The Hitcher - La lunga strada della paura

A normal ordinary guy picks up a stranger in the middle of nowhere so that he could drive awake. Little does he know that he's going into a road trip from hell...

Rutger Hauer give what I think is his best performance. Sure, there was that menacing Replicant in Blade Runner, but this one overshoots it by a long shot. He delivers a performance so good, that you'll find it difficult to question whether his character is believable or unbelievable.

C. Thomas Howell, one one of the kids in Steven Spielberg's ET, plays the protagonist. Here, he faces every driver's worst nightmare imaginable, and he delivers it with realism. Howell also demonstrates how an ordinary teenager can change into a helpless being who is caught between a psychopathic game of cat-and-mouse set by a brutal man hell-bent on killing him.

The nice New Mexico cinematography of which the film was filmed and set gives tranquility to the picture and makes the film looks good while delivering the thrills. Strongly supporting this topic is composer Mark Isham's gritty yet beautiful score. It;s just perfect for this kind of movie.

The action sequences are handled very nicely here. We got a petrol station blowing up, an intense police car chase, and one of the greatest endings in cinematic history. Period.

The Hitcher (1986) is one of the first films I have ever watched, and I still cherish it to this day. The 2007 remake, or rather, reDO, is a shallow and uninspiring music-videoish piece of crud that will only be liked by the MTV generation, but never the fans of the original. Why was it remade, we will never know.

Overall, it is an excellent movie and one of the best thrillers ever made. Pick this one up, guys, it's worth it.

8/10

Rutger Hauer owns The Hitcher. He hitches a ride with C Thomas Howell and he soon regrets his goodwill. People are killed along the way and the good Samaritan finds himself in deep doo doo. JJ Leigh appears as a waitress who gets tied up with the events. Howell spirals into Dante's Inferno with cops on the chase. Although farfetched I was entertained by the movie.

Yes, this movie would be remade years later with Sean Bean cast as the hitchhiker that likes to play some rather brutal games and one has to wonder why. Rutger Hauer was perfectly cast here as the psycho and his performance could not have been topped. Maybe they felt the need for a female lead rather than the male one because you know how females never get the chance to be the main character who survives in a horror movie (heavy sarcasm here). This is basically a story of a young man driving in the middle of nowhere who looks to have been very bored and in the need of some company. He finds some in the form of a hitchhiker and suffice to say he should have listened to all the warnings he got of hitchhikers, but on the plus side his travels in the middle of nowhere are about to be a lot less dull. You get a great scene as the two opponents as it were square off for the first time with the young man seemingly getting the better of the hitcher in round one. Unfortunately, everyone in this desert seems to be to kind for their own good as the guy sees the psycho in a car with a family. So other face-offs with this hitcher are coming up and some will be very violent indeed. A rather good thriller/horror type movie with my main complaint coming towards the end as how was he not handled better than that? Other than that you get a very good and chilling game of cat and mouse and you get a performance by Hauer that could not have possibly been beat.

Murder Spree Road Flick. Contains many fairly stupid moments ("plot holes") and yet remains gripping throughout its length. Graphic, stunning violence; be warned.

Howell is slightly vapid yet pretty and his relations with Rutger Hauer verge on the homo-erotic. Hauer is a near-perfect villain, demonstrating the steely resolve and psychological impenetrability that have made him a favorite "bad guy" in other films.

A great movie for the paranoid who wish to feed their fantasies. Owes something to Spielberg's "Duel" but remains its own film. Relatively spare visual style well-suited to the theme. Recommended, but not for the faint of heart.

This is just a perfectly executed 80s action/thriller/horror film. Rutger Hauer owns his role and is genuinely terrifying. Ignore the bad reviews, this is a masterpiece!