Hitch-Hike Movie Review

Hitch-Hike is a 1977 thriller directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile and starring David Hess,Franco Nero and Corinne Clery.

Walter Mancini(Nero) and his wife Eve(Clery) are a couple who are on holidays with their camper van. They are heading to Los Angeles. They have a very volatile relationship and they don't seem to like each other very much. They see a hitcher on the road and they decide to pick him up. His name is Adam Koonitz(Hess) and he is a psychopathic killer. He takes them hostage and pulls a gun on them. He tells them that he and his pals robbed a bank and that he wants them to take him to Mexico. He has a suitcase full of money with him. They drive along and Adam eyes Eve. They are stopped by a couple of cops and Adam shoots them dead which horrifies Eve and Walter.

Adam asks Walter to help him to write a book based on his life. Walter agrees, reluctantly. Adam gets worse and worse as the journey goes along. He seems to have some sort of camaraderie with Walter at first, but it doesn't last. Adam is living in a fantasy world and Walter plays along with him to keep him sweet but he knows that their lives are in danger. They meet the two pals who Adam robbed the bank with and they shoot him. They take Walter and Eve with them but Adam comes back and shoots them dead. Walter and Eve have to drive him once again. He turns nasty this time and when they park for the evening, he rapes Eve in front of Walter.

He is going to kill Walter when Eve pulls out a rifle that she found in the van and shoots him dead.
Eve wants to call the police, but Walter doesn't want to. He wants to take the money and head off.
She is not happy with this at all.They have Adam's body in the trunk. They go into a diner and meet some obnoxious youths who run them off the road. Their car crashes and Eve is pinned inside. Walter leaves her to die after telling her that he had planned to get rid of her anyway. He plants the body in the front seat and sets fire to the whole thing. He heads off on the road with the suitcase full of money and hitch hikes himself.

This movie was recommended to me and I really enjoyed it. The relationship between the husband and wife was interesting. The love/hate scenario between them was a main part of the story too as Walter seemed to care about his wife one moment, but not the next. The scene where Eve is raped by Adam is a strange one as it seemed that she was enjoying it, which was kind of weird but there you go. The husband seemed like an asshole to me throughout the film and the fact that he got away with it in the end was irritating. Hess was excellent as the psychopath. He played it so well as he did in Last House on the Left and House at the Edge of the Park. The wife was kind of annoying too as she went around half naked, even though there was a constant threat of her being raped by Adam. That is a bit nit picky of me, so forgive me for that one. When the rape scene did eventually happen, it was just plain odd to me. I liked the scene where Eve shot Adam dead. That was the best part of the movie. Overall, I enjoyed this film. I had never seen it before or heard of it, to be honest. I am glad that I watched it and it is a tense road thriller with some violence thrown in and a rape scene, but nothing too shocking, I think. I recommend it. I will give it a 6/10.