When I first saw The Hitcher, I was probably 14 years old and saw it as a straight-ahead story of violence on the highway. I probably cheered at the end when Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) blew a hole into John Ryder (Rutger Hauer). But age and the miles wear on every man and now when I watch it, it does more than make me raise my fist in the air and shout. It makes me ruminate on the journeys life has taken me and how I’d rather be launched through a window and blasted down a hillside than live a slow, tedious and quiet death.

Halsey starts the film with the kind of confidence that someone at the end of their teens has. He picks up Ryder, who immediately confides to him that he’s killed someone else. But he says something else. Something we don’t expect. “I want you to stop me.”

That’s the whole point of this film. Ryder will transform Halsey into the empty man he is, whether through attrition or forcing him to blast him into oblivion. This road only goes one way.

What does it take to get Halsey to realize this isn’t a nightmare, but reality? Of course, it’s easy to think that this could all be a dream, in the same way that long stretches of drives with no one speaking seem to be visions that last and last. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m still driving and every moment up until here, up until this realization, is just me imagining my life and any moment now, I’m going to wake up with my fiancee asleep next to me.

For our hero, it takes seeing trucks plow into truck stops, station wagons filled with the blood of all American families and the typical movie love interest torn in half by two semis.

Halsey is stripped of his identity, not just because his license and keys — let’s face, the manhood of most red-blooded boys — have been taken away. Everything he may have believed was true — the goodness of giving someone a ride when they need it, that love can conquer fear, even that the role models and lawmakers that society sets up can protect us against one lone man who isn’t just unafraid to die but willingly chases it — is a lie.

Not even suicide can save our hero.

So who is at fault for all the crimes that come out of this spree? If Halsey just shot Ryder in the truck, while Nash (Jennifer Jason Lee, looking like the gorgeous girl who surely will survive all of this madness, right?) is tied between it and another, life would be different.

Look, when a killer says, “I want you to stop me,” you listen.

Eric Red wrote this story while traveling across America, wondering about the lyrics to The Doors “Riders On the Storm.” Pretty simple, really: “If ya give this man a ride, sweet memory will die. Killer on the road, yeah.”

Critics hated it. Both Siskel and Ebert gave it zero out of four stars, with Ebert even decrying the film by saying, “I could see that the film was meant as an allegory, not a documentary. But on its own terms, this movie is diseased and corrupt. I would have admired it more if it had found the courage to acknowledge the real relationship it was portraying between Howell and Rutger, but no: It prefers to disguise itself as a violent thriller, and on that level it is reprehensible.”

Whatever.

The end of this film, as Halsey stands against the sunset and smokes as we process what has just happened just attacks the viewer. The credits just stand there as we feel no celebration or victory. Maybe not even relief, because while it seems like this is over, there’s no way it is over.

The fact that this movie spawned a sequel and a Michael Bay remake are two things that I have added to the many things that I have tried to forget so that I can keep on living my life*. Kind of like how director Robert Harmon makes the Jesse Stone TV movies for Tom Selleck now instead of getting to create more movies like this (that said, I’ve heard good things about They, a movie he did with Wes Craven and I kind of don’t mind his Van Damme film Nowhere to Run). Red would move on to write a few other films that break the mold and are on my list of favorite films: Near Dark and Blue Steel.

The last thing that this movie makes me feel is loss. Rutger Hauer is such an essential part of my film nerd stable of actors, someone who always makes a movie way better than it seems like it will be just by his presence. Nighthawks is so intense because of him. Films like Wanted Dead or Alive, The Blood of Heroesand Buffy the Vampire Slayer (with Hauer getting to finally play the vampire lord that Anne Rice, who always wanted him as Lestat, saw him in) are actually great because of Hauer. And Blade Runner means nothing without him as Roy Batty.

