Ya gotta house full of drunken frat boys and an empty VCR. What are you gonna play? A Dark Brothers porno? Animal House? Faces of Death? Naaaahhhh. For this group, who still have fresh memories of Driver Education movies, you pull out this sick bit of obscurity from the early Seventies called Hitch Hike To Hell, which brings new meaning to the word "minimalism."
Lensed in scenic Encino, California (noted for its suburban sprawl architecture and Taco Bell ambience) and starring "Gilligan's Island's" professor Russell Johnson as a stressed-out police chief, Hitch Hike really is from Hell. Starting with a country-western theme ("Oh, you're on a hitch hike to hell . . . . "), it jumps straight into the story of an Ed Kemper-like geek who rapes and strangles all hitch hikers who claim that they're running away from home. His sister has long since hit the road, leaving him and his mother to a deflated domestic existence of drinking root beer and assembling hobby kits. Using his dry cleaning delivery van to pick up youthful transients, he rapes and strangles girls with wire hangers. "What person would drive around with wire hangers in his car?" ponders the visibly humiliated Johnson.
The killer resembles an overgrown Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo, and indeed Hitch Hike to Hell is extremely Devo in many departments. The photography and lighting is bluntly simple. The dialogue never strays from elementary school basic. It resembles a safety film seen in Health Education class with rape and nudity inserts. Johnson along with his black "Starsky and Hutch" police partner do little than walk around and say things like "I told her not to hitch hike in town withe that maniac loose." Seeing the professor from Gilligan's Island reduced to this level will have those frat boys rollin' on the ground and pissin' in their chinos.
Hitch Hike presents a vision of the world where everything looks like a shiny refrigerator door. Everybody seems to have the arrested emotional development of an eight-year old. For instance, the mother of the psycho upon hearing of the local slaughtered teens, offers this bit of rationalization: "I'll just bet that happened to your sister when she ran away six years ago. If it did, she had it coming to her. Really, it did." Sick, sick, daddy-o! If this wasn't enough, a comic relief scene has the killer strangle a Nancy fairy boy after he calls his mother a "peasant."
Hitch Hike to Hell is truth in advertising, and need it be said? One of my personal favorites. Stick out your thumb and enjoy this ride.
By Greg Goodsell (1998)
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