Arrow Video, out now

 

Laundry delivery driver Howard Martin is a lovable mummy’s boy, but when he spots runaway hitchhikers he becomes a murderer.

The message here is quite clearly “Don’t hitchhike, kids, as there’s loads of ‘mental cases’ out there.” That’s the politically incorrect message being pushed by the police in this tedious 87-minute exploitation flick that I really am struggling to recommend on any level. I get no satisfaction in giving a film a kicking, but director Irv Berwick’s 1977 movie is so incompetent on every level that I cannot see how it justified a release.

Arrow’s disc includes a new 2K restoration from original film elements and allows you to watch 1.33 and 1.78 versions of the feature, but it’s a very poor print, the hi-def transfer only adding to the movie’s cheapness. Robert Gribbin is Howard Martin, a delivery driver for Baldwin Cleaners who goes crazy if the many hitchhikers that he picks up admit to having run away from home. You see, this is what his sister did, and this triggers homicidal instincts in him.

The trouble is, we don’t buy this transformation at all. And even when he’s strangling his victims (with wire coathanger or hands), the movie never shocks, it just feels grubby. No one suggested that this was the next Last House on the Left, but with that movie you were troubled and affected by the killings, whereas here they feel phoney. Equally phoney is his relationship with his mother and his flashbacks to the kills – you don’t buy for one moment that he’s actually conflicted.

Russell Johnson is Captain Shaw, best known as The Professor on Gilligan’s Island, here leading the hick local police department. Spending more time sermonising and commenting on society’s ills (rather than doing some actual police work), they only catch the man when they remove a receipt from a victim’s hand, directing them to his place of work. And then they turn up and arrest him. End of movie.

There’s a new appreciation by Nightmare USA author Stephen Thrower and a video essay on the perils of hitchhiking both in screen and in the real world. You might also want to check out the original press book which is included as BD-ROM content or watch the trailer.

Verdict: ‘There is no such thing as a free ride!’ Yes, even a free review copy can’t sweeten the taste of this dud. Not even ‘so bad that it’s good’, this is a poorly made film in every department and its biggest failing is that it’s a bore. 2/10

Nick Joy