Hauer astounded the stunt people in this movie, pulling off the car stunts by himself. And he also intimidated Howell, scaring him even when they weren’t acting. He even knocked out a tooth when he flew through the windshield himself. There is no one who could have played this character quite so well and stayed with me so long after the film was over.**

*The fact that René Cardona III made a Mexican version of this called Sendero Mortal does give me the energy to keep on living.  I’d also like to recommend the absolutely insane Umberto Lenzi in America  Hitcher In the Dark, which makes me wish that more Italian directors made their own versions of The Hitcher.

**Hauer said in his autobiography, All Those Moments, that Elliott “was so scary when he came in to audition that Edward S. Feldman was afraid to go out to his car afterward.”

I watched The Hitcher at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Eye of the Tiger was on the CBS Late Movie on May 5, 1989.

Imagine Con Air where instead of Cameron Poe finally getting home on a plane filled with killers, he served out his prison sentence and came back home to killers.

Instead of Nicholas Cage, Gary Busey is the hero, Buck Matthews, newly home to his wife Christie (Denise Galik) and daughter Jennifer (Judith Barsi, who was Thea Brody in Jaws: The Revenge and sadly was killed by her father at a way too young age).

His hometown is being ruled by that gang of killers I mentioned, a post-apocalyptic gang of motorcyclists led by Blade (William Smith). On his first night back at work on a construction site, Buck stops the bikers from assaulting a nurse named Dawn (Kimberlin Brown). To pay him back for his good deed, Blade and his gang follow him home, beat him into oblivion, kill his wife and send his daughter into a near-catatonic state.

Would the cops help? Not the sheriff (Seymour Cassel), who probably set Buck up for his first prison bid and threatens another. His friend Deputy J.B. Deveraux (Yaphet Kotto) wants to help, but the police department is corrupt. Buck calls in a favor from a Miami drug dealer he saved in prison, Jamie (Jorge Gil) and gets an armored truck that shoots missiles.

This movie was in the same script package as Rolling Vengeance, so once you know that, you’ll get it.

As you can imagine, Buck kills every single member of the gang that he can, as well as force feeding Blade a mountain full of cocaine, which is a wild death for a final boss. As for the sheriff, he blows up real good in Buck’s truck. The rest of the cops come through and J.B. drops bombs on the bikers from his biplane while blasting James Brown’s “Gravity.”

That’s because this movie may seem like a Cannon film but it was produced by Scotti Brothers.

Yes, the record label that released albums by Leif Garrett, David Hallyday, Felony, “Weird Al” Yankovic and Survivor.

Now it’s starting to make sense, right?

Right?

They may want you to think that Eye of the Tiger was based on the song by Survivor, but that was just a gimmick. Yes, that song was also in Rocky III and was used by Hulk Hogan before he took “Real American” from Barry Windham and Mike Rotundo.

This film actually started as a spec script called Midnight Vengeance, written by Michael Thomas Montgomery as part of an “Action Package” with the aforementioned Rolling Vengeance and a third unproduced script. He didn’t have an agent but instead sent posters and cold-called a hundred companies to make these movies. As the owners of Survivor’s record label, the Scotti Brothers owned “Eye of the Tiger” and thought that would make a good title for an action movie.

This is the kind of movie where bikers kill a woman and then come and ride their bikes around her funeral, which causes Busey to decapitate one of them with a wire across the road, then goes to the hospital and lubricates a stick of TNT, shoves it up a biker’s ass and lights the fuse while interrogating him. The bikers respond — well, Buck did cut the head off Blade’s brother — by digging up his wife and dragging her coffin all over the front yard like Big Bossman at the funeral of Al Snow’s dad.

If you like the song that this takes its name from, good news. You’re going to hear it a lot.

This movie is pretty good. It’s no Stone Cold, but what movie is? But for a late 80s non-Cannon revenge movie made by a record company — they also released Eddie and the Cruisers II, Lady Beware, In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro, He’s My Girl, The Iron Triangle, The Resurrected, Stealing Heaven and Death of a Soldier — it’s pretty solid. I mean, Gary Busey flips out on an entire town while they’re trying to play bingo.

