YMMV / The Hitcher

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is John Ryder is a Serial Killer capable of seemingly impossible feats, but otherwise a normal man, or some sort of supernatural entity? Does he want Jim to kill him to turn him into a killer like him, because he genuinely wants to die, or for some other reason?
  • When the cops Donner, Dodge and Starr arrested Jim, are they just Inspector Javerts who after interrogation started think he could be innocent, but still booked and jailed him out of police protocol until Starr's other colleagues he mentioned could fully confirm Jim's innocence, or are they Ambiguously Evil Dirty Cops who couldn't care less whether Jim is innocent or not and that they just want an excuse to imprison him.
• Awesome Music: The haunting, Morricone/Eno-esque electronic score by Mark Isham, inspired heavily by the former's work on The Thing (1982). For a sample, here's the end credits theme.
• Catharsis Factor: Through the whole film, John Ryder is murdering innocent people and framing Jim for it, and eventually murders Jim's love interest, Nash. Watching Jim ram his car into Ryder then blow him away with a shotgun is incredibly goddamned satisfying.
• Complete Monster: The Hitcher films have hostile hitchhikers who kill many, families, children, and cops included:
  • Original film: John Ryder is a mysterious vagabond who gains a twisted obsession with the young hero Jim Halsey and begins hunting him down in an attempt to hurt and corrupt him. After terrifying him once, Ryder is given a ride by a family of three and murders them all gruesomely, including the little children. Ryder sets up Jim as the murderer as he continues racking up a body count. Ryder's most infamous act is to tie Jim's Love Interest, a waitress named Nash, between two trucks and tear her in half. Twisted and monstrous, Ryder is only interested in turning Jim into as much a monster as he is and killing as many people as possible.
  • I've Been Waiting: Jack is yet another sadistic hitchhiker who kills to alleviate his boredom. Having killed others before encountering Jim and Maggie, Jack at one point kills a trucker to take his truck, scalping the man to use his hair as a wig. Murdering Maggie's parents and blaming her and Jim for the murders, Jack fatally wounds Jim and later captures Maggie, putting her in a water tower that will kill her should she make any erratic movements. Once Maggie escapes, Jack follows suit, killing several innocents and cops in an attempt to frame Maggie, stopping at nothing to have her arrested.
  • 2007 remake: John Ryder here lacks the mystique and cold refinement of the original. Instead a vicious misogynist, Ryder slaughters a family to prove a point, children included, before arriving at a police station to massacre everyone there. Trying to rape heroine Grace, Ryder instead forces her to watch her boyfriend Jim pulled in half before slaughtering the cops arresting him while delighting in trying to turn Grace into a killer.
• Creepy Awesome: John Ryder is a dangerous, terrifying, and possibly supernatural Serial Killer, but he also is a supreme badass who takes out an entire police station with his bare hands, takes out an attack helicopter with a pistol, and manages to break out of a highly secured prison bus without a scratch.
• Critical Dissonance: The original. To name one example, it's one the few films Roger Ebert has given a flat out zero.
• Fanon Discontinuity: A sequel and remake both exist, however fans would prefer to think otherwise.
• Foe Yay Shipping: With a generous dollop of Ho Yay mixed in.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Captain Esteridge.
  • Trooper Lyle Hancock in the original film, thanks to his actor Henry Darrow's emotional acting even though it is just a small part. Also see One-Scene Wonder below.
• He Really Can Act: Despite being a bit character actor who was best known for his reoccurring supporting role as Manolito Montoya in the 1967–1971 NBC western series The High Chaparral and being relatively known at the time for his role as Zorro in the 1981 animated series The New Adventures of Zorro (through voice acting) and in the short-lived series Zorro and Son in 1983, Henry Darrow's One-Scene Wonder performance in terms of emotive expression is quite impressive.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jim is facing off against an extremely smart and resourceful Killer who Murders indiscriminately. C. Thomas Howell would later play an extremely smart and resourceful Serial Killer known as "The Reaper" on Criminal Minds.
  • Character actor Gene Davis plays a fully-clothed blue denim clad police officer who gets killed by a Serial Killer. Three years earlier, Davis inversely plays a fully-unclothed Serial Killer who gets killed by a police officer played by Charles Bronson in another crime thriller 10 to Midnight.
  • Henry Darrow plays a state trooper who happens to be a Vigilante Man, which is interesting as Darrow had played the iconic vigilante Zorro in the 1981 animated series The New Adventures of Zorro (through voice acting) and in the short-lived series Zorro and Son in 1983 and would later be well known for his role as Zorro's father in the 1990-1993 television series.
• Jerkass Woobie: Trooper Lyle Hancock, who is visibly filled with both a mixture of grief and rage when confronting Jim after thinking he killed two friends of his in the force.
• Moral Event Horizon: Ryder killing the family with children and tearing Nash in two was simple sadism and unnecessary.
