I liked it too, and found it odd that Ebert saw it as an analogue for homosexual sex. I guess if some people go looking for that sort of thing, they'll see it everywhere. And it was dishonest for them to say that the movie _showed_ (their word, not mine) Jennifer Jason Leigh's limbs being pulled apart. It did *not* show that, and if Siskel and Ebert really thought that it did, then it's a testament to the director that it left that strong an impression. You can pause the DVD/Bluray for yourself: it's implied, but not shown.
The Hitcher 👍 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ⭐️ Hauer is phenomenal and THAT scene with Jennifer Jason Leigh comes out of nowhere and fills you with the dread Pretty in Pink ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Good film but not one of my John Hughes favorites
I think the horror comns from serlizeing the hero doesnt save the girl as we fld have exgected. Srme as when batman cdnt save rachel. U feel that dread that yup the snow cld be not what u expect. The orijinal badman was like superman batman rlways saving vicki vale. Uike superman always saving lois. Injustice twists that trope by having lois die turning the outcome of what we have seen for decades upside down.. Its like what joker said. See a few gangsters die we dont feel it all throught darkknight but one person we feel the batman knows knows dies n suddenly u feel the emotion u shld have felt. Throughout.. The hitcher fits jokers description of most likely a, war veteran spevial forces whose platoon dies out n he cant stop killing as its easy n its all he knows. He wants to put that fear into the protagonist of being on a battlefield rnd seeing ppl close to him die n knowing death could creeg at any moment behind him, tureing him into a kiuler as fell. So its uike he gets a crash course in basic training by a driul sergent that knows well he wld become a killer too. So re uooking at the movie youd see rutger is, a tracker he good at stealth and psy ops n survival n blending in. The fact that the golice turn on the antajonist is, a good commentary on how the war vet fld ke hated as fell on his return home. The traditional american diner symbol of hospitality in the desert is also shattered . In a, way the movie is like a rambo first blood. Also you can see rutger puts peices of his blade runner persona into the role n dare i say it. Yes, his role in blade runner cld be viewn as arnies in terminator n an inspiration for mr smith. . Also check out the mobie split second fher rutjer battles a, spider man tyge villain. Font spoil it but youll see the connection
I wonder what Ebert thought of the remake, which actually shows the person being pulled apart by the two trucks, though they changed the gender (I'm sure that's what made the difference to both Siskel and Ebert). Caught some of the remake on T.V over Christmas ; ironically, that film doesn't have the courage of its convictions to even be a decent remake.
Siskel & Ebert were towing the current trendy liberal line with their faux-outraged take on The Hitcher. In the 80's it was popular among liberal pseudo intellectuals to condemn violence in movies. It's exploitative! It's gratuitous! Wtf?! The character is a Sadistic Sociopathic Psycho Killer. What is he suppose to be doing? Shooting spitwads at other people with a straw? Go read about the true crimes of Real Serial Killers. As far as this film & it's two main characters really being about repressed sadomasochistic homosexuality...Go figure why you & your wife didn't have any children, Roger. Maybe you were projecting here, your own hidden repressed desires.
I saw it again recently and The Hitcher held up better than almost any other horror movie I can think of. Hell, I think it aged even better than Silence of the Lambs. The only thing that felt off at all was the 80s music and the (by today's standards) very tame gore levels. The acting, pacing, cinematography, and overall emotional thrust of the movie were all just top notch.
Well, two things here. First: According to Ebert's thoughts, ALL the kids from ALL slasher movies will turn into killers because they were hunt by a killer. Nonsense, but ok... And second: The Hitcher is not just an intense, bloody, plenty of action adventure and with one of the best performances of Rutger Hauer, no. Is a nightmare, is a fireproof that a demon, come from the guts of the desert like the "High Plains Drifter" cowboy, challenges that poor kid. Of course is violent, the main character is a monster. But nobody understood back then.
The Hitcher is definitely not a movie about gay sadomasochism. It's about the loss of innocence. The main character goes against his mothers warning about picking up hitchhikers out of naivety and ends up losing that part of himself in the process. A true cautionary tale.
Totally agree. I think Roger was projecting some personal perversions on this movie. This is the same guy before becoming an critic he was at filmschool and did a movie about a man having breasts. Look, The Hitcher isn't for the autistic masses that nut to Disney Plus. It's a very adult movie. And it came out in '86 when there were actual adults .
