Extremely unpleasant suspense film. C. Thomas Howell, drowsy at the wheel of a Chicago-to-San-Diego drive-away, pulls over and picks up a rain-soaked hitchhiker, Rutger Hauer (pretty unpleasant right there, you might think, but there's more). The passenger's conversation, occasionally punctuated by switchblade, consists of stuff like: "You wanna know what happens to an eyeball when it gets punctured?" He also manages to impart the hard information that he is a serial murderer with a special fondness for dismemberment, and already the question that has started to form in our minds is: how is this situation going to be sustained ? There is perhaps enough here for an old Twilight Zone episode -- a format which would also help explain the hitchhiker's vast resourcefulness, his resilience, his omnipresence, his je ne sais quoi. But tyro director Robert Harmon is determined to prolong it into an allegorical odyssey like Steven Spielberg's Duel, only with theatrical-film levels of violence. He would probably be content if the rest of his career stayed similarly close to the Spielberg course. (1986) — Duncan Shepherd
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