The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, State of Fear, and a few more movies

Hit Man (1972)
Free on DVD from your public library

The is a blaxploitation remake of Michael Caine's Get Carter — a dynamite idea, so it's surprising how much it sucks.

Bernie Casey wears plaid pants, and tries to find out who killed his brother. There's sex and violence, but you'd be safe watching this in a room filled with explosives, because there's no spark anywhere.

And beware the vicious and obviously authentic dogfight scene.

Verdict: NO.  

♦ ♦ ♦     

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

There's a psycho-killer on the loose, and he's hitchhiking. A couple of middle-aged fishing buddies are tootling along the highway, and six minutes into the film, they make the mistake of offering him a lift. The bad guy pulls a gun, so now these two pals are in trouble.

The rest of the movie isn't much more than the bad guy telling the fishing buddies what to do, threatening to kill them if they don't. You'd think that might get sorta one-note, and most Hollywood movies would have something else happen — maybe have one or the other buddy escape for a while, get re-caught, or wrestle the gun from the bad guy — something to change things up.

#335  [archive]
SEPT. 17, 2024

This movie doesn't do that. It's relentless, the bad guy always pointing the gun and being crazy and scary. And it works.

William Talman plays the hitchhiker, and you might remember him as "Ham Burger," the prosecutor who lost in court to Perry Mason, week after week. He's sure different here, wearing a sneer that almost looks like a facial deformity.

It's a B-movie, but everything clicks. Has some great camerawork, and ample tension, both probably thanks to director Ida Lupino. 

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦     

The Hitchhiker (2014) 
Streaming free at Internet Archive

There seems to have been a mistake. I'd been expecting a 2014 short titled The Hitchhiker, starring Jerry Mathers, TV's "Beaver," but this is Beaverless.

What the heck, though. It's a movie, let's watch it...

It opens with about two minutes of the ordinary warning against unauthorized exhibition, while someone reads along, mispronouncing the longer words. When it finally gets underway, a guy wearing an obviously fake beard waves at the camera now and again, while someone off-camera recites poorly-recorded so-so poetry. Then there's a road-trip, but it's unclear who's going where, and eventually someone confesses to murder.

My mind and occasionally my eyes wandered during this, so I hadn't noticed a murder, and also never noticed a plot. Overall, I don't really understand what I've just watched.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦     

The Hitchhiker (2014)
Streaming free at Vimeo

OK, here's the one with Beaver.

Jerry Mathers plays the titular hitchhiker in a short, good-natured spoof of The Twilight Zone. It's only a giggle or two, but it's watchable, Mathers is old but a decent actor, and it has noir-inspired photography and sets.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦     

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

The Hitchhiker's Guide was originally a radio show, written by Douglas Adams in the 1970s, but my radio back then didn't get UK stations, so I've never listened.

Then came a novel, which several folks I knew raved about, so in the 1990s I tried to read it, but failed. Enjoyed the premise, but it's relentlessly zany, and at the length of a book it exceeded my endurance for zaniness.

Then came this TV mini-series, which folks have been raving about for 40+ years, so I finally gave it a look-see. It's zany too, almost as zany as the book, but it works better in half-hour doses. I'm definitely recommending it, but wouldn't advise binging; one episode at a time works best. There are only six episodes, so it's a week of amusing bedtime stories.

It's like a mash-up of Monty Python and the original Doctor Who — often funny, sometimes not, and cheap-looking, but it makes up for the cheapness with lots of heart.

What's it about? Earth is obliterated to make way for interstellar urban renewal, but a lovable dude named Arthur Dent survives, with the help of his friend Ford Prefect, whom Arthur hadn't known was a space alien. They end up in outer space, where they're taken aboard a passing ship, and whatever happens next you know it'll be nuts.

Explaining further would be futile, because it defies explaining, as the show itself explains: 

"Perhaps I'm old, but the chances of finding out what's really going on are so absurdly remote the only thing to do is to say, 'Hang the sense of it', and keep occupied." 

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦     

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Streaming free at Hoopla, with your library card

This feature film remake is from Disney, which means it's calculated and 'cute', but not in a good way.

On the plus side, the special effects no longer look cheap, and it has the always amusing Martin Freeman as Arthur, and the always erudite Stephen Fry as the titular Guide.

It is, however, exponentially zany — zany on top of zany, marinated in zany, and wrapped in more zany. Perhaps hardcore fans of the franchise enjoyed it, but for me the story was lost in the zaniness. Despite having read half the book and seen the TV show, by midway through the movie, I had no idea what was going on, except, of course, it's always something zany!