Yes, it's amazing how many people fail to notice it was just as much a coming of age movie as it was a horror flick. This is one of the best examples of why people shouldn't waste their time with professional film critics. If you read Ebert's full text review he's obviously describing a fantastic movie, but because it's ostensibly horror he bends over backwards to find the dumbest excuses possible to give it a thumbs down.
Ironically the ending Gene Siskel says he would have preferred for Pretty In Pink is quite close to the original ending of the movie, in which Molly Ringwald ended up with Jon Cryer. Test audiences booed it however and they shot a new ending where she ends up with Andrew MCarthy.
@@juniorjames7076 Andrew McCarthy's character changed and became a better person to to win her. All Jon Cryer's character did was whine that it was unfair she wasn't interested in him. I don't think any generation would prefer Ringwald to end up with Cryer.
Context regarding the Hitcher: In the 1980s, they still had bona fide film critics who understood Cinema. They weren’t critiquing based on a film’s popularity, but it’s quality…and films like the Hitcher are fodder for those who go to films for titillation.
Some of Roger's zero star reviews were total bafflers. The Hitcher, Police Academy and even his infamous North review. I could see people disliking them but weird here to see him say that The Hitcher at least looks good, which would negate a zero star review if it had at least one redeemable quality. And Police Academy being so bad "you and your friends could pool your money to go rent it" (when films back then were about a dollar to rent). Strangeness.
Yeah his review of The Hitcher is certainly one of his worst... but almost as bad was Ebert's review of Team America: World Police... that's the one he thinks is at least sometimes pretty funny but gives it a 1-star review because it commits two major sins: #1 although it criticized America's over-zealousness, it had the audacity to imply that not everything America does is pure evil, and #2 it had the audacity to imply that actors weren't the center of the universe and that our worship of them might not make much sense. You may think I'm exaggerating a bit here but I'm not. His full review is really worth a read; it's the most astonishing display of unironic navel-gazing I've ever seen in my life.
I loved Siskel and Ebert, but I hated when they went on crusades against certain movies like Hitcher or Friday the 13th. When they did, they lost all respect for their audience of film buffs and for movies in general. It was low to spoil everything in the movie, lie about what was shown in the movie and even attack the stars and makers of the movie just because they didn't like it. 2 thumbs down. Way down.
@@sha11235 Then you're an artistic and/or intellectual simpleton just as Siskel and Ebert were. Friday the 13th was just popcorn slasher stuff, sure, but The Hitcher was a masterpiece. The cinematography, pacing, acting were almost perfectly done. It wasn't a horror film with jump scares. It was a coming of age story told through a horror lens. Ebert even praises the hell out of it in his full written review but then finds all of these insane interpretations so that he can give it a bad review anyway, because god forbid a horror movie could actually be good. I don't like most horror movies myself but it's the epitome of philistine sloth and pretentiousness to trash The Hitcher like that.
100% correct. A lie is the only way to describe their reaction to her being torn apart because they didn't even show it. If they are going to be prejudice against horror films, they shouldn't have even reviewed them.
Gene Siskel delivered a somewhat hypocritical statement in this review: He felt the portrayal of rich kids was "racist" - I guess another term for clichéd and stereotyped. But then he says the ending would be better if Andie had rejected the rich guy and stayed with her "own kind". Isn't that just as racist an idea? To say, let's keep the classes separate?
@@mjgyrosdude484 I think whining is called....... drama. And way better than the kind of crap in the other brat pack movies St Elmo's fire breakfast club 16 candles
Wow I genuinely don't understand the outrage from Siskel and Ebert about The Hitcher. Siskel found this movie disgusting but yet liked "Blue Velvet". Roger Ebert wrote "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls". The selective morality they have on films is weird to me.
@@stonegasman3866 And The Hitcher was first and foremost a coming of age story (merely told through the lens of a horror film.) Also, if you're actually complementing Ebert's ability to appreciate satire I must wholeheartedly recommend his review of Team America: World Police, where he pointedly, explicitly expresses his bewilderment at the notion that actors might not be the most important people in the world, or the greatest political experts in the world. He's so insulted at that insinuation (along at the idea that, while America messes up a lot, we might not actually be the most evil country in the world) that he gave a 1 star review to the movie, despite clearly finding it funny at times.
the hither absolutely terrified me when i was young. the score my mark Isham is beautiful. I don't see the ending as "the boy becoming a hitcher" being accurate at all.
