The Hitcher (18) |Home Ents Review
Cast: Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Review by Colin Dibben
Jim (Howell) is driving through the rainy rural Texas night when he picks up a sodden hitch hiker (Hauer). The hitcher soon threatens Jim with an impossible choice, one that has seriously Old Testament gravity: tell me that you want to die or I will destroy your life.
Jim refuses – and The Hitcher proceeds to make good on option B, leaving a swathe of carnage across the roads, truck stops and motels of the desert landscape (it is really California’s Mojave Desert, looking exquisitely desolate).
As if The Hitcher’s (real name John!) biblical choice-cum-curse isn’t enough, he frames Jim for the series of appalling murders and motor vehicular mayhem he visits on the sun-and-sand blasted denizens of the desert. This is a classic neo-noir move, so that genre can be added to the horror, slasher and road movie genres already implied in the screenplay, by Eric Red.
Jim teams up with diner waitress Nash (Leigh) to help defeat The Hitcher. But it is going to be a long, hard ride.
Featuring arguably Rutger Hauer’s second most iconic role, The Hitcher gets the 4K UHD treatment and looks great. In this restoration, the desert backdrops gleam like icy diamond. And not in a good way; rather in a harsh and brutal but beautiful way. I was reminded of Blaise Pascal’s famous quote about the dread inspired by the “eternal silence of the infinite spaces.” In other words, the cinematic spaces reflect the relentless, steely drive of events, while keeping things alluring.
Whatever, the surprise here is the big budget look and feel (a $7.9 million budget was average back then) to what is essentially a B-movie premise, albeit with a relatively ‘high concept’. Director Harmon and director of photography John Seale must take bows: Harmon’s short film China Lake (included here as an extra) already has many of the visual stylings of The Hitcher; Seale had already filmed Witness and his career was about to go stellar.
There is also a very 80s and much loved synth score by Mark Isham.
This is a new 4K restoration by Second Sight Films from the original camera negative, supervised and approved by director Robert Harmon. The UHD is presented in HDR with Dolby Vision and features Dolby Atmos and original stereo audio mixes.
Extras include:
- Commentaries by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Robert Harmon and writer Eric Red
- Scene-specific audio commentaries with Harmon, Red, composer Mark Isham, director of photography John Seale and actors Rutger Hauer and C. Thomas Howell
- New interviews with Harmon, Red, Howell, Seale and Isham
- Duel Runner: Leigh Singer on the evolution of The Hitcher and Rutger Hauer
- China Lake: a short film by Robert Harmon newly restored
- The Calling Card: Robert Harmon on China Lake
- Telephone: a short film by Eric Red
The Hitcher is out on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Second Sight Films from 30 September 2024.
