The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
Two friends driving to Mexico for a fishing trip pick up a stranded motorist who turns out to be a wanted spree killer. At gunpoint he forces them onward toward a port where he can slip across the border, making clear he intends to murder them once they have served their purpose.
Ida Lupino built The Hitch-Hiker from the real 1950-51 murder spree of Billy Cook, and the result is often called the first American film noir directed by a woman: a lean, sweat-soaked three-hander shot largely in the California desert standing in for Baja. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 1998.
Background
Ida Lupino made The Hitch-Hiker with her company The Filmakers, and it is often described as the first mainstream American noir directed by a woman. It draws on the 1950 to 1951 crimes of the killer Billy Cook. William Talman plays Emmett Myers, the hitchhiker, and Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy the two men he holds at gunpoint; Talman later became known as the district attorney Hamilton Burger on Perry Mason.
What to watch for
The film’s most chilling touch is Myers’s eye, which does not close when he sleeps, so his captives can never tell whether he is awake. Lupino shot most of it on real roads and in real desert, which gives it a bleak, sun-baked look, and she keeps it tight, at 71 minutes, with only three main characters. It is a good film to watch alongside her other work as director, and the National Film Registry added it in 1998. Lupino was also a fine actress, but here it is her direction that impresses.
