The hitch-hiker
1953 · 71 min
The Hitch-Hiker (1953), Ida Lupino's desert noir, the first American film noir directed by a woman. Watch the full movie free, with no account required.
Two friends drive south for a fishing trip, pick a man up off the roadside, and spend the rest of the film at gunpoint in their own car. His right eye does not close, so they can never tell when he is asleep. Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy are the hostages, and William Talman, later the district attorney who lost every week on Perry Mason, is the one holding the gun.
Ida Lupino directed it and wrote it with Collier Young, and it is generally called the first American film noir directed by a woman. She did the reporting herself. It comes from Billy Cook's 1950 killing spree, and she went and interviewed the two men Cook actually took hostage.
The National Film Registry took it in 1998.
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