As a child of the ’70s, I remember our family station wagon driving swiftly past the first hitchhikers I ever saw — “dirty hippies,” my dad called them. They looked nothing like the comely, clean-cut cuties of Hitch Hike to Hell. And for the record, my father is nothing like the disturbed driver of this exploitation crime thriller.
As the delivery driver for a local dry cleaners, slow-minded and slap-happy, Howard (Robert Gribbin, Trip with the Teacher) runs across an inordinate amount of female thumb-extenders on his route, and gladly gives each a ride in his boss’ cherry-red van. Lord forbid one of the girls self-IDs as a runaway or talks smack on her mother, because then the lift — and her life — comes to an end. Otherwise, they’re delivered safely to their destination! So don’t accuse him of lacking a moral code.
Why all the fuss? It has to do with Howard being triggered over his missing sister, who up and vanished one day, leaving their mother (one-timer Dorothy Bennett) heartbroken. That’s all the backstory director Irv Berwick and his Malibu High screenwriter John Buckley offer — and maybe even more than we need. After all, from scene one — when, between cries of “You tramp!” Howard backhands a passengers out of her bell-bottoms before raping and murdering her — we just assume Howie has mommy issues and still lives at home … and we are correct.
With its commingling of sex and violence, Hitch Hike to Hell wastes no time proving itself worthy of oozing alongside producer Harry Novak’s more notorious Boxoffice International Pictures offerings like The Sinful Dwarf and The Toy Box. Although nowhere near explicit, the scenes of Howard’s attacks remain sleazy enough to make them unpleasant to watch. Outside of these sequences, Gribbin possesses an odd magnetism, although given his character, it’s impossible to tell whether he’s terrific in the role or just a bad actor. Not up for debate: Russell Johnson (the Professor of TV’s Gilligan’s Island) plays a police captain eager to solve the mystery of his town’s new serial killer, but rarely does anything besides smoke at his desk. —Rod Lott
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