The Hitcher

Jim Halsey, driving through Texas overnight, picks up a hitchhiker in the rain. The man's name is John Ryder and the moment he is in the car he tells Jim he is going to kill him. Jim manages to throw him out; it does not end there. Ryder keeps reappearing further along the road and pinning his own murders on Jim. The subject is not the chase but the strange fixation between victim and killer. Robert Harmon directed from a screenplay by Eric Red. Rutger Hauer plays Ryder and C. Thomas Howell plays Jim. Red thought of the story while driving across the country, starting from a Doors song. He wrote it over seven months while working as a taxi driver in Austin. The first draft was extremely violent; producers spent months on it and settled certain scenes in negotiation with HBO and Silver Screen Partners. Several actors were considered for Ryder including David Bowie and Terence Stamp; Hauer, who preferred not to play villains, accepted saying the script really got a hold of him. It opened on 21 February 1986 and took 5.8 million dollars against a 7.9 million budget. The reviews were harsh: Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel both gave it zero stars. It became a cult film later. Christopher Nolan called it mind-bendingly arbitrary while praising Hauer's finest Euro-psycho performance. Who it is for: viewers who like road dread and evil left unexplained. Who it is not for: anyone who needs a reason. Why Ryder does this is never stated, and for some viewers that empties the film out.