Hitch-Hike

Italy / 1977 Directed by Pasquale Festa Companile Starring Franco Nero Corinne Clery David Hess Color / 104 Minutes / Not Rated Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC) Anchor Bay Entertainment

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2008 Blue Underground Edition

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6     7   10 = Highest Rating

If you're ever driving down the highway and see David Hess thumbing a ride, whatever you do... don't pick him up. That's the mistake made by Franco Nero and Corinne Clery in Hitch-Hike — they obviously never saw Left House on the Left.     Nero plays Walter Mancini, an Italian journalist on a road trip with his wife Eve (Moonraker's Clery) through the American southwest. Theirs is a supremely dysfunctional relationship. Walter is a drunken, boorish lout, an alcoholic who verbally and physically abuses Eve at every turn. When they encounter a man stranded along the roadside, Walter doesn't want to offer him a ride but Eve — perhaps just to piss her surly husband off — does. The curly-haired hitchhiker, relieved to have found a Good Samaritan on such a desolate stretch of desert road, introduces himself as Adam Konitz. He also pulls a gun on them and demands to be driven to Mexico. Eluding a police dragnet following a violent robbery, Adam is carrying a satchel case stuffed with $2 Million in cash. The hapless couple will provide him safe passage across the border. In the meantime he decides to have Walter record his life of crime for posterity and have a bit of fun with the Mrs. — whom he playfully dubs "The Girl With the Gilded Ass." Thus the road to Mexico will be strewn with violence and death, rape and revenge...     Hitch-Hike is a prime slice of exploitation filmmaking, its minimalist narrative punctuated with brutal violence, sex and plenty of nudity courtesy of the luscious Ms. Clery. The majority of the film takes place in the Mancinis' car, with long stretches of dialog between the kidnapper and his two captives. It's a cat and mouse game between all three characters — the Mancinis, in their strained, bitter marriage, are almost as much enemies of each other as they are of Adam. A psychotic nutcase in addition to being a murderous criminal, Adam (who escaped from a maximum security insane asylum before launching his crime spree) is totally unpredictable from one moment to the next. Knowing that there's little chance he'll let them live, Walter tries to think of some plan to turn the tables on him before it's too late. Eve, meanwhile, just tries to keep her sanity while caught in the crossfire between the two men. Reduced to an object of competition, she's eventually raped by Adam as a helpless, tied-up Walter is forced to watch. This scene is made even more disturbing when a resistant Eve eventually succumbs to the killer's brutal passion — giving in and unmistakably deriving pleasure from the experience. The psychosexual blow of this ultimate humiliation sends Walter over the edge... deep into an abyss that will change him into something even more dangerous and unpredictable than the maniac holding them at gunpoint.     Franco Nero, so cool as the stoic, calm-centered hero in dozens of European films like Django and Keoma, gets to play a thoroughly despicable cad in Hitch-Hike, something he obviously enjoyed doing... maybe a little bit too much: there are moments when he seems about a millimeter short of going over the top. His character Walter is supposed to be a drunkard, though, so it's somewhat more difficult to judge the performance in toto. He is exceptionally good in many of the scenes, convincingly essaying a detestable human being who we nevertheless keep hoping will somehow redeem himself. His antagonist, Hess, is essentially playing the same Krug Stillo character from Last House on the Left, only perhaps even crazier (but not as sadistic — still a total scumbag, though). Clery (who did not do her own English dubbing, as Nero and Hess did) is mostly in the movie to look very sexy, which she achieves handily. Director Pasquale Festa Companile is telling a story examining concepts of masculinity (including emasculation), so the beautiful heroine is for the most part merely the prized battlefield over which the male characters clash. Companile gives us lots of opportunities to view that prize, as Clery has a number of striking nude scenes that may have you memorizing chapter stop numbers. Any "message" Companile is trying to impart with his story is diluted by the obvious exploitation of Clery's gorgeous bod, which he likes to show a lot of — I can't really blame him. So let's just say it's an exploitation film, albeit a high class one; Companile's direction adroitly carries us along, keeps us wondering what's coming around the next curve in the road.     The ambiance of Hitch-Hike (Autostop Rosso Sangue as it's known in Italy) is aided substantially by Ennio Morricone's moody score, which could easily be that of one of the numerous Spaghetti Westerns he composed for. There are a number of haunting pieces, some featuring the banjo used in interesting ways. It's a pretty cool score — except, that is, for a horrible little ditty I like to call "Campfire Song from Hell." It's first encountered in the movie's worst scene, a badly staged group sing-along which the Mancinis witness at a bustling campground. (It looks like different music must've been played on set when the sequence was shot, as white people — even Italians — are just not that rhythmless.) Now I realize the song is supposed to be sappy, as it's later used for ironic effect when Konitz has Eve and Walter under the gun. But enough is enough... The Campfire Song from Hell is used at least three times, and you'll be gritting your teeth about 20 seconds into it the first time 'round. (Gee, Ennio, did you really write that thing?) Along with some indifferent dubbing work, it's the main reason that Hitch-Hike — while entertaining — isn't one of the great "Road Trip" thrillers. Fans of Nero, Hess, Clery's fabulous self, or "EuroTrash" in general shouldn't pass this one up, though.

Never before seen in the United States (other than via poor-quality Japanese bootlegs), Anchor Bay releases Hitch-Hike with commendable aplomb. The widescreen 1.85:1 print looks good and the mono audio track is first-rate. (Stereo would've been cool, though, since the film has Morricone music.) Extras make up for in quality what they lack in quantity.     You get the original theatrical trailer, which thankfully doesn't give anything away and is actually quite riveting, and a 17-minute documentary, The Devil Thumbs a Ride. 25 years on, the three principal actors — Franco Nero, Corinne Clery, and David Hess — recount their experiences working on the film. (Nero and Hess in English, while the still beautiful Clery speaks in subtitled Italian.) It's genuinely interesting and amusing, made so not only by the anecdotes of the stars but also the skillfully clever way the interview segments are interwoven with clips and music from the film. Yet another great featurette produced for Anchor Bay by Blue Underground (which also has its own line of DVDs). 10/26/02

UPDATE In April 2008, Blue Underground is reissuing this title using the identical transfer and extras.

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