Review of The Hitch-Hiker

And here we have another episode of "The Twilight Zone" that is undeniably brilliant, but nevertheless ruins yet another impression I had about my one of my all-time favorite movies. When you're watching the entire series of "The Twilight Zone" you often get confronted with the fact that original, innovative and genre- defining ideas featured here first, and only afterwards the ideas were copied and further elaborated in long-feature movies that are now – still righteously – considered as horror/Sci-Fi milestones. "The Hitch-Hiker" is perhaps the finest example to prove this theory. For several decades now, I regarded Herk Harvey's fantastically atmospheric "Carnival of Souls" as a genuinely original genre masterpiece. What with its uniquely ominous ambiance, inexplicably mysterious story lines and – most of all - perplexing denouement, it's one of those rare movies that everyone should watch at least once in their lives. "Carnival of Souls" naturally remains one of the greatest horror movies of all times, but have to put that "perplexing denouement" part of my review into perspective, now that I discovered that "The Hitch-Hiker" features a very similar denouement and got released a good three years prior. It's a very mood and unsettling episode in which the young and joyful Nan Adams embarks on a coast-to-coast road trip across the USA. She encounters a bit of minor tire troubles in Philadelphia, but from that moment onwards her path is repeatedly crossed by a strange and uncanny middle-aged male hitch-hiker. The peculiar individual is never obtrusive or violent, but he shows up at the most unexpected and illogical places and indirectly causes for Nan to end up in perilous situations. Due to the many years of experience I have in watching obscure genre movies, including the aforementioned "Carnival of Souls" and reminiscent others, I was able to guess quite early on in the episode what the shocking end-twist would be. However, this certainly doesn't mean that the plot isn't brilliantly scripted and predictable! Quite the contrary, "The Hitch-Hiker" is a very intense and frightening tale and I reckon the climax must have made an enormous shock-impact on people when the episode first aired on television in 1960. I often truly regret that I wasn't yet born in that time, because personally I would be much more looking forward to the next weekly episode of "The Twilight Zone" rather than to the new season of "Game of Thrones"….