Oh man! How can I forget? This was directed by Richard C. Sarafian. Yes, the same guy who made Vanishing Point!

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Armed and Dangerous was on the CBS Late Movie on October 27, 1989.

Mark Lester can do a buddy cop movie. But a comedy? A movie that starts with John Candy’s character sent up the river and Eugene Levy as the worst lawyer ever throwing himself on the mercy of a judge — Stacy Keach Sr.! — to keep the mob from killing him, with Candy in a Bill Murray role instead of the likable everyman?

If anyone can handle it, it’s Lester.

With no job prospects, Dooley and Kane (Candy and Levy) apply for work at Guard Dog Security, run by Captain Clarence O’Connell (Kenneth McMillan, Cat’s Eye) and supervised by Maggie Cavanaugh (an impish and delightful Meg Ryan).

Their first night on the job, some goons take advantage of them when lead guard Bruno makes our heroes take a break. He’s Tiny Lister, better known as Zeus from No Holds Barred and Deebo in the Friday movies.

This launches them on a quest to see who has set them up — again in Candy’s case — you get plenty of great casting to help the story move, a hallmark of Lester’s work. There’s Robert Loggia as corrupt union head Michael Carlino, Brion James and Johnathan Banks (both strangely with full heads of hair) as his goons, James Tolkan (Strickland from Back to the Future), Don Stroud (Stunts), Steve Railsback (Turkey Shoot) pretty much playing the same character as he did as Manson in Helter Skelter, Tony Burton (Duke from Rocky), Teagan Clive (yes, Bimbo Cop from Vice Academy 2 and The Alienator), Tito Puente, Judy Landers (Dr. Alien!), Christine Dupree (who was one of the models for the aborted video game Tattoo Assassins) and even a blink and you’ll miss him appearance by David Hess as a gunman.

You may watch this and say, “Robert Loggia has a nice, if familiar house.” That’s because Jed Clampett used to live there. The Sport Pit, the gym that gets messed up in the film, is also in the same strip mall that D-Fens shot up the phone booth in Falling Down.

By all accounts, this movie sounded like a mess to make. Originally written by Harold Ramis as a vehicle for Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, it was resurrected by producer Brian Grazer.

Candy and Tom Hanks were cast, but Hanks dropped out, and Candy recommended Eugene Levy. Of all people, John Carpenter was initially attached to direct.

Ramis disliked the final film, saying: “It was not good. I tried to take my name off it. I took my name off in one place.” That said, he’s credited as a screenwriter, despite his demands.

As for Grazer, Lester demanded that John Candy call Meg Ryan a bitch in a scene. Candy refused, Lester walks and Grazer had to finish directing for the day. Keep in mind, this is an alleged story.

It’s an alright movie that moves fast enough. It doesn’t feel like Lester’s other films, but that may be because of studio pressures. I had difficulty locating a copy and the one I did find had Russian actors speaking over the English soundtrack, even reading out loud the credits. I think it made this a much better film.

Directed by David Chung and written by Kan-Cheung Tsang, the second film in the In the Line of Duty series finds officer Michelle Yip (Michelle Yeoh) coming back to Hong Kong from a trip to Japan. Highjackers attempt to take the plane, but she stops them along with a security guard named Michael Wong (Michael Wong) and Interpol agent Peter Yamamoto (Hiroyuki Sanada). The bad news? Well, now they’re being targeted by the other members of the same mob family for revenge.

This movie blows away any action movie made yesterday or today, featuring an incredible nightclub assault, so much glass being broken I was wondering if it was sponsored by PPG, Michael’s family being wiped out by a car bomb, chase scenes that make you retroactively worry for the safety of everyone involved and an ending where Yip drives a futuristic tank into a trap laid by the big bad with him holding the body of her boyfriend on a crane.

