Rutger Hauer’s bedraggled, trench-coated hitchhiker John Ryder is everything the Joker always wanted to be, just without the film bro philosophising and cosplay-friendly get-up. A true agent of chaos who exists outside of rules, society, and possibly even reality itself. The way he appears and disappears, floating in and out of the worst day of hopeless everyman Jim Halsey’s life, showing up just in time to send another calamitous domino tumbling, is, very plainly, supernatural. A character who’s so far beyond the realms of reason or humanity, he’s practically primordial; more of a lesson than a person. Don’t trust strangers – you will be dragged kicking and screaming into a cross-country cat-and-mouse game that will surrender your very soul, and potentially get a little bit homo-erotic too.
Famously written by Eric Red from the lyrics of The Door’s 1971 classic Riders on the Storm (“there’s a killer on the road…”), Robert Harmon’s 1986 feature debut The Hitcher is simple by design. A naïve twenty-something man (perhaps because no woman would ever be so stupid), played impeccably by a young, “aw-shucks” era C. Thomas Howell, picks up a hitchhiker in a storm to battle his tiredness. Said hitchhiker very quickly reveals himself to be a murderer. But instead of doing the dirty there and then, he decides to play with his food a little first. Chaos (and we mean chaos) ensues, from high-speed car chases to gas station infernos, culminating in one of the most provocative and upsetting scenes in horror movie history.
Because this is horror with a capital ‘H’; an exciting, pulse-raising thriller, but one positively caked in dread and capable of seemingly anything, at any time. Few things can strike more terror into the heart of a viewer than Hauer’s leathery glare here, a slimy smirk that always signals death, destruction and misery are abound, no matter the context. There’s no reasoning with his directionless crusade; every single time he wades out of the shadows, you can hear an audience’s stomach audibly drop.
And unlike the Batman/Joker dichotomy (which only really existed in comic form when The Hitcher was released in 1986, and was yet to have its grandest arc in Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke in 1988), Hauer’s Ryder isn’t letting Howell’s Halsey live because he sees them as equals, or that they have anything to gleam from each other. They’re not “two sides of the same coin” or “you on a really bad day”. Ryder’s not toying with Halsey to prove a thesis or push him to breaking point here, it’s much, much worse. He’s doing it because he very simply enjoys it. And what’s more terrifying than a well-equipped and seemingly indestructible force like this, who only seeks suffering?
It’s no secret that Christopher Nolan’s an out-and-out fan of Harmon’s film and his and Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning twist on the ‘agent of chaos’ Joker (as opposed to the more theatrical ‘clown prince of crime’ take on the character portrayed by Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson), clearly owes a huge debt to The Hitcher’s special brand of anarchy. But whilst Nolan and Ledger are somewhat fenced in by the limits of superhero blockbuster filmmaking, Harmon and co. really, really aren’t. Ryder can (and does) do anything he likes.
The broader landscape of The Hitcher is just as important in shaping its antagonist’s impact too. The dark side of the American west and its deeply hideous deserts, filled with rotting buildings and decaying civilisations (a la The Hills Have Eyes and the other post-Watergate, US-skeptic horrors of the ’70s and ’80s), is just as much a part of Ryder’s game; he clearly gets off on the helplessness of its emptiness, and the small and always fruitless slithers of hope the locals might provide. It’s why he keeps Halsey on such a long leash. Corrupt sheriffs who only makes things worse, and well-wishing waitresses that serve as perfect pawns to inflict even more suffering.
After all, Ryder’s bodycount is nowhere near the realms of a Freddy or a Jason, even including several lame and less nuanced attempts at remakes (starring Sean Bean) and sequels (starring Jake Busey – yes really). But his commitment to human suffering is beyond even a Leatherface. In fact, his individual acts are so vile and vicious in nature – physically and psychologically torturing civilians, murdering entire families out of pure spite – it’s virtually impossible to include him in the same conversation.
This isn’t, for example, a character that’s ever likely to be seen adorning t-shirts or memes, or popping up as a playable skin on Fortnite any time soon (unlike, say, Michael Myers). Ryder is, frankly, a bit too possible to be played with and appreciated in any sort of pantomime context. Which goes some distance in explaining how he’s never truly penetrated the public consciousness in the same way. Even Psycho’s Norman Bates has had all his heightened maliciousness drained from him by pop culture parodies and the likes in the years since, while Ryder remains virtually untouched.
