Though Hitch Hike only marginally quaifies as a giallo – there are no black gloved killers and no mystery involved – it is listed in the giallo bible Blood and Black Lace, so I’m going to classify it as such.

Hitch Hike begins as more of a crime thriller, though it quickly spirals into a misanthropic back and forth of psychosexual games and macho posturing.

Franco Nero plays an Italian reporter who has married his boss’ daughter and now spends much of his time drinking and cursing. I mean really drinking. He and his wife Eve have been camping in Nevada and are driving across the country towing a trailer. Against her husband’s judgement, Eve decides to pick up a hitchhiker, and it is revealed before long that he is one of a gang of thieves who just stole 2 million dollars from a bank.

Adam Konitz, the thief, is played by David Hess from Last House on the Left, and his performance here mirrors that of Last House and a lot of those especially psychotic male characters that proliferated exploitation cinema in the 70s. He finds great pleasure in subjecting the young couple to insults and humiliation, giggling and slugging whiskey from the bottle as he waves his revolver from the back seat. He says he needs them in order to pass any roadblocks on the way to Mexico, but it’s more likely that he enjoys keeping Nero around simply because of his stubborn refusal to kowtow to Hess.

The similarities between the drunk and the thief are not so subtle, and it’s the scumminess of the characters that grace the film with gravitas and 70s grit. Films today would never dream of making the good guy a complete prick, and a misogynist to boot, but it creates that uneasy feeling of living in a world where everything is not black and white, but shades of grey.

The film’s action scenes drag a bit and it’s really the cruel back and forth between Hess and Nero that deserves the spotlight. Having only seen Nero’s cowboy flicks, the gusto with which he attacks his role is hypnotic. A Morricone score of banjo plucking is nice, though the theme song, a hippie drum circle ballad, has the power to grate a little.

Director Pasquale Festa Campanile, who I’ve read made mostly throwaway comedies, infuses Hitch Hike with a deep cynicism and the downbeat ending reminded me of the shocking finale to Fernando Di Leo’s To Be Twenty. In that film, two young women are punished for reveling in their newfound female empowerment and perhaps Hitch Hike was also meant to be a rebellion against the hippie lifestyle. On more than one occasion it is Eve’s freewheeling samaritanism that proves the couple’s undoing. But you don’t have to think about any of that to enjoy watching two great actors attempt to one-up one another.