One of bitterest of its time, Detour is a low-budget noir that maybe didn't age as haunting as it must have been back in the 40s, but it's still fresh on its powerful and resigned thoughts about guilt. Edgar G. Ulmer's film ends beautifully -- you just can't say it really happened or if it is something that came out of Al Roberts' imagination.

way more fun to watch if you don't buy anything the guy is saying

The more I think about it, the more this grows on me.

That's the stuff

Slavishly devoted to the tenets of film noir but a little short on skill, this unintentionally funny trip with a man fated to a foul end borders on parody. Most of the cast stumbles through the Cliffs Notes version of Hammett dialogue, but Ann Savage, who gets the material, makes it sing with a rabid ferret of a performance that almost makes you pity the poor sap caught in her jaws. Noir fans will love this, warts & all; others will wonder why the MST3K crew isn't planted in the foreground.

There's a great story here that gets clouded by some wonky writing and direction, but it still shines through for the most part. It's a good film, but it could have been a stone-cold classic with a better production.

#518

This sort of feels like a little kid saw a noir film and was trying to describe it to you for an hour. But the atmosphere and sheer despair that engulfs everything makes it a pretty good watch.

Dark, grimy, and very cheap, it's noir boiled down until only the basic elements remain; the fatalistic tone, the flashbacks, the internal dialogue, the ineffectual protagonist, plus Ann Savage living up to her surname as a truly vicious femme fatale. Seriously, she's like a pitbull - once she gets her teeth in, poor old sad-sack Tom Neal has no chance. It's all very over the top, and the plot is kind of ridiculous, but it's a lot of fun.

This is another nice little film noir. The main character makes one really big mistake and things then fall apart from there. The only thing that was unnecessary was the last little short scene.

Anyone who appreciates noir should get a kick out of this. It's a lot of fun.

This is so pulpy that it feels like a parody. I might be able to swallow lines like "I was tussling with the most dangerous animal in the world: a woman!" if they weren't delivered so flatly. I didn't really notice a lot that would make it stand out amongst a sea of film noir; it told its simple, silly tale with its unlucky loser protagonist and its femme fatale and its plan to make a wad of dough fast, thankfully all in one swift, forgettable hour.

Borderline unwatchable. Don't care about the budget. Absolutely aggravating performances and storyline.

Not particularly engaging. Way too much VO exposition.

I've lost count of all the films I've watched in my lifetime, but I can make this assessment without hesitancy...Ann Savage's character Vera, is the most evil bitch I've ever seen in a film. And she's great. I used to think that Out of the Past and Double Indemnity were the truest expression of Film Noir, but Detour has every Noir cliche in spades.

The cheapest film that will haunt you forever.

# 428

A must-see for anyone into film noir.

A great concept, but the story, and especially the dialogue, often feel forced. It's still fun to watch but it doesn't have the richness of the better noirs. The final minute is also terrible, but I guess we can thank the Hayes Code for that.

Cheap, trashy, and glorious. In a way it's the definitive noir, with the cheery hero being dragged down into the dregs by the fickle finger of fate. Tom Neal isn't really that great as the hero. But good lord, Ann Savage is amazing as one of the most wicked femmes fatale to grace the screen. It's those flashes of vulnerability that really sell it. There are a few really good shots, but on a technical level the film is nothing special. It's the story and the atmosphere that suck you in.

The most pure film noir ever made. Cheap, sleazy, dark, and the star was imprisoned for murder in real life to boot

Howard Hawks goes Ed Wood.

470

Entertaining movie that holds up quite well. Excellent performance by Ann Savage. It's public domain so you can download it without worry.

It has long been considered one of the best (if not *the* best) low-budget films ever made.

Roger Ebert once called Midnight Cowboy a great movie trapped inside a good one; Detour is a bad movie trapped inside a great one. The shoestring budget ($20,000) manifests itself in most every aspect, and the movie is like one giant noir cliche, with super-arbitrary deaths and the ultimate down-on-his-luck loser. By any conventional standard, Detour is not a good movie, but more than just about anything I've seen, it's greater than the sum of its parts. I saw a bad print - it felt appropriate.

This excellent budget noir is one of the more pessimistic films from this period. Al Roberts is an accidental murderer who, in a moment of panic, assumes the identity of his victim. The discrepancy between his personal identity (victim of horrible circumstance) and how others perceive him (murderer and con man) eventually destroys him. Even the final scene (Hayes Code tinkering) is ambiguous. I just assume it took place in Roberts' troubled mind. Fantastic, overlooked film.

390

God, fuck Ann Savage.