Turning it off wasn't an option or I would have, but I watched this with my brother, as one of our monthly movies.

Verdict: NO. 

♦ ♦ ♦     

Hitler Lives (1945)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

It's 1945, and Germany has surrendered. Japan was still fighting, but not for long, and I would've thought folks would be hungry for peace. This rather well-made propaganda film says no — we must remain on guard and suspicious of all things German, and especially disdainful of the German people.

A narrator presents Germany's unpleasant history — Otto Von Bismarck, attacking Denmark, Austria, and France in the 1860s and '70s; Kaiser Wilhelm, giving us World War I; and of course, Dolph Hitler, giving us World War II. This is explained with barely contained anger, which, after the Nazis and all, is understandable.

In its last few minutes, the focus shifts to America, and the enemy stateside, which looks very much like MAGA.

"Right here in America, the evil spirits of these ghosts still haunt us. Wearing many guises, as they continue with Hitler's aims and purposes, spreading the violent propaganda of race hatred and violence."

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦      

Hobgoblins (1988)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

A flock of squeaky clean white kids fight off monsters that seem to live in a vault, in the basement of an abandoned movie studio.

This is sub-par even for schlock, with a dumb script, bad acting, unconvincing hobgoblins, and not enough dead teenagers, but there's a funny rake-and-hoe fight on the lawn.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦      

Hobson's Choice (1954)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

Capitalism as comedy, and it's cute.

We're in 1800s England, with Charles Laughton as Henry Hobson, an obnoxious drunkard who owns a shoe shop. He's supposed to be charmingly obnoxious, but the charm eludes me.

He's of no consequence, though. The appeal of the movie is Brenda de Banzie as Hobson's eldest daughter, Maggie, single and spinstered at the age of 30, who decides she'll marry William Mossop (John Mills), the shop's finest shoemaker.

It's refreshing that Maggie is written and portrayed as smart and tough but never mean, never manly. Her husband-in-progress William knows only bootmaking, but he's uneducated and unpolished, and she brings the business smarts to set up their shop in competition with her father's. Maggie & William's relationship is simply sweet, and makes the movie.

It's quietly critical of the class separation between haughty capitalists and the working class, banished to the shop's basement. 

I'm not wild about the music, which screams 'comedy' from the first notes, nor again Laughton's obnoxiousness, but the other elements sparkle.

Directed by David Lean, who also co-wrote. When you think of Lean, you probably think Lawrence of Arabia, and this is obviously much, much more compact, but even here Lean finds moments of epic visuality.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦      

State of Fear (2005)
Streaming free at Kanopy, with your library card

This is a documentary about Peru, where the "war on terrorism" was a literal war. It was twenty years of murderous killings by Abimael Guzmán's Marxist-oriented "Shining Path" guerrillas, and by the nation's military, which was granted murderous impunity by President Alberto Fujimori, who used cried of "terror!" to dissolve Congress and make himself a dictator. It was a perfect storm of equal and opposite evils, which left 50- to 70,000 people 'disappeared' and dead.

I watched this knowing next-to-nothing about what had happened in Peru, and learned a lot, but a few eternal questions remain, like: Why are people such monstrous fucks?

Why, other than at gunpoint, would anyone follow Shining Path honcho Abimael Guzmán, who talked of a glorious future while killing anyone who disagreed? Or Fujimori who, even after Guzmán had been caught and Shining Path collapsed, continued stoking people's fears, claiming military law and draconian oppression were necessary?

"People were very afraid to be mistaken for terrorists. They figured, 'Better stay home, not protest, keep quiet..."

As for the moviemaking, I never need a flute to tell me it's sad when people are killed. Music and special effects have no place in a documentary, and there's too much of both here — but that's true of virtually every documentary in the past 25 years, and I'm the only human bothered by it.

Other than that, State of Fear tells what happened at a measured pace, perfect for newcomers to follow along. It's infuriating but feels fair, even hopeful by the end. It's Peru, but some of the plot developments feel familiar, and what happened there could happen anywhere.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦       

• Ida Lupino, the filmmaker

• Interview with Sean Kenney, Star Trek's original Captain Pike

   9/17/2024   

• • • Coming attractions • • •     

Hoffa (1992)
Hold That Ghost (1941)
The Hole (1960)
The Hole (2001)
Holiday (1930)
Holiday (1938)
    ... plus schlock,
            shorts,
                and surprises out of alphabetical order

— — —

Now accepting movie recommendations,
especially starting with the letter 'I'.
Just add a comment, below.
— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

 

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