'The Hitcher': 1986 Rutger Hauer film is a horror masterpiece

Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher

Rutger Hauer is often overshadowed by the likes of Christopher Walken and Gary Oldman when film fans describe their favorite movie psychopaths.

But in my opinion, he may just be the greatest.

His role in 1986's The Hitcher, coupled with his work in the classic sci-fi noir Blade Runner, are both compelling works of art.

Of course, Blade Runner is widely recognized as a masterpiece, whereas The Hitcher is largely unknown and was re-made recently as a mediocre Sean Bean vehicle, further diminishing its reputation. It was reviled by critics when it first came out for being both implausible and relentlessly bleak -- which is a large part of why it's a genius horror film.

The plot is deceptively simple. A young guy (played by '80s heartthrob C. Thomas Howell), with no real backstory, is dozing as her drives along the highway during a thunderstorm. He picks up a hitchhiker, a man who calls himself John Ryder, who almost immediately threatens to kill him. The Howell character, horrified, asks Ryder what he wants from him and Ryder says "to stop me," a cryptic line, laced with deeper meaning.

Although the boy succeeds in pushing Ryder out of his car, this is just where the fun begins. Ryder seems to be imbued with some sort of omnipresent power. He continues to terrorize the Howell character in increasingly menacing ways and every time he commits a crime he manages to incriminate our hero when he does it.

Critics who viewed this film in 1986 just didn't get it. They complained that the Hauer character is unrealistic, that there's is no way he could show up where he does when he does and do the things he does. They also attacked the film for being violent without purpose (Siskel & Ebert called it "sick"). But the movie is not interested in sensationalism, it's about a sadistic mind game. This is what makes the movie intriguing and ripe for all sorts of interpretations.

Does Ryder have a death wish? The enigmatic character is a man of few words. Hauer's face, oozing both sensuality and insanity, speaks volumes. When he does talk he alludes to being tired and he spends much of the movie bating Howell to kill him, with caveats of course.

Rutger Hauer and C. Thomas Howell in The Hitcher

Is the entire movie a figment of Howell's imagination? One of the first shots of the film shows Howell falling asleep at the wheel of his car and nearly hitting an oncoming truck.

What if he indeed hit the truck and what we're seeing in a manifestation of his own personal hell?

The movie is largely bereft of gore and the action plays out in a tense but stately pace. I loved that the director, Robert Harmon, didn't MTV-edit the hell out of the picture and force easy jump scares. He lets tension build and early on establishes Ryder as so menacing that we come to believe he's capable of almost anything.

There's a scene late in the picture where Ryder has been arrested, is handcuffed, and being led to an armored police truck by about half a dozen officers, and you find yourself believing with the utmost confidence that Ryder will kill them all.

The Hitcher is a movie I like more and more each time I see it and it definitely ranks among my favorite scary movies of the 1980s. It deserves rediscovery as does a lot of the work of Rutger Hauer, who's remained a cult favorite for decades but is a truly great actor who deserves  to be celebrated and revered.