The Hitchhikers

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.

Two summers after the Manson Family murders, a nonconformist dude enjoys his own li'l harem in the Southwest desert, but they have to make money somehow and so prey upon men stopping for the alluring girls as they pretend to be hitchhikers.

"The Hitchhikers" (1972) belongs to the counterculture genre that ran from the late 60s to early 70s. While the outlaw biker flicks from that same period were a separate genre, there was some crossover. For instance, there's a biker dude here that visits the hippies in the ghost town. Or take "Angels Hard as They Come" from the year prior, which likewise features nonconformists living in a SoCal ghost town. Thankfully, this is superior.

It only cost $223,200, which would be equal $1.6 million today. By Comparison, "Vanishing Point" from the previous year had 6.5 times as much money with which to work. The best part is the three main females and how their beauty is effectively captured on camera without getting too sleazy (although there's a little tame nudity).

My favorite is the redhead, Karen, whom I'm assuming is Tammy Gibbs (it's hard to tell because the credits ambiguously list three of the girls simply as 'hitchhiker'). Meanwhile blonde Misty Rowe plays protagonist Maggie and brunette Linda Avery plays her rival Diane. All three are physically stunning. But how long can their outward beauty last living in such conditions? What will they look like in a mere ten years?

"Easy Rider" was easily the best of the counterculture flicks, although "Billy Jack" was a worthy Indie contender, whereas "The Wild Angels" was arguably the best of the outlaw biker movies. All three contained great depth beneath the surface entertainment. "The Hitchhikers" is playful fluff by comparison, but works as a snapshot in time of the 'free love' counterculture movement and what happened after their 'peace and love' ideal was destroyed overnight with the 1969 Manson Family murders, followed by the Altamont Free Concert fiasco four months later.

"The Wild Angels," "Easy Rider," "Vanishing Point" and "Dirty Mary Crazy Larry" showed the inevitable consequences of counterculture folly, but this one uniquely keeps a playful spirit. However, you could say that what the group is forced to do in order to make a living is their own perdition, not to mention their primitive, drug-addled living conditions in the ghost town. Down the road, I'm pretty sure they're going to realize that holding up men with guns is evil; it's a form of abuse at least and torture at worst. Maybe they justify their actions on the grounds that their victims were lustful males, but what about the minister, who seemed to stop simply to do a good deed by giving a pedestrian a ride?

The soundtrack is of the Woodstock variety, upbeat folk rock, except by no-names. There's zero hard rock, let alone heavy metal, the latter of which had only existed for about a year when this was made in 1971.

It runs 1 hour, 32 minutes, and was shot in Thousand Oaks, California, which is 35 miles west of Hollywood and 20 miles northwest of Malibu.

GRADE: B-

I found this movie to be very entertaining. It's light hearted and it rolls along at a good pace. Perfect for an afternoon viewing. Maybe not for the younger viewer though as there is quite a lot of partial nudity and teasing camera work. The characters are likeable even though they are crooks and the acting, although not challenging is more than adequate.It's very much a 70's road movie and a good example at that.

Most of the time I give a film 10 stars if it entertains and 1 if it stinks in kind of a thumbs up or thumbs down vote... because picking the numbers in between seem a little too artificial for someone like me has no problem pointing out trash, liking trash, or criticizing a flawed movie that I ultimately still enjoyed.

However, with movies like this, unless they are absolutely horrible, I feel the need to give them 10 stars on principal because you always get exactly what they advertise that you're going to get.

In this case you get boobs, nudity, and hippies. The film bills itself about being about boobs and hippies. The plot makes it clear that you aren't going to get anything deeper than boobs and hippies.

If you sat down to watch this movie and expected anything other than boobs and hippies than either you were grossly misinformed or you were attempting to delude yourself because you felt guilty about watching a movie that is about nothing more than boobs and hippies.

However, there is a pretty funny line here and there that will make you laugh out loud and the soundtrack is actually exceptionally good... and those are two things that you don't really expect in a movie that is about really nothing more than boobs and hippies.

Some of the actors actually have pretty decent comedic timing and a few of them actually know how to deliver a believable line... which is, again, kind of shocking in a movie that is only about boobs and hippies.

And what makes it better is that, yeah, this was a drive-in sleaze movie in the era where these kind of movies played regularly at such fine institutions of American culture. There is something absolutely HYSTERICAL about putting an enormous film about boobs and hippies up on the big screen, where anyone driving by can get an eye full. I kind of miss that America, you know, the one without Puritanical Prudishness. The America where you might be driving down the road at night, and look off to the drive-in just to get an eye full of eight-foot tall boobs bouncing on an IMAX size screen somewhere in Middle America.

So, if you want boobs and hippies and 1970s drive-in sleaze this is one of the better ones you can watch.

All I remember about this movie is the annoying soundtrack. There's this really sleepy sounding hippie voice singing over a jam band or an acoustic guitar. He says, "Here comes Benson" over and over in a nasally lazy voice because the main character is Benson, who is running from the law. All the songs are actually made for the movie. To this day, it is the main thing I remember about it.

The other memorable part is the hippie commune in the desert and how dirty everyone was. People just did whatever Benson said. They robbed motorists who were nice enough to stop to offer them rides when the hippies would pretend to hitchhike. The characters were just plain mean, and the sick part was that they got away with it. No conscience on any of them. And that annoying song! It was like it was trying really hard to be free lovin' and hippie-like, but the characters were just too mean to be respected.

Left me with a bad taste in my mouth and a bad song in my head.