Baby, you can drive my car on Day 8 of 7 Dollar Popcorn Presents The 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Extravaganza: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem Day, just don't pickup any hitchhikers. Not after watching The Hitcher!Ha ha! See what I did there? That's funny! It is! You know, you just don't know comedy.
I did watch The Hitcher. Not the one that came out a couple weeks ago. The one from 86. The one with Rutger Hauer.
C. Thomas Howell is Jim Halsey and he's driving a car to San Diego. Along the way he decides to disobey his mother and pick up a hitchhiker. He's trying to be a good guy, I mean, it was raining pretty hard and this guy was just standing there on the side of the road. The guy says his name is John Ryder. And that's about ALL he says. Oh, no, he says he killed the dude in the car they just passed. And he's going to kill Jim, too. Unless Jim stops him.
So, Jim throws him out of the car and speeds off. He's real happy until a family passes him. A family towing a boat! A family towing a boat who picked up the hitchhiker!! Oh no! So, Jim tries to warn them, but hits a bus instead. (Thankfully his car is fitted with nanotechnology, because it appears to be unharmed a scene later and for the rest of it's time in the movie.) Jim finds the family, dead, and proceeds to throw up. He then drives to a gas station where John tries to kill him (again) by blowing up the gas station. This sets the car on fire. And that manages to destroy the amazing car. It must have, Jim doesn't have the car after that.
And, this is the movie. John will keep killing until Jim kills him. John just keeps following and antagonizing Jim. He is unrelentless. It reminded me of the one mission in Fight Club where they have to start a fight with stranger. Well, getting a stranger to kill you is apparently pretty hard too. But, well, Ryder is pretty fucking determined. Ryder keeps killing anyone except Jim. At one point, Ryder shoots down a police helicopter (with a handgun no less) to keep Jim alive!
The Hitcher is a pretty good movie. I really dug it. And to be honest, it holds up really well for being 21 years old. It doesn't feel dated. This is not a movie that was in desperate need of a remake. Let's say there are 7 cars behind you warning you about the serial killer in your backseat out of 10.
