Editorials
‘The Hitcher’ Turns 35: Remembering Rutger Hauer’s Terrifying Performance
The feature debut of both screenwriter Eric Red (Bad Moon, Near Dark) and director Robert Harmon withstands time for many reasons. The road thriller offers exhilarating action sequences, an intense cat-and-mouse chase that spans the entire film, nasty deaths, and a unique relationship between the protagonist and antagonist. It’s the latter that transforms a well-executed thriller into something remarkable. Actor Rutger Hauer‘s career contained no shortage of defining roles, especially his more villainous turns. Hauer’s performance as icy cool John Ryder, the titular character, solidifies The Hitcher as an enduring genre highlight of the ’80s.
On a long road trip from Chicago to San Diego, young Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) struggles to stay awake during the dark, desolate stretch of desert highway in Texas. He turns the radio volume up high and lights a cigarette to ward off sleep, but the rain isn’t helping. So, Jim does what his mother warned against: he picks up a hitchhiker. The man, introducing himself as John Ryder, behaves oddly almost immediately. When Jim passes a stranded vehicle not much farther up the road, John presses his knee down on the accelerator to pass it. The danger escalates until Ryder issues a challenge, “I want you to stop me.” It marks the start of a deadly game between Jim and Ryder that will claim the lives of many before it’s through.
Before The Hitcher, Hauer already had several iconic performances under his belt. His portrayal of replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner marked an all-time career-high, but he also turned out equally commanding villains in Flesh+Blood and Nighthawks. He’d openly stated he wanted to move on from villainous parts in interviews, but Eric Red’s script drew him in instantly. That was fortuitous as Hauer was Harmon’s first choice to play John Ryder.
John Ryder remains an enigma throughout. His identity and backstory never come into play, and the lack of identification makes it all the easier for Ryder to pin the bodies piling up alongside the stretch of road on Jim. The elusiveness of Ryder is instantly intriguing, giving the character an almost supernatural feel as he takes far more damage than a human can usually withstand. The lack of character reveals also makes Ryder far more frightening as a psychopath gleefully killing without any apparent reason or motive.
Hauer elevates the already excellent material with a calculated and level-headed approach. Lines like, “Because I cut off his legs. And his arms. And his head. And I’m going to do the same to you,” become downright chilling with Hauer’s icy delivery. With a straight face and a bemused look in his eye, Ryder takes great pleasure in his sadism. This maniac enjoys inflicting psychological torture, perhaps more than homicide itself.
The evolution in the relationship between killer and target adds a unique layer to this propulsive thriller. It begins with a promise of violence. With every subsequent encounter, Ryder instead seems to be more interested in shaping Jim into a like-minded killer. In the film’s most infamous scene, Ryder finds Jim’s hotel room and kidnaps Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Ryder strings her up between two trucks then climbs into the cab. Knowing they can’t take out Ryder without killing Nash in the process, the police send in Jim, hoping he can talk Ryder down. Instead, Ryder hands Jim a revolver and tells him to shoot. When Jim refuses, a disappointed Ryder ends Nash’s life. Ryder offers up his own life freely, hoping to push Jim into committing murder. Poor Nash would be dead regardless of which choice Jim makes, so this grisly scene is more about the battle for Jim’s soul.
It works. While Jim relents in this choice, it marks the shift that heralds in the climax with Jim now chasing down Ryder. Jim runs Ryder off the road and finishes him with a shotgun blast. The Hitcher ends as it begins with Jim striking up a match to smoke, alone on an empty stretch of Texas desert. But Jim isn’t the same person that he was in the opening; he’s been battered, psychologically scarred, and manipulated by a ruthless killer who has successfully left an indelible mark in his psyche.
The psychological back and forth between Jim and Ryder, acted to perfection by Howell and Hauer, sets this road thriller apart. Ryder is a terrifying and ruthless killer, but the truth is that Harmon leaves most of the deaths to the viewer’s imagination. It’s Hauer who sells it. The Hitcher was released thirty-five years ago on February 21, 1986, and with it came one of horror’s most unforgettable villains of all time.
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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