Horror is a genre of fear, in all of its forms. Fear of the unknown, fear of the self, fear of the other— the manifestations are endless. Still, each iteration offers a relatable thread, a human truth uncomfortably easy to identify.
In this way, fear calls to us, invites us in, sees us in a way that nothing else can. The best horror stories are uniquely positioned to strip our psyches bare, leaving something naked and vulnerable in its wake. They show us a side of the world we may have hitherto refused to acknowledge, or, perhaps, a side of ourselves.
The Hitcher (1986) spends the whole of its runtime examining fear’s inner workings. The story tracks its protagonist’s terrifying journey through the desolate West Texas desert as a deadly serious psychopath pursues and torments him physically and psychologically. The film opts not to cater to the typical stalk-and-slash tropes of its genre brethren of the time, rather utilizing its villain as an allegory for evil incarnate. Instead of the fear of being killed, the alteration allows the story to instigate terror on a much deeper level than simply what one can infer from seeing a hulking figure wielding a sharp knife.
At its core, the film is about a young man named Jim Halsey and the hitchhiker he was naive enough to pick up. Born from an act of kindness, Jim’s decision to let the man called John Ryder in leads to a complex and ever-changing dance with fear itself, beginning with a concern for one’s life and culminating in a fight for the soul. Ryder presents Jim with choices as opposed to ultimatums, each leading the boy down a path that sacrifices not only his morality but his freedoms, creating a vortex which swallows anyone who crosses his path.
The movie crafts a deep, dark web of danger as the hitchhiker’s methods to frame young Jim Halsey for the atrocities being committed grow more sweeping and outlandish. It stops being a question of whether or not you’re willing to suspend disbelief as the tension and anxiety emanating from the film takes over, placing the viewer in Jim’s shoes and forcing them to contemplate the impossible decisions which constantly lie before him.
Many scenes embody the dichotomy between fight-or-flight which runs as a constant throughout The Hitcher, the struggle brought on by fighting back against the fear which so often cripples its victims. But the sequence where Jim Halsey and his counterpart Nash flee from the fleet of police only to be pursued by a helicopter stands as one of the film’s most impactful moments.
Grandiose and overwhelming, the scene is action packed and brimming with mesmerizing stunt work. It further heightens the stakes Jim Halsey is facing regarding his own livelihood and the believability of his innocence as well as the danger he is inviting Nash into. And, when John Ryder reemerges, the scene stands as the perfect representation of what the villain is capable of and the cold calculation which lies behind his seemingly limitless powers of evil.
Of course, beneath its bombastic visual execution, the scene is beautifully written on the page. Poetic but naturalistic and somewhat colloquial, Eric Red’s words paint an engrossing picture that informs and actually enhances the exploration of fear which permeates the finished film.
When they first meet, upon being asked about his motives, the hitcher responds plainly, “I want you to stop me.” Fear poses a similar challenge and this scene brings that proposition to life in a big and emotionally meaningful way.
THE SCENE
Jim and Nash speed down the highway in a stolen police car when suddenly a helicopter emerges over a ridge from up ahead. The helicopter turns and pursues them. After a moment, an officer inside opens fire, causing the trunk to fly open and several windows to shatter. The helicopter turns to make another pass and more squad cars approach from behind. Losing hope, Jim and Nash notice the hitchhiker’s black pick-up truck approaching from a parallel, dirt road. John Ryder aims a magnum at the helicopter and fires, causing it to smoke, falter and crash. The explosion results in a multi-car pile up of the police cars that had been approaching. As Jim speeds off, he and Nash exchange terrified and unsettled glances as they watch the hitchhiker casually light up a cigarette and pull away.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
Something appears in the sky up ahead. Jim snaps to attention when he sees it. A black dot. A Bell Jet chopper with the insignia of the Texas Rangers on the side. A little flash.
PTAAAAAAAANK! A fist-sized hole is punched in the carburetor.
The script opens with speed and fury, propelling the characters into the next dangerous set piece with almost no warning or time to digest. The text is straight forward but conversational, direct and to the point but not without a sense of poetic flourish.
