» Genre Films

Ida Lupino’s film and television career extended from the early 1930s through to the late 1970s. She proved to be a versatile figure in the movie industry, beginning as an actor in England as a teenager, and then later transitioning in the US to as an actor, screenwriter, producer and director. In terms of her directorial career, she worked mostly in the independent vein, establishing a production company entitled The Filmmakers (which she founded with Collier Young, her husband at the time). Directing mostly social issue feature films between 1949 and 1953 (including NEVER FEAR, 1949), she then went on to a prolific career as an actor and director of episodes from innumerable television series, ranging from THE UNTOUCHABLES to DR. KILDAIRE.

A singular importance of THE HITCH-HIKER stems from its perch as the only classic American film noir directed by a woman. In 1998, this film was selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant.

Inspired by the true-life murder spree of serial killer Billy Cook, THE HITCH-HIKER is the tension-laden saga of two men on a camping trip (Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy) who are held captive by a homicidal drifter (William Talman). He forces them, at gunpoint, to embark on a grim joyride across the Mexican desert. Lupino visited the real serial killer at San Quentin, where he granted her exclusive rights to his story. THE HITCH-HIKER was independently produced, which allowed Lupino and ex-husband/producer Collier Young to work from a treatment by blacklisted writer Daniel Mainwaring, and tackle an incident that was too brutal for the major studios to even consider. A number of factors attracted Lupino to directing THE HITCH-HIKER, one most notably being the challenge of directing a gritty, all-male road movie in the style of her mentor Raoul Walsh, who had previously directed Lupino in ARTISTS AND MODELS (1937), THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1940), HIGH SIERRA (1941) and THE MAN I LOVE (1948).

With a B-movie budget of $200,000, THE HITCH-HIKER went into a five-week production schedule beginning in late June 1952. Location shooting took place around Lone Pine, California, the same surrounding location used for HIGH SIERRA. Experience cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca had shot a number of key noir films, including OUT OF THE PAST (Nicholas Ray, 1950) and CLASH BY NIGHT (Fritz Lang, 1952). From the rural setting (unusual for a Film Noir), he exaggerated the unstable scortchedness of the fierce desert climate, through his lighting of deep and gothic shadows to suggest its protagonists are as much in battle with the landscape as with their unhinged captor. The tense tone produced by the penetrating close-ups inside the car, through the framing on shadows to both block and foreground the characters is as claustrophobic and foreboding as those from any noir of the period.

Lupino’s character study of these men is compelling thanks to her ability to deconstruct their macho exterior. The captured men bicker and squabble about ways they can escape the hand of their captor, stressing that only through their commitment to one another can they both survive. For this reason, the film plays as an intense and surprisingly progressive buddy movie lacking the expected stoic glorification of heroism – more a lesson on survival in the direst of environments, as the heroes show fear, praying for the hand of law to prevail. Lupino’s focus on the captor is perhaps the most fascinating portrayal in this film, as always at work is a sad, volatile vulnerability of a damaged madman whose behavior can never be easily predicted; in scenes of raw emotional explosion, actor William Talman seems to revel in a performance that is both savage and lucid.

“As a screenwriter and director, Lupino had an eye for the emotional truth hidden within the taboo or mundane, making a series of B-styled pictures which featured sympathetic, honest portrayals of such controversial subjects as unmarried mothers, bigamy, and rape ... in THE HITCH-HIKER, two utterly average middle-class American men are held at gunpoint and slowly psychologically broken by a serial killer. In addition to her critical but compassionate sensibility, Lupino had a great filmmaker's eye, using the starkly beautiful street scenes in NOT WANTED and the gorgeous, ever-present loneliness of empty highways in THE HITCH-HIKER to set her characters apart.”  

– John Krewson

Also by Ida Lupino

A-Z Titles Available for DSL