For boxed set dvd enthusiasts...

[therealfuster]

I just watched the film last nite called "The Hitch-Hiker" which I picked up at Best Buy in a package called "Classic Film Noir" which came out this year.

 

Disc 1 on this 3-disc collection contains "Too Late For Tears", "The Man Who Cheated Himself", and "The Stranger".

 

Disc 2 contains "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers", "The Hitch-Hiker", and "Quicksand".

 

Disc 3 contains "Detour", "The Scar", and "D.O.A.".

 

I'd seen "The Hitch-Hiker" on tv, but owning it on dvd is great, though all these films could do with some restoration possibly. I think this film has been shown on TCM in the past, but if you've not caught it, pick up the boxed set which is most reasonably priced. By the way, unlike the phrase "Are you going my way?" reminiscent of Barry Fitzgerald and co-star, this ain't no Bing Crosby movie!

 

The Hitch-Hiker [1953], an unremmitting thriller from RKO Radio Pictures, was adapted from Daniel Mainwarings original story, though he was not given credit in the film, where the Screenplay is credited to Ida Lupino and Collier Young. Starring William Talman as escaped convict Emmett Myers, Edmond O'Brien as wannabe fisherman Ray Collins and accompanied by road partner Frank Lovejoy as Gil Bowen, this cautionary tale of the dangers of picking up hitchhikers, evolves into a relentless tale of noirish isolation and fate as purveyed by talented director Ida Lupino. From the opening shot, just showing the feet and legs of the hitchhiker entering the Dodge convertible, and speeding off into the distance this exciting and terror provoking highway to hysteria never slows down.

 

When fate steps in [spoilers ahead!] and takes a seat in the auto of Collins and Bowen, by changing their itinerary from going to the Chocolate Mountains of Arizona, to instead taking a trip down memory lane in San Felipe and Mexicali..the dreaded die is cast. Emmett Myers is the personification of everything you do not want in your back passenger seat..what with his snarly grin, antisocial demeanor and paralysed right eye. As Myers says the first night they sleep outside, while holding Collins and Bowen at gunpoint and explaining the hopelessness of escaping his sight, "I got an eye that won't close..." And the close-up shot of Myers with one eye open and one closed, looking like some luciferous lizard in human form, will stay with you for many a moon.

 

Adding to the sense of senseless isolation are the uninviting and uninhabited desert and Mexican locales, which are beautifully filmed by the great cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca. Coincidentally..this is one film where the Mexican people [whether of police rank or villager] are treated uniformly with respect. Hoping to get to the Mexican village of San Rosalia is Myers' desired destination and there are many terror filled side trips, that make this journey of predestination, one no one should miss.

 

Take a ride on the wild side...and erase the image of prosecutor Hamilton Burger from the "Perry Mason" series, from your mind's passenger rolls forever!

 

Deep focus....Nicholas Musuraca was born in 1890 [according to some sources]. He began his association with films as the chauffeur to J. Stuart Blackton* in 1918 and with other duties at Vitagraph, before becoming a cinematographer in the 1920's. Musuraca worked on numerous silents and early sound Westerns before becoming one of RKO's top men in the late 1930's, where he worked till 1954. His credits include Cracked Nuts, Golden Boy, A Bill of Divorcement, Stranger on the Third Floor, Cat People, The Seventh Victim, Curse of the Cat People, Spiral Staircase, Bedlam, The Locket, Out of the Past, Blood on the Moon, Born to Be Bad, Clash by Night, and The Blue Gardenia.

 

*James Stuart Blackton was a British born illustrator/journalist for the New York World whose drawings were animated by Edison for his Kinetograph camera. Blackton later established the Vitagraph Company where he acted, directed, produced and animated, and pioneered the single frame shot, the close shot [before Griffith in 1908], and to whom he was second in being the most innovative person in films. Blackton lost his fortune in the crash of 1929, and worked on government projects and then for the Anglo-American Film Company till his death in 1941.