The Hitcher

The sky is dark hours before dawn over a lonely stretch of highway outside El Paso, Texas. Thunder rolls across the desert expanse and a match is struck. Jim Halsey takes a drag from a cigarette and drinks coffee from a thermos as he drives alone. Voices from the car radio give the slaughter cow report.

Early on in his trip, Jim Halsey narrowly misses a head on collision with a truck. He’s shaken, but physically sound. Throughout the rest of the film Halsey survives one near fatal miss after the next, each leaving him more and more mentally disheveled. When Jim pulls over shortly after his first brush with death he picks up a lone hitchhiker in the rain, Rutger Hauer in the title role. “John… Ryder” he says is his name. When they pass an abandoned car, Halsey slows while Ryder forces him on, the first of many dominant acts by Ryder towards Halsey. After some awkward conversation, Ryder gleefully explains the gruesome fate he bestowed upon the abandoned car’s driver and that he is going to do exactly the same thing to Halsey. Without giving too much away, Halsey manages to force Ryder out of the moving car escaping his assailant. Soon he realizes that he has only upped the ante for Ryder and a life or death game of cat and mouse ensues. —Classic-horror.com