#45. JOHN RYDER from THE HITCHER
I watched THE HITCHER over and over again on Super Channel and like most (but far from all) horror flicks, it’s extremely sparse on story but thick with wonderful jet-black imagery. Rutger Hauer plays the enigmatic title role with a dark vacancy that scared (and scarred) the shit out of me. I’ve never picked up a hitchhiker in my life, and I never plan to either.
In the time we spend on this descent into Hell, we see first-hand the Hitcher’s savagery. Families murdered, throats slit, the love interest literally torn in half. Everyone seems to remember the severed finger hidden in the french fries scene.
It’s the Hitcher’s motives that always stuck with me. He wants his adversary (just a kid driver) to kill him. And here’s my theory for the whole shebang. Early in the film, our protagonist Jim (played by C. Thomas Howell) evades a fatal head-on car accident. This causes him to pick up the Hitcher, rationalizing the company will keep him awake. But then the trouble starts and the massacre unfolds. No matter where Jim goes, the Hitcher follows. The Hitcher is omnipresent, almost supernatural. Jim is framed for his murders, and when the cops show up, the Hitcher helps Jim escape. His only request over-and-over again is for Jim to kill him, to put him down like a dog. But what if there is no Hitcher? What if Jim never evaded that head-on crash at the beginning? To me, Jim not only died in it, but his negligence took innocent lives with him. The movie then becomes Jim’s waking dream at that moment between life and death (like JACOB’S LADDER and OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK), with his guilt taking the form of an unstoppable murderer and the Hitcher’s wish to die to be Jim’s culpability for falling asleep at the wheel. Only at the end, after he’s killed the Hitcher, can Jim rest and reflect as the sun sets and the world (his life) fades forever to black.
Two follow-ups were made, an unremarkable sequel that sees Jim return to face Jake Busey’s version of Hauer and an even more unremarkable remake with the always brilliant Sean Bean wearing Ryder’s water-stained raincoat.
Ryder: “You want to know what happens to an eyeball when it gets punctured?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKh46i4PXE4
