The Hitch-Hiker

The Hitch-Hiker is a 1953 American independent[2] film noir thriller co-written and directed by Ida Lupino, and starring Edmond O'Brien, William Talman and Frank Lovejoy. Based on the 1950 killing spree of Billy Cook, the film follows two friends who are taken hostage by a murderous hitchhiker during an automobile trip to Mexico. The Hitch-Hiker was the first American mainstream film noir directed by a woman. It was selected in 1998 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. In the early 1950s, a hitchhiker robs and kills motorists who offer him rides. A suspect, Emmett Myers (Talman), is publicized in newspaper headlines. In California, two friends, Roy Collins (O'Brien) and Gilbert Bowen (Lovejoy), are driving to a planned fishing trip in San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico. In Calexico, California, they pick up Myers, who pulls a gun and takes them hostage. Myers forces the pair to drive him to Santa Rosalía, Baja California Sur, where he plans to escape a police manhunt by taking a ferry across the Gulf of California to Guaymas. To avoid law enforcement, he orders them to stay off main roads and instead try to drive through the Baja California desert. Collins and Bowen comply, hoping they will be identified and stopped at the Mexico–United States border at Mexicali, but to their dismay they are let through. In Mexico, Myers sadistically terrorizes the pair—at one point forcing Bowen to shoot a tin can out of Collins' hand from a long distance—and revels in the ineffective attempts by Mexican law enforcement to catch him using checkpoints. After a tense moment while stopping to get food, they stop for the night. Collins and Bowen discuss their plans to escape, and agree that they must act at the right time or they will be killed. More and Source -> Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitch-Hiker

LicensePublic Domain