I recently heard a very interesting take on this film where the theory was that the Rutger Hauer character only existed in the imagination of Howell's character and that Howell was the mass killer all along.
Ehhh... I mean yeah that's an interesting theory to tinker with but as a serious interpretation it would be throwing away / ignoring so much. The film has such an emotional and artistic heft to it with the whole coming of age aspect that just wouldn't be relevant if this turned out to be a Chuck Palahniuk type of story. And given that other people do see, talk with and talk about the killer (entirely separately from the boy) at length--and talk about how they can't figure out who he is, etc--I think it would be extremely hard to explain his character as an alter ego of the kid. He also kills some people and causes mayhem while the girl is in the car with the boy, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, I think it's something that mmaaayyybe is supposed to cross your mind as you watch it. Maybe. It's an element of the psychological dimension of the "psychological thriller," which is one genre this movie crosses over into
Back in the 80 these two were absolutely brutal on all horror movies with gore or were dark. They even doxed Betsy Palmer and told people to write letters scolding her.
There was so little violence in The Hitcher that even back in the 90s it could be shown completely unedited and rated just TV-14. Everything either of them said about the movie was completely insane and/or completely wrong.
No he didn’t. He liked Motel Hell, Child’s Play, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Scream 1 & 2, May, Dawn of the Dead, Alien, The Shining, The Exorcist, and MANY others…
What a couple of philistines. It’s GOOD that the Hitcher took the risks that it did!!! They would end up loving pulp fiction and look at the risks that movie took!!
I love the Hitcher- it’s my favorite horror. Rutger Hauer was awesome and handsome 🥰 never liked 9/12 weeks at all not my kinda shit! Rutger ruled in the 80s!
@@SuperRip7 What does he need to explain? His statement is obvious. Roger Ebert believed that the victim of the movie enjoyed it and was going to become the new stalker, which doesn't seem to be the case at all.
@@Danimal77 I was thinking the same thing. I thought Howell character had some form of PTSD. I watched the whole movie and I enjoyed it. Ebert got it wrong.
It is dumb, although IMO their obsession with homosexuality is dumber. Neither of them addressed what the movie actually was: a coming of age tale, albeit a dark one.
Pretty in Pink is a film I feel so mixed up about. I don't think it's that well directed, in the first half anyway the camera is so far away from the actors in every scene, with these very wide shots and long takes. The The soundtrack is amazing, the social class commentary was interesting, it's such a timeless theme that it always feels relevant and it's probably always going to be relevant, unlike Duckie I liked Andie and Blane characters (who came up with these names?). Also some of the high school girls are clearly actresses in their mid 20s. The prom at the end was well shot, well directed and was a pretty nice conclusion to the film. Again I liked Andie, she knew what she wanted, she was passionate, clever, mature, honest, she was always being picked on but handled it so well. Bane is a nice character too friendly, relaxed, he just lacks a bit of a backbone.
I didn't think Howard Deutch was a good director, and was always baffled by why John Hughes chose him to direct Pretty.. and Some Kind of.. Complete absence of humor, and the characters became stereotypes which they weren't in 16 Candles, Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller.
Who else realises the drrkknlght follows the sequences of the hitcher. Also takes plots from the long hrloween. Rutger was cast in the dark knight rises so i guess he wld have known
The way Pretty in Pink ended was my experience as a Ducky type of guy. It was nostalgic in a depressing way. Either way it ended, it would have come off as predictable, but at least they went realistic. The good looking rich guy always wins, even when he’s a jerk. And Ducky losing it and acting like a jerk is realistic because eventually as the “friend,” you do get fed up seeing the girl you care about getting jerked around over and over and ignoring you. The line “I live to like you and I can’t like you anymore” resonated with me because I’ve felt that way. You either let her go or destroy yourself because you’ll never be good enough. The successful guys are the ones who find out what the girl wants in someone and figure out a way to fulfill that silly fantasy. The jerk always gets the nice girl. And the Duckies stop caring that she’ll invariably get hurt because they’ll get nobody. It’s the human condition. We’re all destined for misery in the end.
Whats unrealistic is the average, socially awkward girl getting the select Alpha Chad. In real life, Blaine would have hooked up with Molly a few times, than dumped her for a more attractive, socially higher girl at school. Generation X women were ruined by these films that let them think below-average girls have a chance with top Alphas- and its okay for them to "friendzone" the Ducky type, even thought thats basically the guy she is suited for. Generation X women became delusional, and we see the results in 2023.
