The Hitcher

There's a killer on the road (everyone's favourite Dutch psycho, Hauer) with a Nietzschean gleam in his eye and an ugly knife in his pocket. When Howell picks him up at dawn on a deserted Texan highway, he immediately makes his intentions plain by scaring the boy witless. When the boy fights back, however, then the hitcher has found what he needs - a decent adversary - and the game begins. By an apparent near-magical ability to be in several places at once, Hauer embarks on his round of gory slaughters, while sucking Howell into appearing at the scene, only to be nabbed by the cops. If you can swallow the unlikely nature of the killer's powers (like dismembering an entire police station while the boy is asleep in a cell), then you are in for a good rough ride down a murky road. There's a little toying with the old doppelgänger idea of the hero and villain coming to resemble one another, and the ending is rather straightforward; but it's a highly competent sick-fright version of the evergreen chase formula. And you'll never eat french fries again without looking at them closely. CPea.