The Hitcher is a 1986 horror / thriller film, directed by Robert Harmon and written by Eric Red. The film stars Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, Jeffrey DeMunn and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Billy Green Bush, Gene Davis, Armin Shimerman and Emmy-winner Henry Darrow make cameo appearances as police officers. The score was composed by Mark Isham. The film was #34 on Bravo TV's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
In addition to scenes shot in the studio, filming locations include Amboy, California, Barstow, California, Death Valley National Park in California, Imperial County, California and Lake Mead in Nevada.
The film spawned a sequel in 2003, The Hitcher II: I've Been Waiting, with C. Thomas Howell returning to the role of Jim Halsey. A remake was filmed and released on January 19, 2007; directed by Dave Meyers with Sean Bean playing the hitcher.
Plot summary
Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell), a young man delivering a car from Chicago to San Diego, spots a man hitchhiking and gives him a ride. The man, John Ryder (Rutger Hauer), is a brooding, soft spoken man; when Jim passes a stranded car, however, Ryder's personality suddenly shifts. Ryder calmly states that the reason the car is stranded is because he murdered and mutilated the driver, and he intends to do the same to Jim. Ryder produces a switchblade knife and taunts Jim for several moments before Jim realizes Ryder had never put on his seat belt and that the car door was left ajar, so knocks him out of the car's passenger door.
Relieved, Jim continues on his journey, until a station wagon carrying a family on vacation passes, and Jim is horrified to see that Ryder has hitched a ride with them. Jim attempts to warn the family, but ends up nearly totaling his car. When he finally catches up to the station wagon, Jim discovers the entire family has been hacked to death.
The movie shifts into an elongated chase sequence, which finds Jim trying to flee Ryder both on foot and in his car, to no avail; wherever Jim runs, Ryder finds him: It seems that Ryder, impressed with Jim's show of bravery by knocking him out of the car, has decided that Jim is the man who is finally going to put his killing spree to an end.
Jim then finds Ryder at an abandoned gas station; Ryder knocks down the gas pumps with a pickup truck and then lights a match; both cars drive off and the gas station explodes. Jim retreats to a roadside diner, where he meets a pretty young waitress named Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and calls the police. She then serves him a cheeseburger and french fries; he starts to relax and eats in solitude, until discovering, to his horror, that one of the fries is a severed finger. Realizing that Ryder is nearby, Jim attempts to flee, but is stopped by two brutal police officers (Billy Green Bush and Gene Davis) who promptly and coldly place him under arrest. At some point, Ryder had picked Jim's pocket and placed his wallet at the scene of a murder. Thus implicated, Jim is taken to a local police station where he is interrogated by the cold-hearted chief of police, booked, and placed in a cell.
Sometime later in the day, Jim awakens from a nap to find the police station eerily quiet and his cell door open. Jim slips out to discover the bodies of three dead policemen. Jim, panicked, steals a gun and runs from the station house as five police cars arrive.
Jim comes to a pay phone and sees two cops pull up. With his gun pointed at them, Jim takes the squad car hostage. He forces the police officers to get him in touch with the captain (Jeffrey DeMunn), and Jim pleads his case; the captain suspects that Jim is telling the truth, and asks Jim to come meet him. Jim agrees, but just then, Ryder pulls up alongside the car, kills the cops with a revolver, shoots out the radio, and drives away. Distraught and realizing he lost his only chance to clear himself, Jim attempts to commit suicide with the cop's revolver, but did not and decides to stop Ryder once and for all.
Jim wanders across the desert to a diner and is confronted by Ryder. When Jim asks Ryder why he's pursuing him, Ryder only replies "You're a smart kid, you figure it out" then calmly reaches across the table and sticks two pennies over Jim's eyes — an ancient funeral ritual performed on corpses so that their souls could pay Charon to carry them across the river Styx to the land of the dead. Jim is left terrified and alone with the pennies on his eyes and a handful of bullets that Ryder left him for his gun.