In the Line of Duty 2 is filled with non-stop mayhem and violence, a downbeat tone and Yeoh embracing the opportunity to be the lead.

This was originally released by 88 Films in their In the Line of Duty box set, along with 1985’s Yes, Madam!, 1988’s In the Line of Duty 3 and 1989’s In the Line of Duty 4.

Now you can get the individual release. Extras include the audio being available in Cantonese and two different English versions. There are also new subtitles, commentary by Hong Kong film expert Frank Djeng, missing inserts, trailers and English trailers. You can get it from MVD.

Everett De Roche also wrote a ton of films that more people should see: Roadgames, Patrick, Harlequin, Link, Razorback, Fortress and more. I can say the same for this film’s director, Brian Trenchard-Smith, who said of his own work, “There is something you always get in a Trenchard-Smith movie: pace, a strong visual sense, and what the movie is actually about told to you very persuasively. Whatever I do, I’ll still be applying a sense of pace: trying to find where the joke is and trying to make the film look a lot bigger than it cost.” I’d recommend his film’s Stunt Rock, Dead-End Drive-In, Turkey Shoot, Night of the Demons 2 and even Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, which is way better than it ever should be.

This was originally to be directed by Russell Hagg, who wrote Trenchard-Smith’s BMX Bandits and was the art director of A Clockwork Orange.

Henry Thomas, Elliot of E.T., plays Cody, an American orphan living in Australia, raising by his guardian Gaza (Tony Barry). He’s a smart kid, intelligent enough to build his own railbike, and also interested in the cryptozoological legends of his adopted home. In Devil’s Knob national park, there are water monsters known as Bunyips, including one called Donkegin. There’s also another creature called the Kurdaitcha Man who is some kind of supernatural judge who comes after those who do harm to one another, murder animals without the need for food and destroy the environment.

Cody decides to explore the bottom of a pond in a diving suit of his own design. He gets stuck and everyone but his friend Wendy (Rachel Friend) thinks he is dead. What he thought was a monster is instead a steam shovel that has been stuck for years. That’s what satisfies the adults; the kids still can see the Kurdaitcha Man as he returns it to the pond.

For a kid’s movie, this is pretty terrifying. But I always think that there should be an element of the fantastic — and frightening — in these films to inspire.

The title refers to an Aboriginal myth. Alternate titles include The Go-Kids in the UK, The Quest in the U.S., The Mystery of the Dark Lake in Italy, The Boy Who Chases Ghosts in Bulgaria, The Spirit Chaser in Germany and Fighting Spirits in Finland.

You can watch this on YouTube.  You can also order it from Kino Lorber.

Was Film Ventures International fighting Cannon for the rights to show Israeli movies in the U.S.?

Directed by Rafi Bukai, this was the Israeli entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 59th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

“Forward people, towards redemption. Red Flag, Red Flag. Red Flag will triumph. Long live communism and freedom.” This Italian song, “Bandiera Rossa,” is also called “Avanti Popolo” after the first words in the song, which mean “Forward people.” That song is sung by the soldiers in this movie.

This is set on June 11, 1967, just as the cease fire of the Six-Day War starts and two Egyptian army men, Gassan and Haled, make their way through the Sinai desert to reach home. It feels like they have entered another planet as they seek any way to survive.

Finally, the protagonists meet and befriend three Israeli soldiers who should be their enemy. The war means nothing to them, other than something to live past. Tell that to the Swedish soldier, dead in a Jeep filled with high end alcohol or the British reporter who wants to see even more violence.

Evil Senses is all about Manuel (Gabriele Lavia, who directed and co-wrote this with Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino and Dardano Sacchetti) is a hitman who has found a list of names that means nothing to him, but that marks him for death by his bosses. He hides out in a brothel that’s run by an old girlfriend named Micol (Mimsy Farmer) and falls in love with one of her employees, Vittoria (Monica Guerritore). He doesn’t realize that they share the same employer and that her husband wants her to get the list and kill him. He tells her that he’s thrown the list away but has memorized it.

