Names: Ivan Nagy, director

Set up: We open on a guy driving down a mountain highway in a big honking 4x4. He’s snapping his fingers and getting down to some Highly Generic TV Pop Music. Since this was made in 1983, it’s Disco-tinged Highly Generic TV Pop Music, which ain’t helping.

We cut a nearby figure ambling down the road. Why, it’s…The Hitchhiker! Oddly, he’s actually hitchhiking, and rather than popping up after we’ve gotten a taste of that particular episode’s main characters and plotline, instead the 4x4 Guy pulls over to give him a ride.

The Hitchhiker pulls open the passenger door. This is portrayed via a subjective shot from the driver’s POV, so that the Hitchhiker seems to be speaking directly to us. (Wow!) In my first review of the series, I wondered why they didn’t incorporate the fact that the host was a hitchhiker directly into the show. Apparently early on they did. I can only assume that they found the device cumbersome, however, for they quickly dropped it in favor of having him merely insert himself into the action following a bit of a prologue, ala Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone.

The driver resumes driving. He also pops in a cassette, at which point the truly awful drivel we heard before again begins to play. "I’m Bob Ames," he introduces himself. "If you’re into Today’s Music, I’m on top of it." Really? Because it feels more like it’s on top of me, and pummeling me in the head.

Bob proves a bit chatty. Admittedly, that can be fairly obnoxious, but Our Narrator responds by pretty much ignoring him. Under the circumstances, that’s a little rude, which might be another reason they stopped using him this way. If the Hitchhiker gets chatty with this week’s cast of characters—who are most likely either slimy miscreants, or shortly due to be shuffling off this mortal coil, or both—then he’d appear ghoulish at best, a harbinger of doom at worst. On the other hand, if he remains aloof from someone who bothers to do him a favor, then he just appears to be a jerk*.

[*Of course, my idea would have been to just have him relay tales to folks unconnected to the main narrative; those who stop to give him a ride or that he meets at some overnight stay at a campground or seedy motel. Then all the above problems could have been avoided.]

Anyway, Bob indeed proves a putz, bragging about his success as a lady’s man while also owning up to being married. I suspect he’ll learn a valuable, albeit probably deadly, lesson by show’s end. And…hey! I don’t want to brag, but literally five seconds after I typed that last sentence, the 4x4 drives past a sign reading ‘RAWLEY STATE MENTAL INSTITUTION FOR WOMEN", a sight heralded with a spooky music sting. Hmm, where could this be going?

That night, the 4x4 pulls into the parking lot of a combination diner and general store. The fact that neon signage advertises the availability of Guns & Ammunition is, no doubt, meant to suggest that Bob is deep in remote redneck country. The Hitchhiker exits the vehicle and takes his leave.

Bob ambles into the diner, pausing to check out a hot blonde uniformed police officer. We’re now about three and a half minutes into things, including the minute-long opening credit sequence. With about twenty-three minutes left to go, I’ll wager that Bob ends up hooking up with the police officer, and then the punch line will be that she’s a homicidal escapee from the aforementioned mental institution, who killed a cop (who was exactly her size, of course, and who naturally failed to bleed) and took his or her uniform, and that Bob will learn all this to his extremely short lived regret.

Should this be the case, it will in many ways prove a pretty typical Hitchhiker episode, in that three very briefly observed facts:

1. Bob is a womanizer.

2. He’s currently in the area of a Woman’s Mental Institution.

3. He sees a hot blonde.

…are all that are necessary to figure out where things are going less than ten percent of the way into the proceedings. To play fair, though, I’ll leave this section in if I prove wrong, so that everyone reading this can laugh at my presumption.

The cop pauses to hear an APB, which is helpfully spelled out on a computer screen in her squad car. I hope you’re sitting down, because it turns out there’s been an escape from the Mental Institution. The fugitive is blonde (hmm), was wearing hiking boots, a T-shirt and green shorts, and had been incarcerated for five counts of murder, her preferred weapon being a knife. Her technique is to slash her victims’ throats with a single cut.

In a more logical series, the fact that she kills with a blade would invalidate my theory about her being disguised as the cop, since the obviously clean uniform we see would not be very likely coming off someone killed in such a fashion. Here, however…well, let’s just say that I’m sticking with my theory.

After this alert is heard, we cut away to…The Hitchhiker!! [His narration is punctuated by several patently ersatz peals of thunder and lightning flashes. Oh, bru-ther.]

