The Hitcher (1986)
Directed by Robert Harmon
On a stormy night, young Jim, who transports a luxury car from Chicago to California to deliver it to its owner, feeling tired and sleepy, picks up a mysterious hitchhiker, who has appeared out of nowhere, thinking that a good conversation will help him not to fall asleep. He will have enough time to deeply regret such an unmeditated decision.
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What critics compared The Hitcher to
Widowed dad Istvan Kovak (Rutger Hauer, "The Hitcher") is uncomfortably pushy about the dead with the young boy, including the corpse of his own mother.
Imagine “The Hitcher” without the psychotic Rutger Hauer.
Director Robert Harmon who helmed the cult classic “The Hitcher” (one of my favorites), and the little seen “Highwaymen” goes to work on this film, and boy can this dude direct.
Director Robert Harmon ("The Hitcher") builds up and releases healthy doses of ominous atmosphere from time to time, as when another victim (Ethan Embry) shows Julia the nightmarish, black-on-black paintings he creates as an outlet for the overwhelming dread that's eating away at him.
In these days of CGI overkill, not many directors manage to keep their monsters hidden off-screen, but director Robert Harmon ("The Hitcher") does exactly that, letting our imaginations do the scaring by giving us just the briefest of glimpses of monster mayhem.
Some might be thinking that the combination of the filmmaker responsible for "The Hitcher" and the creative force behind the likes of the "Scream" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies sounds like a good idea.
And so a game of cat and mouse, recalling portions of Steven Spielberg’s Duel and Robert Harmon’s The Hitcher , is kicked into motion.
“Unhinged” falls back on a reliable trope: Spielberg showed in “Duel” and Robert Harmon in “The Hitcher” that crazed drivers can deliver exhilaration in movies full of twists and turns.
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Two movies in particular were attacked by Siskel and Ebert with such venom, I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and The Hitcher (1986), that those kinds of horror movies were immediately frowned upon by all mainstream movie people, press and artists.