Classic Horrors Club

In Hitchhike! (1974), Cloris Leachman, who’s been so good in several TV movies we’ve discussed in this series, plays Claire Stevens, a woman on the run from someone or something, who picks up Keith Miles (Michael Brandon) beside the road on a rainy drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Made in the 1970s, you can imagine it’s not going to be a ride with good company and pleasant conversation.

It’s movies like this (and I’m sure a few real life events here and there) that gave hitchhiking a bad name. I remember being warned as a young man never to pick up a hitchhiker. No one must have warned Claire. In fact, the way the two frolic together on the beach during a lunch stop, you have to wonder if she was motivated to stop for him by his good looks and David Cassidy hairstyle.

However, frolicking on the beach is a peak for their friendly bonding. He also turns up the radio to drown out her incessant chatter, steals a knife from the aforementioned lunch stop because it told him it wanted him to take it, and hangs up the pay phone when Claire’s calling her sister just to tell her she’ll be arriving late. Why doesn’t she run when she has a chance? Besides the physical attraction, she also thinks she can help him.

He’s beyond help, though. I’m not sure why he was released from the state rehabilitation center a few months ago. While there, he was found to have a lack of “early prizing,” which means, in part, that his parents weren’t around to tell him what or when he did right or wrong. Under “certain situations” he could be “unpredictable and dangerous.” In practical terms, he acts like a child, making demands and throwing temper tantrums.

This is no spoiler because it happens in the second scene of the movie, but he was also recently having an affair with his stepmother. When she wakes him from a peaceful slumber one morning and tries to seduce him by letting down her hair, he stabs her suddenly while the camera, courtesy of director Gordon Kessler, takes a triple slow zoom into a painting of a tiger that’s hanging on the bedroom wall.

There are so many stories of hitchhiking gone wrong that this one seems more like a kitten than a tiger. There’s a hint of a subplot as the detective in L.A., Gardner (Henry Darrow) races to the north to catch the killer while the detective in San Francisco, Hadley (Cameron Mitchell) races to the south. They talk a lot, but I never realized there was significance to it until Hadley comments that they’re finally going to meet each other in person.

SPOILER ALERT!

When they do all converge on a bridge in San Francisco, Hitchhike goes out with a whimper, not a bang. The cops put away their guns to coax Keith from down from the ledge. He surrenders peacefully and thanks Claire for the ride. One of the detectives asks, “Miss Stevens, are you all right?” She replies, “I’m all right.” Not the most exciting conclusion for not the most exciting movie, but Leachman is great and I thought it was “all right.”