Hitchhiker Intro: "Bob Ames thinks he’s got the world on a string. Thinks he’s got everyone figured out. But the sky is charged tonight. And it can sometimes boil the blood, and fog the mind."

Well, there’s a classic Hitchhiker Intro, because I have no friggin’ clue what he’s talking about. What can boil the blood and fog the mind? The charged sky? Is that what he’s saying? Because I don’t get that at all.

Anyway.

Later that night, Bob is driving down a lonely forest road through the pouring rain. Comically, when they shot his ‘in vehicle’ close-ups on the studio set, they remembered to have his windshield wipers working, but failed to bother spraying the car with water! The wipers are obviously playing across a bone dry window, or, more likely, one empty of a windshield altogether.

Bob eventually nears a small cabin, one with the windows all lit up. He parks his truck and heads towards it, pausing to grab a rifle. Inside the cabin we see a blonde woman drying herself before a fire. Bob enters with the gun raised, and the woman (currently wearing a sheet, although I don’t imagine that will remain true for long) admits to being a trespasser. She apologizes for entering what turns out to be Bob’s hunting cabin, having been hiking in the woods when it began to rain.

See, I wasn’t so bright. Bob is obviously going to hook up with this woman, then suspect that she’s the escaped killer, and then the cop will show up and eventually be revealed to be the real maniac, although probably after Bob’s killed the innocent woman or something, just to make sure we don’t feel sorry for him when he in turn gets whacked.

Oops, sorry.

Anyhoo. Bob proves extremely oily and of course immediately starts hitting on his uninvited guest. This is because we’ve established ‘horn dog’ as his One Personality Trait, which was pretty much all any character on this show was afforded, if that. On the other hand, Bob is in good company, as horn dogs were quite plentiful throughout the program’s run.

***

Immortal Dialogue [Now with Insta-Dating™ Pop References!]:

On the Make Bob: "I never expected to find Bo Derek wearing one of my sheets!"
Hot Trespasser: "You think I look like her, huh?" [Uhm, no.]

Bob: "Let me tell ya, I’ve been as close to her as I am to you now [uhm, no], and you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of!"

***

The woman, who naturally (if none too credibly) responds favorably to Bob’s ham-fisted pick-up lines, names herself as Cat. "My friends call me ‘Cat’ because I love animals," she explains. Yes. Yes, I guess that really does explain it. Really, that’s some fine writing there. I hope the author of this episode was nominated for an Emmy.

She then inquires as to whether Bob enjoys killing animals. (Perhaps, you see, because he owns a hunting cabin full of firearms and came in bearing a loaded rifle.) Unsurprisingly, he demurs, albeit unconvincingly, noting that it’s only the hunt and not the kill he enjoys. Leering, he describes his pleasure at getting his prey "in my sights," while she responds to his none too subtle innuendo with the sort of vamping one seldom sees outside an episode of Hee Haw.

Cat notes that her clothes are almost dry and she should be leaving, although obviously this is merely part of their Dance of Seduction. Meanwhile,  her togs naturally prove to be skimpy starlet fare rather than the sort of thing a hiker would be more likely to wearing. She dons her T-shirt—and only her T-shirt—in a provocative fashion. (Good grief, is there really still 19 minutes of this left to go?!). Bob, of course, hurriedly invites her to stay the night. He escorts her to his bedroom upstairs, explaining that he has some dry clothes she can wear. Yep, he’s a smooth operator, all right. *cough, cough* Cat follows along, still wearing only her T-shirt.

Bob gives her clothes and makes to head downstairs, asking her if she likes "red or white?" "Red or white what?" she responds. (?) He heads to the kitchen, and somehow doesn’t notice the large knife missing from the hanging display the camera helpfully zooms in on. Learning that she had vague aspirations to be an actress, Bob notes that a friend of his produces TV commercials. Do lines like that really still work?

He’s still yelling up the stairs when she appears behind him and shocks him by playfully leaping on his back. She goes on to note that she enjoys pretending to be animals. Wow, she kind of sounds crazy, doesn’t she?

With still a lot of time to waste until we end up wherever we’re going, the inane dialogue continues apace. Imagine the following spoken in the corniest ‘double entendre’ fashion possible:

And so the ceremonial boobs are bared, making this an official The Hitchhiker episode.

