The Hitch-Hiker (1953): watch the full film free, legally

A fishing trip becomes a hostage ordeal

The Hitch-Hiker is a 1953 American thriller film noir directed by Ida Lupino, who co-wrote it with her former husband, Collier Young. Edmond O'Brien, William Talman and Frank Lovejoy star. Independently produced and distributed by RKO Pictures, it was the first mainstream-released American film of its type directed by a woman. Lupino had begun directing after Elmer Clifton became sick and could not finish a film for Filmakers Inc., the company founded by Lupino and Young to make low-budget, issue-oriented movies. This was her first hard-paced, fast-moving picture after four films about social issues.

In California, friends Roy Collins and Gilbert Bowen set out one evening for a fishing trip to San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico. After crossing the border at Calexico-Mexicali, they continue through the night and pick up Emmett Myers. He pulls a gun. Myers is a serial killer who has already kidnapped and murdered three motorists in similar circumstances, and he takes control of the car and its occupants.

Myers orders Collins and Bowen through the Baja California desert toward Santa Rosalía, Baja California Sur. He plans to evade a police dragnet by taking a ferry across the Gulf of California to Guaymas, and insists that they travel at night to avoid law enforcement. The two men comply while their captor terrorizes them, including forcing Bowen to fire a game rifle at a tin can balanced in Collins' hand. At checkpoints, Myers takes pleasure in what appear to be ineffective efforts by Mexican authorities to find him.

Desert roads and failed escapes

After a tense food stop, Collins and Bowen discuss escape. They agree that any attempt must come at the right moment, or they will be killed. The next morning, the car radio fails and Myers strikes Collins in the head for breaking it, leaving Bowen to drive. Police investigators discover that the three men are together and work out Myers's likely destination.

At a gas station, Myers kills a dog. Bowen leaves his wedding ring for police to find. Collins and Bowen later try to get away during the night, but Collins injures his ankle and both men are recaptured. Police supervisors release false information intended to mislead Myers, apparently with some effect. When the car is damaged, Myers makes the group continue on foot at gunpoint. He taunts the two friends over missed chances to flee, even where one man's escape might have meant the other's death.

The story was based on Billy Cook's 1950 killing spree. Posing as a hitchhiker, Cook murdered a family of five, kidnapped a Riverside County Sheriff's Department deputy and abandoned him in the desert, and killed a travelling salesman. He then took two men hostage on a hunting trip and forced them toward Santa Rosalía. Cook was identified and apprehended there by local police. He was tried, convicted and given the death penalty, then executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison on December 12, 1952.

Lupino's independently made noir

Production began on June 24, 1952 and wrapped in late July. Nicholas Musuraca, an RKO Pictures regular, was director of photography. Location work took place in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine and Big Pine, California. The film was at first called The Difference and The Persuader. It premiered in Boston on March 20, 1953, received little fanfare, and went into general release immediately.

Contemporary responses were mixed. The Philadelphia Inquirer called it a "grim little chiller," praised the performances, and said Lupino directed it with "masculine strength." The New York Daily News gave it three and a half stars out of four, saying Lupino made "good and exciting use" of the real-life incident. The New York Times described it as an "unrelenting but superficial study of abnormal psychology coupled with standard chase melodrama." Its critic, A. H. Weiler, praised the performances and Lupino's brisk direction while finding the plot too predictable.

Later critics responded more warmly. In 1992, Bob Porfiero and Alain Silver praised the desert locations, writing that they isolate the protagonists in a milieu as uninviting and potentially deadly as any in film noir. Time Out Film Guide wrote in 2008 that Lupino creates a bleak noir atmosphere in the car and desert while charting changes in the two threatened men's relationship. The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1998 as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

Film details from the Wikipedia article “The Hitch-Hiker”. Text adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0.