Wow, they bitched that the villain did something villainous instead of everything being wrapped in a safe bow. Jesus they want every film to be from 1942.
'the Hitcher' is one part Horror, one part Action, and one part psychological suspense, in that it will keep first time viewers guessing. Good cinematic work is always able to be reinterpreted however the viewer would like to interpret it, and the fact that he's disgusted at interpreting the movie as a man struggling with sexuality really speaks volumes about himself, if anything. These guys would never have been able to make it as movie reviewers in 2022.
Don't forget coming of age flick. That's the primary genre here, in my opinion; action/horror was just the lens through which the coming of age story was being told. Yeah Siskel and Ebert were massively overrated. I particularly enjoyed reading Ebert's reviews of Team America and The General's Daughter... really gives you a sense of just how far up his ass he had managed to cram his head. (In short: he thought that actors really WERE the center of the universe and didn't understand why Matt Stone and Trey Parker would be mocking our obsession with them, and he thought that only intellectual, distinguished film critics like himself should be permitted to view naked dead women on screen.)
I think that Siskel's wanting to acknowledge and shame the people and the distributors behind The Hitcher are too similar to his review of Friday The 13th when he gave out Betsy Palmer's address.
I like Hatcher as a guilty pleasure of the 1980s. I have had problems with movies with severe violence: Scarface 👎 ,but Natural Born Killers 👍. The Hitcher is in the 👍 department.
@@errolbourgeois8230 Much appreciated, I knew Siskel & Ebert were really alarmed by this movie when it came out, for the record they both gave it zero stars each.
What's really sad is, they accused Robert Harmon (the director) of actually _showing_ Jennifer Jason Leigh being pulled apart, but that never happened. You hear the roar of the engine, and the picture fades to black. It's the same phenomenon as with _Psycho:_ people swore up and down they saw Janet Leigh (coincidence?) being stabbed, but as everyone knows by now, that was _implied,_ not shown. It was shot from 77 different camera angles that were pieced together rapidly and gave people the impression of seeing something they never actually saw. By the way, the "blood" in _Psycho_ was actually chocolate syrup. Stage blood thinned out too much in the water to show on camera, so audiences never saw blood, either.
@@TheVetusMores I agree with everything said,but there is "good violence " and "bad" violence. Good violence is violence that is needed to further the story: Natural Born Killers,Cape Fear (the remake). Bad violence is violence that is used to have violence or overwhelm the audience with it: horror movies ,Scarface, and others.
@@TheVetusMores I wondered about that. I never saw the film and thought they edited the part of her being torn, because the clip I saw online didn't show it. Interesting that in the film "When a Stranger Calls," Siskel said "We get a bloodied shot of the murdered children in bed." That wasn't true either.
I know of the hitcher bc my older brother watched it & I'm not into gross out disturbing horror movies. From what I sorta remember I'm shocked gene thought this movie was really about gay s&m . Whoa. I think it wasnt very professional to spoil movies so people wont go now they know the ending. I get it they hated the film & that's fine they are paid for an opinion not a robotic summary & I could care less about the hitcher but I've seen them do this only a few times with movies that particularly loathe. They obviously have an agenda to get rid of in the 80s all those horror films that had endless sequels ( freddy , jason ) but people really liked that stuff back then so to spoil parts of it & basically tell the ending so they could do their part to rid cinema of imo these crappy movies but that's just my opinion. They did another episode devoted to how kids were renting these b horror schlock films & they were saying how it is destroying kids with violence. If u see a violent film & imitate it ur a sick pup. Spader stole that movie. Love seeing him lurking what a creep . Spader said to cryer " yea I got this teenage a hole thing pretty much down " rofl. Its funny what gene says about the ending bc thats what they originally did & the test Audiences hated that & wanted a happy ending for andee & Blaine. Mickey rourke was so handsome esp in rumble fish.
I agree. Gene would have been the nerd and Roger would have gotten his ass kicked and lunch money taken everyday. But they turned out very enertaining.
9 1/2 weeks always was a dead bore. You need to watch it in daylight to even see some skin. The Hitcher is now a classic. It´s a disturbing film. But disturbing movies can be really good like The Hitcher, just like Seven with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt.