Lavia’s co-star is his wife, who he had already directed in Scandalosa Gilda. If this all feels like a vanity project, it’s close. But if I was making my own movie, I’d work with Saccheti and have Fabio Frizzi do the music, so who can fault him? And wow, this was all filmed in English.

By the end, Vittoria falls for Manuel and saves his life, helping him kill the organized crime leaders that they both serve. Then he shoots her, because he’s a loner.

This was also released as Stripped to Die in Italy. I’m frankly shocked at how little Mimsy is in this and I assume that she was looking for another movie after making Body Count while she was in Italy.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie on January 15 at 7:00 PM PT at Los Feliz 3 in Los Angeles. For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

Also known as Florence! The Killer is Still Among Us and The Killer Has Returned, you have to admire the chutzpah — or the gall — of a film to have the disclaimer “This film was made as a warning to young people and with the hope that it will be of use to law enforcement to bring these ferocious killers to justice,” after you’ve just watched 83 minutes of a killer graphically mutilating women and their most intimate of parts, as if this were some bid to outdo Giallo  In Venice or The New York Ripper.

Based on the true story of the Florence serial killer “The Monster of Florence,” this was written by Ernesto Gastaldi (The Whip and the Body, All the Colors of the Dark, My Name Is Nobody) and Giuliano Carnimeo (who directed four of the Sartana films under the alias Anthony Ascott, as well as The Case of the Bloody Iris, Exterminators of the Year 3000 and Ratman).

Directing this movie — and helping with the script — would be Camillio Teti, who produced The Dead Are Alive and Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi’s attempt at a non-mondo, the ironically named Mondo Candido.

Much like a scene out of Maniac, a couple on lover’s lane is blown away mid-aardvark by a gloved killer. What separates the uomini from the ragazzi is that the killer then uses a knife and a tree branch to do things that made me turn my head from the screen for an extended period of time.

Christiana Marelli has been studying the killer in criminology class to the displeasure of her boyfriend, the cops and her teachers. This leads to her being stalked via phone and in person by the killer. Of course, seeing as how Alex, that formerly mentioned boyfriend, is never around during these killings, you can see why she starts thinking he could be Il Mostro.

The film moves from the giallo into the supernatural as our heroine attends a seance where the medium has a vision of the killer decimating a camping couple, soon developing the same wound that the victims just received.

What does Christina do? Run to the theater to see if Alex is there or not, proving that while he is waiting for her, he certainly could still be the killer. If I were her professor, I’d have given her a zero out of thirty.

After all this, she just sits down to watch a movie with him and it ends up being the same film we’ve just been watching. That’s either a huge cop out or just how you expect a giallo to end.

Based on a true story, this is all about a series of sex murders that have been the talk of Florence for almost 15 years. A serial killer is murdering couples while they make love, then cutting off parts of the female anatomy. Whoever the murderer is, they start the film by killing two more people while they are camping.

Hunting for that killer are Giulia (Bettina Giovannini), a journalist who has been tracking the killer for four years, and her fiancee writer Andreas Ackermann (Leonard Mann) who is writing a book all about the crimes. He soon realizes that he’s become obsessed with the case and has constructed a profile of a wealthy man whose parent’s perversions made him impotent.

As the case was not solved when this came out, this film was pulled from theaters. The case was finally resolved in 1998. Four men — all friends — were the killer, including five of the killings committed by postal worker Mario Vanni, along with participation by Giancarlo Lotti and two others who were released due to lack of evidence.

Directed by Cesare Ferrario, this was also released as Night Killer. this has Leonard Mann in his second giallo after Night School.

The same year, Camillo Teti released The Killer Is Still Among Us which is a much rougher and more traditional giallo story.