• Narm:
  • When Sergeant Starr is being licked by the dog, the actor looks like he's barely avoiding grinning.
  • The remake also suffers from a lot of this. The scene in particular, where Jim has his lower torso ripped off by Ryder looks absolutely humiliating, and despite, or even because of, the fact that the scene is more graphic than the original where Nash is is the one torn in half, it does nothing to make the scene less unintentionally comical, if anything it just increases the narm factor, because of how gratuitous it is.
• Nightmare Retardant: A big reason why the remake failed is because it suffers greatly from many scenes that fall under this. Most notably, the scenes of Ryder murdering the family in the car and Jim being torn in half by two trucks (originally Nash) being shown graphically on-screen are ironically less disturbing than the versions of said scenes from the original film, where the fact that they weren't shown explicitly in the original gave the viewer more of a sense of eeriness, which the remake complete ruins by doing the opposite.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Trooper Lyle Hancock's initial Loophole Abuse to personally execute Jim Halsey ("Wipe it off!") and eventual confrontation with Jim and Nash. Hancock maybe just another officer on Jim's trail, but his own personal agenda of vengeance as a result of Ryder's killings, his actor's emotional acting and fact his actor had previously played Zorro in 1981 and 1983 that gives off a vibe Hancock could be a Hero of Another Story makes enough of a deep impact.
  • Also, do not forget Sergeant Starr's interrogation of Jim and his eventual opinion that Jim maybe's innocent.
  • Also, Starr's abrasive subordinates Jack Donner and Dodge, played by veteran character actors Billy Green Bush in one of many of his supporting policeman roles in film and TV and Gene Davis ironically aka Ax-Crazy birthday suit-wearing nemesis of Charles Bronson Warren Stacy from 10 to Midnight, who both initially arrested Jim.
  • Also, the complying policemen Jim was forced to take hostage which in turn gets him in contact with Esteridge for the first time, Trooper Prestone and Trooper Conners, with the former of the two cop hostages being played one of Jennifer Spencer's rapists and kills from the Dirty Harry sequel Sudden Impact that was theatrically released three years prior to this film and the latter of the two being played by the Kid's abusive vagrant guardian of a so-called "protector" Steve the Tramp from Dick Tracy that would be theatrically released four years later after this film.
• Questionable Casting: Many did not like Zachary Knighton as Jim Halsey in the remake, since he not only felt miscast as Jim, but also gave the character a weaker performance compared to C. Thomas Howell's performance as Jim in the original.
• Replacement Scrappy: Grace from the remake. An unoriginal, perfect character replacing the final boy of the original didn't go over well with fans of the first film.
• Retroactive Recognition: The interrogation inspector is played by Armin Shimerman. Yes, the same guy who would later become well known for voicing Dr. Nefarious and Andrew Ryan.
• Sequelitis:
  • Yes, this movie had a Direct To Video Sequel, although it did have Jake Busey as the psycho, which is reason enough to rent it.
  • That, and Kari Wührer.
    • Or the Narm flowing freely through the movie.
    • Ironically, by virtue of adding Grace in the movie and having killed off both Jim Halsey and Lt. Esteridge, the remake actually ends up feeling more like it's redoing the SEQUEL instead of the original.
• Special Effect Failure: The tractor pull scene in the remake.
• Squick: The remake has a great deal of Gorn, but the scene where Ryder slips his hand out of his cuffs (consisting of snapping his own thumb out of place with a loud "crack", and skinning his hand, resulting in a bloody mess), is especially enough to make the stomach turn.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some moviegoers felt that Trooper Lyle Hancock, one of the Inspector Javert policemen pursuing Jim Halsey who is the most vigilante and grief-strickenly ruthless out of the other cops, should have been given a larger pivotal supporting role with more screen time as one of the most frequent and persistent Hero Antagonists on Jim's tail, while acting as the irrational Vigilante Injustice-commiting Inspector Javert Foil rival to the more rational Captain Esteridge then just another background character in the original film after blowing the audience members away with his actor's brief, but emotional It's Personal Revenge Before Reason Rabid Cop performance and his Loophole Abuse attempt to commit an act of vigilantism against Jim. Instead, he is cut off from the film's main plot after Nash's Big Damn Heroes moment to save Jim from being personally summarily executed, is left stranded for him and his partner to report their escape and never heard of again. A total waste of Hancock's portrayer Henry Darrow's exceptional emotionally-driven acting, especially considering at the time his past role as the iconic Mexican hero Zorro in the 1981 animated series The New Adventures of Zorro (through voice acting) and in the short-lived series Zorro and Son in 1983.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: An early version of the script included substantially more violence and Gorn than the finished product, prompting the studio to order rewrites so as to avoid this trope. Even so, some people (including Roger Ebert) would argue that the completed film still suffers from it, as the high level of violence and suffering inflicted on the protagonists can be potentially off-putting to a good number of viewers.
• The Woobie:
  • Jim in the original.
  • And in the remake as well along with Grace.

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