Everyone talks about Rutger Hauer's impressively menacing performance, but as great as he is, the real star of this film is C. Thomas Howell, whose descent into desperation, frustration and misery, you can't help but empathise with. Some gaping logical flaws but still a terrifying, tense thriller.

So bad.

This is such a tense little thriller. I hated the ending. But, all in all it was a good time

Hauer is terrific and terrifying!

Rutger Hauer is great, the movie however is not.

Must see oldschool "horror" / thriller classic! Watch a maniac dominate the feeble mind of this (irritating) teenager. One of Rutger Hauer's greatest!

Hauer and Harmon do a great job and the rest of the movie has tons of camp value. Quite entertaining.

67.500

An all-time classic in an unjustly forsaken genre: the road-trip horror flick.

It's a good thriller if you have a great ability to suspend disbelief since the entire sequence of events borders on preposterous.

Another one of those movies mainstream Hollywood would have difficulty releasing today due to the lack of explanation about what's going on. Pitch this to a studio now and they'd insist having Hauer's character give a 5 minute soliloquy explaining his motives behind the killings. Half the fun of this movie is debating with friend whether the Hitcher was actually a crazy man, or just a figment of the kid's imagination (the other half being Hauer's awesome performance).

John's cruel endurance test pushes Jim into a state of post-maturity that facilitates the development of a mutual understanding - one whose marriage of Jim's unfolding history with John's unspoken one clarifies The Hitcher's circular narrative functionality. It's not the making of a monster so much as an awakening of Jim's adult self - a man who now understands how life is defined by the adversities and obstacles it ushers forth. Director Harmon has crafted one of cinema's horror masterpieces.