As screenwriter Eric Red drove through the Texas badlands, The Doors’ song “Riders on the Storm” came to mind. Partly inspired by [the blank], who brutally murdered six people during a cross-country spree in the ‘50s, its refrain is concise yet striking: “There’s a killer on the road.”
A month after reaching his destination, Red had a finished script. Released in 1986, The Hitcher unfolds as a sadistic cat-and-mouse game. It begins when the boyish Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell), in his naivety, picks up hitchhiker John Ryder (Rutger Hauer) on a desolate stretch of the West Texas desert late at night. With sickening clarity, he quickly realizes this choice will cost him. From the moment Ryder enters the car, director Robert Harmon positions him as a threat, amplifying the sense that something is horribly, horribly amiss. Halsey’s friendly chatter is met with either unnerving silence or a cruel smile. Ryder lapses into sudden bursts of laughter, as if reacting to a twisted joke only he comprehends. To Halsey’s growing, wide-eyed terror, he describes dismembering the last man who gave him a lift, then holds a switchblade to his face. Though in the passenger seat, his sinister, looming presence—encroaching into Halsey’s space—cements him as the one in control.
Deep nighttime shadows make the car interiors feel smaller and even more claustrophobic. The danger to Halsey now is not from oncoming vehicles or dust and fog obscuring his view of the road; it is seated right beside him.
What elevates The Hitcher beyond the standard cautionary tale about picking up hitchhikers is Ryder’s terrifying omnipresence. In a moment of courage, Halsey shoves him out of the car and speeds away, leaving him behind—only to soon spot him in another car ahead. The hitchhiker has found new, hapless victims. Later, even when Halsey sees Ryder get into another car in the distance and is too far to warn the driver, their positions abruptly reverse, with Ryder driving up behind him and ramming his vehicle. Is the hitchhiker an ancient evil, able to bend the road to his will?
Gradually, another possibility emerges: he might be a figment of Halsey’s imagination or a more destructive alter ego—note that until the end, there are no other witnesses to his killings. In one scene, he materializes in the shadows of a motel room; in another, he stealthily slips a severed finger onto Halsey’s plate at a diner, relishing the torment. He has no driver’s license, birth certificate, or criminal records. When police run his prints, there are no matches. An early scene shows Halsey falling asleep at the wheel—could the film be a vivid nightmare he is experiencing?
There is little urge to nitpick The Hitcher’s plot holes, for its atmosphere of quiet despair—a young man’s torment by an inescapable evil—is so exquisitely crafted. Harmon portrays the American Southwest as a series of ghost towns, with abandoned gas stations and empty diners. Miles of open road do not evoke freedom but the terror of having nowhere to hide and no escape. The barren landscapes of the American Southwest convey the absence of civilization—and, by extension, humanity. Yet despite his unearthly demeanor, Ryder is distinctly human. He sniffles; beads of sweat form on his forehead—the film’s most chilling reminder that real people can indeed be capable of boundless depravity.
Like classic slasher villains, Ryder seems indestructible. Yet for all the pain he inflicts, he also wants to die. Early on, he challenges Halsey to stop him; it is clear he has been seeking someone who will fight back. When the driver points out that Ryder has the weapon, he sneers: “So what have you got to lose? Stop me.” Halsey’s resourcefulness in escaping him early on is what fixes the serial killer’s obsession on him; he knows he has finally met his match.
The violence in the film grows increasingly overt and then existential, moving from Ryder’s graphic descriptions of his crimes, to visuals of their aftermath, to them unfolding before Halsey, to Ryder forcing him into the horrific choice of either watching him torture a friend or killing him. The hitchhiker threatens not just physical violence but aims to corrupt Halsey’s soul.
Hauer, who had played villains in Nighthawks (1981), Flesh and Blood (1985), and most memorably in Blade Runner (1982), sought to avoid typecasting when he received The Hitcher’s script. “I thought, If I do one more villain, I should do this,” . “I couldn’t refuse it.” Decades later, Ryder’s cold menace and the futility of reasoning with him make him the blueprint for villains such as No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh. Among the slew of iconic 1980s horror villains—from Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street) to Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th) and Michael Myers (Halloween)—his haunting presence is underrated, yet fitting for a character you might pull over for, never sensing danger until it is too late.