A young man driving through the desert enters a deadly game of cat and mouse with a sadistic hitchhiker who frames him for the string of murders he’s left behind.

As a self-proclaimed amazing driver, I absolutely resent long winded road trips. I’m either nursing sciatica pain or flirting with disaster from longterm prairie dogging. There’s no podcast on Earth that could hypnotize me into an excursion longer than four hours these days, which is ironic since I used to take the grueling Dallas to San Antonio drive dozens of times in college. Though, spending that much time on the highway inevitably reveals the inhumanity of others, which helps me to understand why pop culture has produced so many road movies involving psycho killers like Joyride, Death Proof, and Jeepers Creepers to name a few.

THE HITCHER (1986) follows Jim who is on the job delivering a car across the states. On a desolate highway in west Texas, he picks up John Ryder who reveals he’s dismembered another driver and plans to do the same to Jim. An opportunity for escape frees Jim, but only momentarily as John appears again and again, repeatedly outsmarting his attempts to flee and ultimately framing him for his trail of murders.

I’ve only picked up two hitchhikers in my life – an older couple adorned in Patagonia I scooped up leaving a trailhead in Washington. Out of character for me, but if they had pulled anything shady I was confident I could’ve spartan kicked them into Oregon. Luckily they simply reminisced gently about hiking stories but horror movies like THE HITCHER have me prepared for just about anything.

Pull over at the next McDonalds, I have to pee again.