And it’s certainly true that a lot of this is a direct result of a Rutger Hauer performance that’s somehow nasty and knotty and seamlessly virile all in the same breath (as well as Hauer himself, who rarely presented himself on screen as anything even close to approachable). But there’s a great deal of Ryder in the filmmaking here too. And not just Eric Red’s sparse, context-less script, or Robert Harmon’s hardened commitment to sweaty close-ups.
Editor Frank J. Urioste’s work on The Hitcher began an absolutely killer run for him, segueing straight into back-to-back Oscar nominations for his credits on RoboCop and Die Hard, before following them with Road House, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Tombstone and Cliffhanger (in a row). And it really, truly shows here; the emptiness and harshness of Ryder (and Halsey’s) world soaking so spectacularly into the edit, it’s as much about what Urioste leaves behind as what he shows. Slyly focussing on the reaction to Ryder’s work, rather than the spectacle of it; we’re rarely privy to what he does or how it does it, just the sick-spewing fallout and the next misery-inducing domino it kicks over.
Which includes the most infamous sequence of the film, and what truly pushes Ryder beyond any other cinematic psycho, when sweet-natured bumpkin Nash (a fiery Jennifer Jason Leigh) is tied between a truck and its trailer, stretched to her body’s limits and paraded in front of both Halsey and local law enforcement. It’s a real turning point for everyone in the film (not least Nash herself). The moment that Ryder finally reveals himself to the world (and proves once and for all that he’s not some sort of particularly vicious ghost); the moment Halsey’s innocence is proven, and the moment he realises that in spite of all of that, he’s never, ever going to escape this night.
When Nash disappears, the mechanics of the film force us to assume the worst; that Ryder has killed her, just like all the others. And thanks to Urioste’s brutal edit, we won’t be given any real sense of closure either, only be left to pick up the pieces. So the reveal that she’s alive is not only a surprise, but offers a burst of hope. So too does the reveal that Ryder is being held by police at gunpoint – he has nowhere left to turn. The jig is up. The night is finally over and Ryder has been well and truly stopped in his tracks.
Only for him to suddenly take his foot off the brake and let the truck roll, tearing Nash in half in front of everyone. He doesn’t care that he’s been caught; in the world of John Ryder, everything is only temporary (and sure enough, he’ll plough through his prison transport like butter before the movie’s over). No, he let everybody catch up and watch simply because it would make the moment that much more horrible. And of course, Urioste cuts away from any conclusion, at the most excruciating beat possible.
There’s a nihilism to John Ryder that’s hard to face. We’re so desperate to understand why someone would ever do something so abhorrent, we often the miss the entire point. That there is no why. That real, true psychopaths don’t usually have some sort of grand, batshit manifesto tucked away to monologue from in the film’s dying moments. That clueless, opportunist violence happens more often than any other.
There’s also no escaping the fact that, having being written in 1983 and released in 1986, the context of The Hitcher is Reagan-era America in its purest form; a shift in societal philosophy which is arguably the backbone of where the West is today. Personal responsibility is key. If you can’t keep up, you will be left behind. Shit will happen, and no one will help you. And what’s more, the kindness of strangers is a total trap. If you do stop to help your fellow man – maybe it’s raining and they need a ride, maybe they’re being unfairly treated by the police – you will pay the price. John Ryder is the vicious, blood-drenched reminder of all of that.
So obviously, it’s in his very nature to be purposefully forgotten and under appreciated, he’s a very hard pill to swallow and that’s exactly what makes him so menacing. The scariest thing is often the one we’re least equipped to face, and I don’t think many of us are ready to go toe-to-toe with the very foundations of the way we were socialised.
And even though Red’s script does eventually offer the sort of cathartic ending horror fans expect – the violent killer finally getting his comeuppance – it’s presented by Harmon as anything but. A means to an end, rather than some sort of grand release from the horror and misery. Again, in the world of John Ryder, everything is temporary. Even death. The man is gone, but the evil is still very much all around, and deeply entrenched within us.
The Hitcher (1986) was screened as part of Forbidden Worlds Film Festival’s The Big Scream 2024.
