Hitcher in the Dark (1989) * 1/2 (out of 4) Incredibly silly psychological thriller from the same man who brought us Eaten Alive, Cannibal Ferox, Nightmare City and countless giallos. This time out he tells the story of a young man (Joe Balogh) who is so in love with his mother that he drives around in his RV kidnapping women who look like her so that he can sexually assault them, kill them and then feed them to alligators. All of this changes when he kidnaps one girl (Josie Bissett) who he plans on settling down with, although she doesn't share the same feelings. This Italian/American production is a cross between Bill Lustig's Maniac and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Vertigo but needless to say it doesn't come close to any of those films. This movie is without question one of the dumbest and most boring thrillers I've ever seen and trust me when I say I've seen a lot. The biggest problem is Lenzi's direction, which is just downright horrible as he never brings any life to the film nor does he ever dig into this killer's mind even though that's what he's trying to do. There's no doubt Lenzi could create a good film earlier in his career but everything I've seen from after 1983 is pure junk and this film is included. There's some female nudity along the way but this too grows very tiresome. The only thing that keeps this sucker from getting a BOMB rating is the incredibly horrid dialogue, which Ed Wood would probably laugh at. The dialogue in this film is so bad that I couldn't help but laugh at loud during several scenes because it really seems like a two-year-old wrote it. Be sure to pay close attention to one scene where the girl's boyfriend, searching for her, sneaks into a RV, which belongs to a black man. This scene must be Lenzi paying tribute to the blaxploitation pictures of the 70s because of how bad and out of touch with reality it is.

This film has to be viewed with this in mind first: it is ridiculous and not meant to be scary.I like "Hitcher in the Dark" a lot. It's no award winner, but what do you want? It's a low budget, late-80's slasher/thriller with a good dose of comedy and sleaze thrown in for good measure. I doubt Lenzi was even trying to make it scary. The 'killer' is a preppy looking RV driver cruising the Virginia Beach coast on his daddy's dime. He picks up a girl and makes her life hell for a few days, and ends up paying for it in the end. Thrown in between is a cheesy plot, an angry boyfriend, lots of 80's beach people getting drunk and listening to horrible music, and some pretty nice looking chicks.For the time it came out, it was a little ahead of it's time, too. Pretty much all the new thrillers are 'real life' terror rides like "Hitcher in the Dark." For what it is, "Hitcher in the Dark" is a lot cooler than any teen horror movie of today. And it's funny as hell!!! 5 out of 10, kids.

Misogynistic psycho wackjob Mark (a creepily manic and intense performance by handsome beefcake hunk Joe Balogh) wears mirror shades, suffers from a severe mommy complex, drives a fancy expensive Winnebago, and has a nasty penchant for picking up stray foxy young female hitchhikers whom he likes to rape, debase and brutally murder. Mark chooses the feisty Daniela (gorgeous blonde hottie Josie Bissett, who went on to slightly more respectable work as a regular on the trashy nighttime soap opera "Melrose Place") as his next victim and abducts her. Daniela's obsessive boyfriend Kevin (woodenly played by Jason Saucier) gives chase.Limply directed by spaghetti splatter specialist Umberto ("Nightmare City") Lenzi (who also wrote the flat, clichéd, talky cookie cutter script), with slack pacing, nil suspense, mostly mild and goreless violence, atrocious acting, and a humdrum plot which offers no fresh twists or novel surprises, this strictly from hunger Eurodreck rip-off of "The Hitcher" qualifies as a real stinker. However, both Jerry Phillip's polished cinematography and Carlo Maria Cordio's throbbing rock score are up to par, while the copious gratuitous nudity rates as the single most watchable and enjoyable thing in this whole godforsaken turkey (said nudity includes several scenes of Bissett in the buff and an especially tasty wet t-shirt contest). And hardcore Bissett bashers such as yours truly should get a kick out of the extensive degradation Josie suffers throughout the flick: she's drugged, gagged and handcuffed by our star loony, has her hair cut short and dyed black, gets photographed by nutso while nude and unconscious, and is even forced to watch the freak carve the word "pig" in Kevin's chest. Taking that last nugget into consideration, I guess this picture ain't so bad after all.

Italian director Umberto Lenzi will hopefully always be remembered for gruesome and bloodthirsty splatter films like `Cannibal Ferox' and `Nightmare City' much more than this worthless movie. Hitcher in the Dark is lame and redundant attempt to explore the mind of a disturbed psycho-killer. The 22-year-old Mark Glazer picks up young hitchhiking girls in his camper. Too bad for these girls, Mark suffers from a really bad case of the Oedipus-syndrome and goes over to torturing the girls if they don't want to take mum's place. The plot of `Hitcher in the Dark' (wrong name, by the way, the entire movie is shot in broad daylight!) isn't exactly original and elaborates on the success of `The Hitcher', with a slight Norman Bates twist. There's no tension, the characters are absolutely non-believable and there even isn't enough horror to keep you alert. Hitcher does contain a few bloody make-up sequences, but nowhere near as shocking as some of Lenzi's previous films. I don't know if Josie Bisett likes to be remembered about her starring in this film, but it did mean her debut in the world of cinema. Bisett plays the main muse of the young weirdo. Although I don't like the film at all, I prefer it over watching all the `Melrose Place' episodes, so it can't be that horrible. And at least Bisett shows a little naked flesh here