Jim leaves the diner and sneaks onto a Greyhound bus. He then sees that Nash is on the Greyhound. He pulls Nash into the bus's bathroom and convinces her that he's innocent.
Before the two can act, the police stop the bus and attempt to arrest Jim. Vengeful Trooper Hancock (Henry Darrow) means to kill Jim to avenge the deaths of the two police officers that Jim took hostage. Nash takes Jim's gun and pulls it on the two officers, and she and Jim flee in a police car. They're chased by two more police cars, who ignore Jim's pleas and maneuver to execute the two fugitives in cold blood. When the two police cars are both sides of Jim's car, Jim hits the brakes, and the cop aiming a shotgun at Jim's car tire then shoots out the other police cars tire causing the police cars to flip and collide with one another, presumably only injuring the officers. When a police chopper arrives and starts taking pot shots at Jim, Ryder pulls up, shoots the chopper down, and drives away.
The pair hide out in a roadside motel. While Jim is taking a shower, Ryder breaks into the room and kidnaps Nash, dragging her to a truck stop parking lot. He ties her between a Mack truck and its trailer and commandeers the truck's cab, revving the engine and threatening to tear Nash in half if he doesn't speak to Jim. The authorities, now convinced of Jim's innocence, enlist him to try to negotiate with Ryder. In the cab of the truck, Ryder demands that Jim shoot him. Jim refuses, saying that if he were to shoot Ryder, Ryder's foot will slip from the clutch, killing Nash anyway. Furious, Ryder insults Jim and then shifts both the clutch and the accelerator — the resulting action of the truck rips Nash in half killing her as Jim screams in helpless agony. Police swarm the truck and arrest Ryder.
At the station, the authorities are bewildered, unable to find any information on Ryder. He has no social security number, no driver's license, no indication that he has ever existed. All that the police can determine is that Ryder is a serial/spree killer and a threat which the local department cannot handle, and arrange to have him transported for holding at a state prison. Before Ryder is placed into a transport van, the police allow Jim to see him in the interrogation room. Ryder seems pleased to see Jim and touches his hand. Jim responds by spitting in Ryder's face.
The police cover Ryder in shackles and chains and place him in the back of a prison bus, escorted by multiple officers. As Jim is loaded into a police car to be taken to his family, he finally decides to murder Ryder; he steals Captain Esteridge's gun and hijacks the squad car, chasing the prison bus. As Jim pulls up on it, he hears gunshots on the bus and the back door flies open, to reveal the entire police escort murdered and a bloody, still partially chained Ryder clutching a shotgun. As the bus veers out of control, Ryder leaps out of the back of the bus and crashes through the window of the police car Jim is driving. Jim slams on the brakes, throwing Ryder off; the sudden braking, though, causes the police car to stall, and a bloody Ryder lifts himself from the highway, picks up his shotgun, and begins firing it into the police car.
Jim avoids the damage of the blasts by lying sideways on the front seat, repeatedly turning the ignition key and pumping the gas pedal in an effort to restart the car. The car eventually restarts, and Jim slams it into Ryder, throwing him off the side of the highway. Jim slips out of the car, picks up the still-loaded shotgun, and inspects Ryder's corpse. Satisfied that Ryder is dead, he turns around and walks back to the police car — when he hears movement behind him. Jim stops and turns, and is not surprised to see Ryder alive and standing up. Ryder smiles at Jim and throws his shackles down at Jim's feet. Jim responds by emptying the remaining shotgun shells into Ryder's body, at last killing him, and leaving Jim alone in the desert to light up a cigarette and watch the blood red sun set over the horizon.
Cast
Remake
A remake was filmed and released on January 19, 2007; the director (Dave Meyers) maintained the title character: Sean Bean plays the hitcher, John Ryder. The other two main characters, Grace and Jim, are played by Sophia Bush, and Zachary Knighton.
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