title. These folks are sort of a non-homicidal Manson Family, whose approach to larceny is certainly novel. Maggie joins in on the felonious fun.

Ms. Rowe is good in her rather naive, debut role, making the best of this early 1970's drive-in fodder...

"Hee Haw"`s Misty Rowe stars in this god-awful exploitationer made to cash in on the Manson cult murders. After being impregnated by her boyfriend, she decides to hit the road and ends up with a group of convicts who specialize in robbing motorists. Complete amateurism in terms of acting, photography, etc., but the real crime is the ENDLESS padding of every other scene to lengthen the film`s running time. Rowe fans will also be disappointed in the scarceness of her (fleeting) nude scenes.

Although the Woodstock musical festival was a three (3) day event back in 1969, I think this cult leader named Benson (Nick Klar) and his band of Charlie Manson like hot looking female followers who agreed to tease unsuspecting motorists then rob them, assumed that the Woodstock festival was continuing three (3) years later since this film was released in 1972.

The 1969 Woodstock music festival was all about peace, love and good music. In the 1972 film the Hitchhikers, there certainly is an abundance of love and good music, but the peace of the historical 1969 Woodstock music festival was replaced by a Charles Manson like inspired male hippie cult leader named Benson who took in a bunch of scantily clad hot looking women who were trained by Benson to pretend to be hitchhiking and then when the horny male motorists would stop to get a much closer look at the hottie hitchhikers, out from behind a tree Benson would appear gun in hand to rob his unsuspecting victims whose erections in their pants would quickly deflate when Benson's gun was pointed at their head and the motorists were told to get out of their car to be robbed at gunpoint.

Maggie (Misty Rowe) arrives at Benson's compound, broke, hungry and pregnant so when Benson sees Maggie's youth and beauty he quickly brings her into his harum of hitchhikers and trains her how to look sexy and enticing so the motorists will stop. Catfights between Misty and another of Benson's followers named Diana (Linda Avery) erupt for Benson's affections. I must say although the movie is a classic B movie genre, it appealed to me more like a first rate release that just did not get the respect it deserved probably because it did not have any A-lister film star in it, nor was it produced by one of the major film studios.

In my humble opinion the acting was good, the story line simple, and the film was interspersed with great music in a timely manner. If you watch the film on a DVD release stick around to hear the motivation of the writers/directors husband and wife team Ferd and Beverly Sebastian, as their personal messages are worth listening to.

I give this simple B-movie crime/drama film a more than decent 7 out of 10 rating.