To the accompaniment of some really bad electric guitar music—suck never sleeps—we cut to the two making the beast with two backs while rolling around in front of, what else, a roaring fire. Except for the guitar replacing the more typical sultry saxophone, this goes about how’d you expect, with the camera zooming in every once in a while to showcase the NAKED BOOBIES. Frankly, the Hitchhiker must be some kind of pervert, because this sort of stuff happens in pretty much every story he relates.

After the Contractual Obligations, er, hot sex, is completed (indicated by a close-up of a drooping log burning in the fireplace!), the two snuggle a bit. As they chatter afterward, Bob becomes a bit heated when Cat judges their session merely "OK." She’s had a lot of lovers, she admits. It turns out that Bob’s a bit insecure about his carnal prowess, and he won’t let it go until she upgrades his rating. A jerk, a liar, a philanderer and a braggart. Subtle shadings of character were not the show’s forte.

Right on cue, the radio picks up Ye Olde Timely Plot Point Bulletin, which naturally conveys the news about the missing mental patient. Needless to say, the description of the fugitive fits Cat to a tee, and Bob is a bit wigged out to learn that the escapee had been incarcerated for murdering five of her lovers. Then, because Cat has to be totally suspicious before Bob kills her and then falls to the real killer—oops, sorry—she rolls over and turns off the radio so that they can resume their previous activities. Bob, however, nervously makes an excuse and heads to the kitchen, telling her to stay put. But hey, at least this affords us another good look at Cat’s boobs.

To the accompaniment of more really awful music—I assume somebody’s nephew’s garage band really needed the work—Bob enters the kitchen and finally notices the missing butcher knife. He scoops the rest of the cutlery up and hides it. (See Barn Door; Horse). Meanwhile, they cut back to Cat, apparently just so we can be sure that she hasn’t put her clothes back on yet.

In a near panic, Bob collects himself to some extent and returns to the main room. He’s not exactly put at ease, however, when he finds Cat ‘playfully’ pointing a rifle at him. (!) He grabs it away and angrily aims it at her instead. Having the upper hand, he accuses her of being the killer and orders her around in a jumpy fashion. Cat, for her part, begins to freak out over his suddenly hostile manner towards her. He then tries the phone, which is out, of course, because they never work at moments like this.

Still hoping that Bob is just playing with her, Cat points out that his gun is unloaded. "My father taught me to never leave a loaded weapon around," she explains. (However, he apparently neglected to teach her to never, ever point one at someone you don’t actually intend to shoot.) Bob quickly jams some shells into it, and she really begins to worry.

He marches her to the upstairs bathroom, where her clothes are hanging*, as he wants to get a look at her shorts. The fact that these are blue rather than green, as announced on the radio, does little to alleviate his fears. However, Cat’s crying and protestations of innocence begins to wear away at him. However, she’s just as scared as he is by now, and has managed to palm his shaving razor while getting her clothes back on. She then talks her way up to him and slashes him in the chest with the razor. She runs, but stumbles on the stairs and falls. Before she passes out, she secretes the razor in her handy ‘80s studded wristband.

[*If her clothes weren't completely dry yet, why would they leave them in the bathroom rather than down by the roaring fireplace? Because if they did that, then when Bob demanded to look at them, Cat wouldn't be in a position to grab the razor. That's just lazy scripting.] 

She awakens after dawn—duh, the episode’s title is ‘When Morning Comes’—to find herself tied to his bed. She rages at being so secured, and again when he leaves to get the police. (Which, assuming she’s innocent, would seem to be exactly what she’d want.) Of course, despite the fact that he believes she’s an insane killer, and that she’s already slashed him, and that she’s not wearing very much, he’s failed to find the hidden razor. Hell, considering that he’s already seen her in the buff, I’d have stripped her down and tied her up that way. Better safe than sorry. Instead, she goes for the blade as soon as he leaves.

Again, though, such an easy solution must be avoided, so it turns out that the road is so flooded that even Bob’s massive 4x4 can’t get through. This leads to a not extremely suspenseful series of cutaway shots, no doubt in what was meant to be the Hitchcock style, between Cat trying to cut her way free and Bob returning to the house.

She gets loose. He’s right outside when he hears her smashing open his locked gun rack. She grabs a rifle and some ammo and runs out the back door into the woods, with Bob following close after her. (Now, why the hell would he do that?) Then, with further awful music blaring on the soundtrack, the two begin to stalk each other. Amusingly, Bob is wearing a red jacket, although admittedly a somewhat muted one; while Cat is wearing a screaming canary yellow number. Both masters of camouflage, I guess.

