Thunderous downpour & torrential rain resulted in a sleepless night for me. What to do in the foggy haze of the morning? Watch a car movie!
Thanks to a million variations of HBO on my cable system, I found a car movie I'd never seen before: "The Hitcher". From 2007. Sean Bean, Sophia Bush. Just right for this morning, this was a thoroughly violent (although sometimes predictable in the sense of "don't go thru that door") "B"-grade movie. A young college couple (driving an Olds 442) picks up a hitchhiker out in the middle of nowhere, who of course turns out to be an absolute psychopath. Gee, who ever guess that a raggedly-dressed hitchhiker by the side of the road wouldn't be safe to pick up?
This does of course result in numerous grissly murders, long chase scenes over the isolated southwest, and (just to irk the viewers) stereotypically-stupid cops misunderstanding who the murderer actually is - until he kills several of them from a conveniently-stolen black/gold late-70s Pontiac Trans-Am. Just for good measure, the producers of this masterpiece (who also did the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.) toss in a couple of shades of The Terminator: a seedy motel, death by huge truck, and a helicopter.
The end is entirely predictable, but the way the movie gets there is definitely not.
But they didn't come up with the concept - it's actually a remake of a 1986 film (with C. Thomas Howell and Rutger Hauer - not too hard to figure out who plays what there!) that I have not seen. That film also had a sequel, The Hitcher 2.
Read my reviews of hundreds more "car movies" on my site "CarMovieEnthusiast.com".
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