China Lake (1983)
Robert Harmon’s calling card debut, China Lake, first burned its way into my brain via Momentum Pictures’ special edition DVD of The Hitcher, and to this day, is my favourite ever short film – and also one of the scariest.
The always welcome, darkly charismatic, Charles Napier, who more often than not pops up in Jonathan Demme’s pictures, plays Donnelly – a maniac motorcycle cop on vacation, who abuses his authority every chance he gets; locking innocent women in the boots of their cars, shooting locks off petrol pumps to steal gas, and arbitrarily targeting a pair of “germ” concrete workers (Blade Runner’s William Sanderson and Bob Dylan’s 1966 drummer, Mickey Jones). What results is a foreboding effort with an overarching, sinister tone; not a conventional horror film by any stretch, but one that lingers in the mind long after its blood red credits fade away.
Self-funded by saving every penny Harmon had for three years, and stitched together in rented (and stolen) editing suites, pulling industry favours left and right from his previous career as a stills photographer, with the whole cast and crew grafting free of charge, calling in solids from the sound crew that dubbed Star Wars, shooting on leftover short ends, blagging rent-free stages, borrowing cameras with anamorphic lenses from Panavision – even Donnelly’s motorcycle was loaned. Harmon also served as director of photography, and if all else failed, planned to use China Lake to bulk up his cinematography showreel.
The fact Donnelly is a police officer (something that didn’t manifest until the final draft of the script) makes China Lake a political statement; a fear of people in power is brought to the table. Donnelly takes a holiday from the rules and regulations of his job, but continues to wear the uniform. He tells a waitress he’s a writer, but really he’s a dangerous fantasist; a lunatic stalker, seemingly repeating his diabolical methods – his sick tradition, for his own antisocial amusement. There’s no overt motive beyond Donnelly’s warped view of society, and it’s his sick “community responsibility,” as it says on the police blackboard, which makes China Lake genuinely terrifying. The idea this psycho is out there, doing jumping jacks and press-ups between cruising the purple and orange-skied desert at night, searching for new victims, is beyond haunting.
The Hitcher (1986)
The Hitcher is a brutal, unforgiving, nightmarish cult thriller owing more than it would probably care to admit to the slew of unstoppable, serial slashers of the early ‘80s, Spielberg’s unrelenting, high-speed TV movie, Duel, and the relentless, incendiary action of The Terminator—with its familiar motel room hideout, and authentic, practical helicopter crashes, car flips, and death rolls that digital effects will never, ever equal.
This hallucinatory, propulsive action picture stars a despairing C. Thomas Howell as Jim Halsey (a sort of Marty McFly: The Horror Years) and a pretty-eyed, cherubic, mettlesome Jennifer Jason Leigh (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Single White Female) as Nash. A tricksy, persistent, Rutger Hauer steals the show as evil personified, John Ryder—a merciless, mass-murderous, motive-less hitchhiker, and real-life ”Ryder” on the storm, and killer on the road, taunting his victims to stop him.
Penned by Eric Red (Near Dark), and adeptly directed by Robert Harmon—ideally screened in a complementary double bill with his similarly-themed, nihilistic, calling card short, China Lake, The Hitcher is dynamically photographed by future Oscar-winning cinematographer, John Seale (Witness, The English Patient, Mad Max: Fury Road) with a handful of shots to die for. It’s a taught, tense thriller, unafraid to go absolutely anywhere, and drag us along—kicking and screaming for the hellish ride. In ‘86 anyway, it contained moments audiences, and certain critics, never believed they would see in a movie—specifically an unforgettable, and truly shocking truck-stop set piece.
Taking a trip to crap Critics’ Corner, Gene Siskel said he couldn’t quantify his hatred for The Hitcher, and its “violence in service of violence.” It was labelled as “heartless, cruel garbage,” and arrogantly and definitively proclaimed by Roger Ebert to be, “a movie that pretends to say one thing, but is really saying another thing altogether. The violent games are representative of perverted sex in a way the movie will not acknowledge. If you look beneath the surface of The Hitcher, it’s a deeply cynical movie that doesn’t even have the courage to admit what it’s really about, which is gay sadomasochism.”
Paging Dr. Freud! Yes, there’s a crotch stroke, and a palpable, sick intimacy between Ryder and Jim, but it’s locked within an unexplainable film with unspoken character motives. It casts such an effective broad stroke, and has an easily-internalised applicability. It invites such speculation, and evokes and inflames individual perspectives and readings to such a vivid degree, that it seemingly baited the repressed Ebert into publicly confessing his latent homosexuality.
For maximum enjoyment, pair this one with Harmon’s China Lake, and a good ole American cheeseburger and fries—hold the severed digit.
Scarious Artists 