I'm a big baby doll" says Betty Lawford (Agnes) in one of the funniest lines in the movie. Another contender comes from Lawrence Tierney (Steve) who comments about a baby girl's ears. These two characters are the standout in the cast with Tierney running the show as a bad-guy who is being hunted by the police. He manipulates his way through the film and convinces as the tough guy that he really was in real life as well. As for Lawford, despite her strange intonation, she also does well as a lady who's slightly edgy. Tragically, this was her last film as she died the following year and Peter Lawford lost a cousin.Apart from the two cast members mentioned, the others don't fare so well with Ted North (Fergie) being the worst. There are unnecessary comedy characters that just don't belong in this film and I'm afraid to say that North is just hugely annoying and even gets a super-cheesy end sequence. The ending isn't well executed as, all of a sudden, it's over. Oh, that was convenient! This film could have been better if it was expanded and the lead good guy was replaced. He ruins the film and whilst Tierney is very good, he ultimately can't rescue the whole experience. The moral of this film is to get yourself hitch-hiking if you want some stories to tell. One of mine involves hitching on a tractor somewhere in the south of Portugal with a guy that spoke no English and my friend and I had no idea where we were going. Didn't involve murder, though – that's another story with a biker nutter going to Warrington. He was terrifying.

With a title like that, incredible plugs from several film noir historians and the presence of Lawrence Tierney, I just had to find this movie and buy it, even if it was sight-unseen and hard to obtain.This had a "Detour" look to it, meaning a very low-budget film noir with a no- name cast except for Tierney, although he wasn't a big star anyway. I knew him from the film "Born To Kill" and was intriguing. Tierney played the same kind of psycho here. He was convincing, since he was mean and tough and nasty in real life, too.In this film, four people dominate: one good man, one bad man, one good woman, one bad woman. The bad people, of course, have the best lines. You know Tierney is not good because insults everyone he sees, even a little baby. The other people are idiotic and you want slap them and say, "Wake up!" before Tierney does something bad to them.The cops in here are also a bit strange. They would rather play poker than go chase a criminal. On second thought, maybe that was sensible. Anyway, it was odd to see.In a nutshell, Tierney is on the run, and winds up with these other saps who he cons into hiding out in someone's vacant house. Most of the film is talk, not much action, but it moves pretty well and it only lasts 62 minutes. There are laughs along the way despite the seriousness of the story but it still was disappointing overall. I guess I expected too much. The title is still the best thing about the film. See it, if you can, but don't spend money on it as I did.

Laurence Tierney seems to have been born to play this role. He is sinister, amoral, nasty. It's beautifully filmed and superbly directed, though it has a raw feel.Tiernry is the title character. A devil he surely is. He gets the poor dope who picks him up a very hard time. The two women they then give rides to fare even less well.Betty Lawford is perfect as the tough, over-the-hill floozy of those two. She is always looking for a deal for herself -- silk stockings, salvation... We like her, though, and feel that we may have encountered her or her like behind countless counters.We feel bad for the gas station attendant when Tierney says cruel things about the picture of his young daughter. There is no doubt: Tierney's character is a dreadful person. But the gas station attendant is a pain himself. He's an annoying know-it-all.The police are not portrayed in a very favorable light, either. So who do we actually like? Maybe the younger of the two hitchhikers, Beulah. Her older pal, though we surely do not admire her. The watchman Tierney cruelly gets drunk? Not really.It's a slice of life cut with a hatchet and the slice is not pretty no matter what angle we look at it from.

I saw this many years ago on AMC. I barely remember the story, but I do remember that it was a very effective piece of noir. I've wanted to see it again, but it is extremely hard to come by. It isn't on video or DVD, and it rarely appears at revival theatres. If you ever have the chance to catch this on AMC or TCM, do whatever you can to see it. I definitely put it up there with "Detour" and "They Walked By Night". Great stuff.