The film begins the sequence with Jim’s dilapidated, stolen squad car zooming a long, hilly road. It moves up and down the asphalt with each dip and rise of the land, disappearing in and out of sight in the same wide shot for a moment or two. There’s a monotony to it, a calmness that arises from the desolate nature of their surroundings.
The brief reprieve is almost instantly broken by the somewhat muted, beating sound of propellers. For, just as the squad car is on the verge of breaking the last ridge, a helicopter emerges like some monstrous beast from the other side, cutting across the sky dramatically. Not a black dot but a giant machine, practically on top of the car. A series of close ups from inside and around both the car and the helicopter reveal the immediately intensely close proximity between the two and the killer intent of those inside the pursuing chopper.
While the screenplay continues to describe the explosive impact of the weapons firing from the helicopter are having on the car, the film allows a slight chase to occur before the attack. The point of view shots from the helicopter and the car remain wide and expansive, constantly lending to the scope of the movie. Everything feels big and vast, helped by the endless Texas desert which surrounds them. In the film, Jim struggles with the car, crying out, “Let’s go you son of a bitch!” As a close up of the dashboard reveals the vehicle struggling to hit 60mph (something alluded to earlier in the script). Finally, another wide shot of the approaching helicopter signifies the impending attack.
CRRRRAAAASHHH! A windshield cobwebs. The crater is carved out of the vinyl upholstery an inch from Jim’s ear.
In the film, the trunk flies open, slamming against the back windshield as a blinder and presumably some inadvertent protection from stray bullets. The windows get blown out as well as the helicopter relentlessly pursues, turning again and again above the car as it continues to take shots. In the chaos, Jim and Nash shout out in desperation, clearly feeling cornered and close to hopelessness.
The screenplay continues on with the attack for almost an entire page. It describes the gleaming glass dome of a nose as it dive-bombs their car and the two KAPOW! sounds which signify what happens to the headrests as they explode in showers of stuffing. There’s even a direct vehicle attack from the helicopter itself as the chopper speeds over the roof in a BUZZSAW of ROTOR BLADES.
The film distills the over-the-top action into something more concise and equally, if not more so, affecting, allowing for the ferociously unforgiving nature of the authorities to remain in tact while not belaboring the set piece. Also, the film excises a beat where Jim spins the steering wheel, swishing his care sideways, striking the low hanging struts of the helicopter and causing it to go into a WHIRRING, WHIZZING spinout. In this way, not only is the terror in tact, but so is the thematic sense that Jim is often unable to act when he’s called upon to do so.
On film, the scene heads straight to its final few paragraphs, extending them slightly. On the page, it reads, Amid the chaos, the familiar SNORT of a familiar ENGINE. The black pickup truck lumbers up alongside. The movie shows the car and the helicopter in the air beside it in a wide shot before panning to the left and revealing the black pickup truck speeding along on a dirt road adjacent to the highway.
A close up reveals the hitcher in the driver’s seat, wielding a .357 Magnum. He stares at Jim and Nash silently, a solemnity etched on his cool exterior: Six GUNSHOTS RING OUT as Ryder pumps a pistol load into the aircraft. On film, Jim and Nash stare to the helicopter, a look of trepidation and a foreign sense of hopefulness seeming to rise on their faces. The helicopter smokes and falters. Again in a close up, the hitcher grins. Then, in the script, The truck hurtles on and disappears.
In the film, the hitcher remains as the helicopter struggles, depicted as its written, the chopper zig-zagging across the sky, smoke funneling out of its rear rotor. In a medium-wide shot, the helicopter falls from the sky and explodes in a heap on the highway behind them. With little time to prepare, the police cars speed into the debris.
The first vehicle hits the fiery crash and spins forward, overturning multiple times as it crunches to a stop some distance away. As scripted, the HELICOPTER CRASHES on the center of the highway. It EXPLODES in boiling balls of fire and billowing clouds of smoke. Fiery debris rains down. No police cars are about to drive through the inferno. In the film, the second car adheres to this sentiment, stopping abruptly, while a third drives up onto the desert hill surrounding the crash in a desperate attempt to avoid the flames.
