Extras:
Trailer, Teaser trailer, Filmographies, 7 screenplay samples (inc. 2 deleted scenes),
documentary, Two short movies, 2 audio commentaries
Director:
Robert Harmon
(Eyes of an Angel, Highwayman, The Hitcher, Nowhere to Run, They, TV: The Crossing, Gotti, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Level 9)
Producers:
David Bombyk and Kip Ohman
Screenplay:
Eric Red
Music:
Mark Isham
Cast:
The Hitcher: Rutger Hauer
Jim Halsey: C. Thomas Howell
Nash Galveston: Jennifer Jason Leigh
Captain Esteridge: Jeffrey DeMunn
The Hitcher is a pure piece of brilliance from
start to finish,
so it makes you wonder how the same director managed to make the pitiful pile
of tripe that was Van Damme's Nowhere to Run seven years later.
This is a film that goes for basics at their best. There's no fancy CGI and
nothing to divert from the main plot. This is tension and terror at their best.
Young Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) is a kid in the wrong place at the
wrong time, and does the wrong thing when he stops to pick up an unnamed
hitchhiker (Rutger Hauer), joking how his mum told him never to do that.
Clearly he lives to regret that as the man starts behaving very oddly. Even
though Jim stopped to pick him up, as they pass another car along the road
- apparently in trouble - the man pushes Jim's leg down on the accelerator.
Shortly after that he produces a knife...
What follows is a road movie where the hitcher will turn up, scare the shit
out of the kid and make you wonder how he'll ever get away, but to go into
detail about the film would rob it of its superb suspense. It's a classic
thriller that really delivers and includes top-notch performances from its
two leads, with Jennifer Jason Leigh turning up along the way as
waitress Nash as the potential love interest - that is if there's time for
one.
This is how a film should be made, and it also includes a spectacular scene
of two cops cars turning over after one another and a petrol station exploding.
For a near-20-year-old film this new DVD has a brilliant transfer. It's not
perfect all the way through, but a damn sight better than most presentations
of movies of this age. It's also in the original anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen.
The English soundtrack is in Dolby Digital 5.1, although not used exactly
ambitiously here over what you'd expect from a standard surround sound offering,
the latter being what you get in German, Italian and Spanish. The tension comes
through perfectly though.
All of the extras, apart from the commentaries, are on disc 2. The second disc
is necessary because of the seemingly-redundant surround-only language tracks.
Those should've been ditched in favour of a DTS soundtrack.
Trailers:
A 2½-minute Trailer and 70-second Teaser, both in
anamorphic 16:9. Good to see back-catalogue footage given the anamorphic
treatment. Both are also voiced that THAT trailer man, Don La Fontaine.
Documentary: The Hitcher - How Do These Movies Get Made? (38 mins):
An intriguing chat from all the main people involved, cast and crew-wise,
how it began with the director's short film China Lake and also how
Hauer wouldn't have been there had Terence Stamp not ditched it. Harmon also
enjoyed scouting for desert locations and employing the widescreen vista for
small figures in a landscape. It was an early film for Howell, who looks so
so knackered now. The stunts and the score are also discussed.
Short film: China Lake (35 mins):
The precursor to The Hitcher, China Lake is a short film Robert
Harmon made between 1981 and 1983 to prove to Hollywood execs that he could
carry off a multi-million dollar budget. It's another slow-burning tale of
punishment being metered out as necessary, but with Charles Napier,
who's made scores of films but is usually best-known for the hard-nut military
style, as a rogue cop on a mission to harrass and inflict injury on as many
people as possible. A great little addition. The only downside is that the
2.35:1 widescreen presentation is not anamorphic, although it is preceeded
by a text-based introduction from the director.
This was later remade in 1990 as the TV movie, The China Lake Murders.
Short film: The Room (9½ mins):
Presented in non-anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen and in Dolby Digital 5.1,
starring Rutger Hauer in a soul-searching monologue that gets a bit boring.
Filmographies
A few pages of information containing the movies featuring the principal
cast and crew members.
Two audio commentaries:
A feature-length commentary from director Robert Harmon and screenwriter
Eric Red, with additional scene-specific commentaries from Harmon,
Eric Red, C.Thomas Howell, Rutger Hauer, composer Mark Isham
and others.
The disc has a decent 24 chapters, with subtitles in 9 languages
(English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian
and Finnish), while the main menu is the only non-static one with a looped
piece of animation and sound from the film.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