The chase continues for several minutes, with several subjective camera shots and other such flourishes of the sort meant to substitute for style. The result is something that could be justly titled The Most Languorous Game. Eventually Cat ambushes her pursuer. Bob ends up groveling for his life (maybe he should have thought of that before he followed an armed woman he thinks a murderous psychopath into the forest—putz), and amusingly cites his wife and children as a reason for her to stay her hand. Uh, yeah. I’m sure that announcement will rack you up a lot of points.

Cat prepares to shoot him. (If she’s actually innocent, that seems a rather weird idea.) We hear a shot, but it’s the old ‘we think he’s been shot, but really it’s she that’s been shot’ gambit. Wait, that’s not right. It’s more like the old ‘we’re supposedly supposed to think he’s been shot, and be surprised that it’s really her that’s been shot, but weren’t remotely fooled for a second’ gambit. Yes, that’s the one.

Bob looks up and sees an armed woman officer approaching Cat’s body. The two return to the cabin, where the officer removes her cap to reveal her blond locks. (Wait a minute!) She asks to use the phone. Bob replies that it was dead earlier, but she tries it and says it’s now working. She calls in and receives orders to stay put.

Bob, back on the make (!!!!!), saunters over and oozes, "I didn’t know they had guards who look like Bo Derek." The woman, whose name is Sally, responds to his comment with pleased consternation. "I’ve stood as close to her as I am to you," he assures her, repeating what he told Cat, just in case we didn’t ‘get’ earlier that this was just a standard line of his.

He turns to make her a drink, and…

…‘Sally’ reaches into her pocket and produces a knife*. Wow, how stunned literally twos and threes of viewers (well, OK, maybe not that many) must have been to only now realize that it’s Officer Sally who’s the killer, and not Cat. Exit Bob through a pretty unconvincing effect achieved with the traditional stage knife that squirts fake blood.

[*The knife does indeed appear to be the one missing from Bob’s kitchen set, which doesn’t make all that much sense, but anyway.]

Cut to a hearse driving down the road. As it cruises along, it drives past…The Hitchhiker!! Well, actually, it doesn’t. We just hear the Hitchhiker’s narration as the vehicle trundles past the camera. Man, that’s lame even for this show.

The Hitchhiker Wraps Things Up: "Bob Ames had the same line for everybody. It was easy for him. But in the end, it was Death that drew the line." [Uh, what now?]

***

Gratuitous Naked Boobies, Butts and Simulated Sex? Oh, yeah.

Loads of ‘Adult’ Language? Oddly, not so much.

Whatever Happened To…:

Obviously these three initial episodes were shot on the cheap, given the lack of any name guest stars.

• August Schellenberg (Bob Ames) was a fairly busy—surprise—Canadian actor, mostly doing TV guest appearances and playing bit parts in theatrical films. With dark features, Schellenberg is the sort of ‘exotic’ looking actor who ended up being cast as everything from Eskimos to American Indians to Russians and various sorts of South Americans. For what it’s worth, his most prominent role is probably that of Randolph Johnson, a part he assayed in all three Free Willy movies. He’s still acting today.
• Pamela Bowman (Cathy ‘Cat’ Marks) guest played pretty girls on TV episodes (Knight Rider, Airwolf, Hotel, etc.) and in movies. Sadly, her biggest theatrical part was perhaps as "Cruiser’s Girl" in Stripes, although I’m sure her appearance as ‘Girl in Gym’ in John Frankenheimer’s The Challenge has its fans. She seems to have retired after appearing as a pretty girl on a 1987 episode of Married…With Children.
• Tabitha Herrington (Officer Sally) had a robust acting career consisting of three entire jobs (according to the IMDB, anyway). First she played the bit part of Montgomery in Mr. Patman (1980), a dark thriller starring James Coburn. 1983 saw her big break, when she assayed the key role of "Blonde" in Bob Fosse’s Star 80. Finally, we can savor her masterwork as Sally here.
• Director Ivan Nagy directed all of the first three episodes of The Hitchhiker. He did a lot of TV work in the ‘70s and ‘80s, including the telemovie Captain America II: Death Too Soon. His greatest fame, however, emanated from his status as a one-time boyfriend of Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood Madame. He worked with her, was one of the guys who ratted her out, and apparently has a well-earned reputation as a profane, sleazy character. Nagy appeared as himself in the documentary Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madame, which is available on cassette and DVD.

Readers' Respond:

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