The script ends the sequence with a line from Halsey, “Gal. We got away,” while Nash (referred to in the screenplay as Galveston) holds her face in her hands, shivering in shock. The film instead provides one last exchange with the hitcher before moving forward, allowing Nash a moment to survey him curiously while he lights a cigarette, staring onward, not back, before pulling away.
After a moment she turns to Jim and his eyes briefly leave the road. They don’t say a word, merely stare, their eyes frightened, confused and yet driven to keep moving. They may not want or choose to admit it, but it seems their aim and the hitcher’s share some commonalities in that regard.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“It’s a very strange and horrible fairy tale…” actor Rutger Hauer said in the documentary The Hitcher: How do these Movies Get Made? found on the Alive German blu-ray release (Found here), “it’s a mindfuck.”
Horror and fear go hand in hand, that is to say, one opens the door for the other. Fear must be let in and out. Sometimes it demands it, forces entry, thereby stripping its host of the choice of whether or not to engage. Other times it sneaks by, leaning on its charisma, its inherent draw, the unspoken connection people feel to it, whether they embrace it or not. And other times, it simply asks… and, still, we let it come and we let it go.
The Hitcher presents a tale which seeks to face what one is most afraid of and overcome it, to force growth and evolution on an innocent in the hope that what is created as a result survives. If that survival is worth the cost of its perpetuation lies in the eye of the beholder. A means to an end, after all, is exactly what it claims to be.
The helicopter chase sequence brings this sentiment to roaring life in The Hitcher, not only on the page with its extended attacks and stagings but on the screen with immaculate execution.
“It was really complicated for what was quite a small movie,” director Robert Harmon said on his feature commentary found on the aforementioned blu-ray disc release. “We dropped [the helicopter] from a larger helicopter… a complicated stunt… we had to be sure that the cables that suspended the helicopter we were dropping didn’t get pulled up into the updraft of the carrier helicopter.”
According to the documentary mentioned earlier, a large camera car with a crane was built to allow for the highway, allowing for high speed recording and movement. The elaborate shot set up and construction amounted to only several minutes of screen time for this particular sequence, but the lasting impact was indelible.
By presenting Jim with the full force of the law and practically visualizing how it was the hitcher was able to instantaneously defuse the threat, the film further bolstered the mythology and believability of the evil inherent within the character. “The guy’s name is not John Ryder,” Rutger Hauer said in the documentary, in reference to the power his character was intended to represent, “he doesn’t exist. He’s a ghost.”
The best horror films seek to understand and deconstruct the human condition, fear being their primary tool of dissection. The Hitcher is a lean, mean and incredibly personal film which pits innocence against the darkness and allows for us to watch how the two manage to transform one another.
The hitcher reveals his motivation early on in the film, saying, “I want you to stop me.” The line seems simple enough, but comes with an unspoken caveat. For, to stop a force of evil, one must become something else… which begs the question, what does the hitchhiking stranger want innocence to become?
The film bleeds with deeply disturbing questions that may or may not have answers. Sometimes exploration walks side by side with ambiguity. But, as a whole, the film does a fantastic job of putting the viewer into its protagonist’s head space and creating a believable and thrilling environment to experience and explore fear. Making a movie like that is always a risk, but with great risk can come rewards far surpassing their cost.
Take the helicopter scene, for example. On his commentary, Robert Harmon said, “We only had one helicopter, one shot.” At one point a producer approached him and asked what the plan was if it didn’t work. “Well,” Robert Harmon said, “if it doesn’t work, we’ll go to Plan B.” The producer was satisfied and moved on. Still, the story continued as Robert Harmon recalled playfully, “there was no Plan B… we just had our fingers crossed.”
Now that’s a filmmaker unafraid to face fear, its form be damned.
The Hitcher (1986): Written by Eric Red & Directed by Robert Harmon
