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Planned on doing this when I expanded his page.

Do note that this proposal has nothing to do with the 2007 remake with Sean Bean, because I haven't watched it. That and there are probably some stark differences between the two films.

What is the work?

The Hitcher is a tense road thriller from the 80s about a young, hapless man named Jim Halsey who has a sinister encounter with a mysterious hitchhiker while driving through a desert highway to San Diego. Following this, Jim soon realizes his life, and the lives of several innocents, are put in jeopardy when he finds himself being stalked. He most certainly picked up the wrong hitchhiker...

Brace yourself for one of the most terrifying characters Rutger Hauer has ever played.

Who is he? What has he done?

JohnRyder1986

"Do you wanna know what happens to an eyeball when it gets punctured?... Do you got any idea how much blood jets out of a guy's neck when his throat's been slit?"

The man with a death wish who calls himself John Ryder is the titular Hitcher, an enigmatic drifter who is revealed to be a serial killer who hitches rides with people so he can kill them without remorse. Jim Halsey quickly learns the hard way that he never should have picked the man up when Ryder forces him to accelerate past a stranded car. When Jim presses him for answers, Ryder replies that he hitched a ride with the owner of the car before Jim picked him up, confessing that he cut off the man's legs, arms and head (all in that order), and now offers Jim the same fate as he pulls a knife on him. He menaces Jim with grisly details of what he has done with his past victims (stabbing eyeballs and slashing throats) and tries to goad Jim into "stopping him" and trying to force Jim into confessing that he wants to die. Luckily, Ryder left the passenger side door ajar, so Jim builds up the courage to throw the homicidal maniac out of his vehicle.

But this is merely the beginning of Ryder's vicious cat-and-mouse game. Jim spots Ryder hitching a ride with a family of four and tries to pull them over, but he fails. Proving Ryder's earlier confession, a horrified Jim finds the car stranded, with blood dripping out: Ryder butchered the entire family, right down to the two kids he was playing with just moments ago. Ryder continues to hunt Jim down, making several attempts on his life and manages to hitch a ride with two more unsuspecting people in a pickup truck. Ryder is seen using said pickup truck for the rest of the film with the two people never being seen again, confirming their fates. Worse yet, Ryder plants a severed finger belonging to one of the pickup truck people in Jim's fries at a roadside diner just to mess with him, and even managed to frame Jim for his brutal murders by having planted his bloodied knife in Jim's jacket pocket earlier, resulting in the police arresting Jim.

Not finished with stalking Jim Halsey and ruining his life, Ryder goes on a cop killing spree that goes on for the rest of the film. Why? For the purpose of keeping Jim out of the police's clutches just to toy with him further and to incriminate the poor man some more. First, he kills the three police officers holding Jim in jail, making Jim look even more guilty of Ryder's murders when a response team shows up. Second, when Jim takes two cops hostage so he can turn himself in, Ryder drives by and guns the two officers down with a grin on his face, leaving Jim completely hopeless and broken. Third, when Jim teams up with the waitress Nash (who believes Jim is innocent and becomes something of a love interest to Jim) while on the run from the police, John Ryder "helps" Jim and Nash out by shooting down a police helicopter on their tail, causing it to crash on top of a police cruiser, killing four cops in the process and risking the lives of two more.

Jim and Nash go into hiding at a motel, but Ryder catches up to them, kidnaps Nash, and proves just how low he's willing to stoop in order to get his death wish. He ties Nash between a large truck and a trailer, keeping the police at bay by threatening to rip her in half. Nash also screams in agony whenever John stretches her out. Jim is sent by the cops to negotiate with Ryder, who tries to goad Jim into shooting him in the face. Problem is? Ryder's got Jim stuck in a Morton's Fork: If Jim shoots Ryder, his foot will come off the clutch and cause Nash to die; If Jim doesn't shoot Ryder, well... John will just tear Nash apart anyway just because he can. And that's exactly what Ryder does when Jim hesitates to kill him.

Naturally, the police arrest John Ryder. But Jim is convinced that even prison won't stop the almost superhuman Ryder from viciously snatching lives away, so he hijacks the police Captain's car and chases after the prison bus keeping Ryder chained up. Jim's fears are proven when Ryder breaks out of his cuffs and blows the three guards holding him away. After a stressful showdown, Jim runs Ryder over and finishes Ryder off by grabbing his shotgun and emptying shells into the killer's chest. However, Ryder dies with a gleeful smile on his face, knowing that he's turned Jim into a murderer in the process...

Mitigating Factors

If it wasn't obvious by now, John Ryder is clearly suicidal. However, Ryder's past is intentionally kept a mystery, so whatever reason Ryder would even have to go to such lengths to seek death is never given a justifiable reason. It also doesn't make him sympathetic in the slightest, given how he's damn well determined to indiscriminately take as many lives with him as he can for kicks.

Now when Ryder meets up with Jim at a café, he kind of gives Jim this... mocking look of amusement and pity when he frightens Jim into pulling the trigger on his empty gun and tries to give him a vague answer to why he's tormenting Jim ("You're a smart kid. You figure it out."), but frankly, it's not mitigating. It'd certainly be a humanizing moment on Ryder's part... if it weren't for three things:

  1. In Ryder's usual sociopathic fashion, it dries up instantly shortly afterwards.
  2. He continues fucking up Jim's life for the rest of the film without a lick of regret.
  3. He even hands Jim a couple bullets just before he leaves so he can corrupt Jim some more and face off with him when he's ready. Ryder recognizes that Jim fought back when he had Jim at his mercy at the start of the film, so now he's challenging himself by pushing Jim into becoming a killer like him.

Ryder is just a sadistic sociopath who doesn't care how many lives he wants to snuff out or ruin before he croaks.

Heinous Standards

There are no other villains in the film besides John Ryder himself, and boy, does he leave a nasty trail of blood behind him. He's slaughtered at least seven innocent people (two children included) in his initial hitchhike killing spree (with implications of there being more victims under his belt), murders up to twelve cops throughout the film, and his crowning moment of sickening cruelty is painfully splitting Jim's love interest Nash in half. All of this brings his body count up to at least 20, which is impressive for some... lone drifter roaming around in the middle of a desert.

Oh, and, there's the fact that John is relentlessly hounding some poor guy who escaped from his clutches, frames him for his murders to knock him down a peg, and it's implied that John is provoking Jim to kill him as a means to corrupt him.

Any questions?

Final Verdict

Yea to Ryder.

Rest in peace, Rutger Hauer (1944 - 2019)