The Hitchhikers (1972) User Reviews

Another White Trash Hippie Flick

[mrbreth · 25 September 2003]

I remember seeing this movie at the drive-in in the early seventies. We saw it packaged with a white trash biker film called 'Bummer' and another racy nudie flick. That was the 70s, man.

Anyhow, the main character in Hitchhikers is a young, unwed girl who gets pregnant by her boyfriend and then to avoid shame (remember this was a different era), she runs away from home to join a hippie commune. The commune leader, Benson, is a conniver like Manson who runs everything and ends up arranging an illegal abortion for the girl by blackmailing an unscrupulous doctor. (We get to see the shocking illegal abortion scene). Then we find out that the commune members support themselves by having the females hitchhike and flash motorists with nudity, then robbing those who stop for them. Imagine a stark naked or nearly naked girl in the road in front of you as you're driving down the road and you'll know why this ruse works.

The Hitchhikers pull their flash and rob scheme on mostly older men. Sometimes Benson, the commune leader, will pop out of the bushes with a gun and rob the guy or the girls will simply hop into the unsuspecting man's car near a busy intersection and cry rape ("you dirty old man !" or "now how about another $20 for that blouse you tore ! I'll scream !") to blackmail the guy into forking over all his green, lest he suffer extreme embarrassment in front of a crowd.

The girls in this movie are some pretty good eye candy and sometimes you're reminded of 'Girls Gone Wild' except these chics get paid by robbing you !

About the only funny line came when the crew robbed a Reverend on a rural road and left his car keys about a half mile down the road stuck to a bush, forcing him to crawl on hands and knees to retrieve the keys. He utters "Praise the Lord ! I almost got my ass blown off back there..."

There is little redeeming social value to this flick, but if you remember the seventies, hitchhiking was very big and some of this stuff like this actually went on in real life. I remember being warned about not picking up hitchhikers because of this 'cry rape' ruse.

If you want to be nostalgic, rent this flick, along with 'Bummer' some night and toke up. Or even better, find a white trash hippie/biker marathon at one of the few drive-in movies left in the country !

Here comes Benson...

[ethylester · 2/10 · 30 May 2003]

All I remember about this movie is the annoying soundtrack. There's this really sleepy sounding hippie voice singing over a jam band or an acoustic guitar. He says, "Here comes Benson" over and over in a nasally lazy voice because the main character is Benson, who is running from the law. All the songs are actually made for the movie. To this day, it is the main thing I remember about it.

The other memorable part is the hippie commune in the desert and how dirty everyone was. People just did whatever Benson said. They robbed motorists who were nice enough to stop to offer them rides when the hippies would pretend to hitchhike. The characters were just plain mean, and the sick part was that they got away with it. No conscience on any of them. And that annoying song! It was like it was trying really hard to be free lovin' and hippie-like, but the characters were just too mean to be respected.

Left me with a bad taste in my mouth and a bad song in my head.

Low rent hitchhiker exploitation

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 10 February 2017]

THE HITCHHIKERS is a steady slice of exploitation from the early 1970s about a group of criminal hitchhiking girls, presided over by a creepy hippy guy, who make a living out of entrapping unwary motorists. Their usual method is to get in the guy's car, cry rape and then blackmail him for some ready cash. Occasionally robbery-at-gunpoint is brought into play too. There's little more to the story than that, and watching it it soon becomes apparent that the story is being endlessly padded out in order to reach feature-length proportions.

The main character is a young blonde woman who falls pregnant and decides to escape from her boyfriend and family. She soon falls in with the above-mentioned crowd, at which point the film's most shocking and distasteful scene occurs: a graphic abortion which is really sickening stuff. Otherwise, the story is quite tame, with little in the way of violence or nudity that the tagline and poster promises. It's an amateurish effort with an amateur cast who don't make much effort, shot on the back roads in California somewhere. What's most annoying is that this film has a definite beginning and middle, but no ending at all.

Ugh

[BandSAboutMovies · 2/10 · 19 October 2021]

Maggie (Hee-Haw's Misty Rowe) learns she's pregnant so she runs away from home. Such begins a movie by Beverly and Fred Sebastian, who also brought is 'Gator Bait, On the Air with Captain Midnight and Rocktober Blood.

She then falls in with some hippies who rob people so that they can finance getting a schoolbus to travel the country in. And then there's a gruesome abotion scene which contrasts the feel good 70s vibe of flashing your panties to get a ride from a truck driver.

Somewhere in here, there was a good movie, but the Sebastians aren't the people to make it. I mean, they try and make a socially conscious movie while all we want are frolicking moments of stealing cash from truckers and making it on the road. And then it turns all Manson family, you know? I guess in that way, it is a very realistic film about the seventies.

👍

[coryshannon-52708 · 2/10 · 28 March 2019]

This film contains catfights, topless shots, and sexy girls standing on the sides of country roads and flashing their stuff to get the attention of male drivers. There's also this AWFUL soundtrack. If that's what you wanna see then hold out your thumb and catch a ride with this film.

Pretty Bad

[c-33647 · 3/10 · 27 April 2017]

One of the many very bad hippie , biker, deadbeat generation movies of the late 60's early 70's . You get some crappy acting and a bunch of nude white trash hygienically challenged free love whores but it still cannot save this bad trip . It really has nothing going for it. If you have ever actually been around this type of people in that era all you will remember is that nasty smell of unwashed armpits and genitals along with bad breath. If you want to see a bad movie tune in .

These girls and their leader Benson must have still been celebrating the 1969 Woodstock festival

[Ed-Shullivan · 7/10 · 9 August 2019]

Although the Woodstock musical festival was a three (3) day event back in 1969, I think this cult leader named Benson (Nick Klar) and his band of Charlie Manson like hot looking female followers who agreed to tease unsuspecting motorists then rob them, assumed that the Woodstock festival was continuing three (3) years later since this film was released in 1972.

The 1969 Woodstock music festival was all about peace, love and good music. In the 1972 film the Hitchhikers, there certainly is an abundance of love and good music, but the peace of the historical 1969 Woodstock music festival was replaced by a Charles Manson like inspired male hippie cult leader named Benson who took in a bunch of scantily clad hot looking women who were trained by Benson to pretend to be hitchhiking and then when the horny male motorists would stop to get a much closer look at the hottie hitchhikers, out from behind a tree Benson would appear gun in hand to rob his unsuspecting victims whose erections in their pants would quickly deflate when Benson's gun was pointed at their head and the motorists were told to get out of their car to be robbed at gunpoint.

Maggie (Misty Rowe) arrives at Benson's compound, broke, hungry and pregnant so when Benson sees Maggie's youth and beauty he quickly brings her into his harum of hitchhikers and trains her how to look sexy and enticing so the motorists will stop. Catfights between Misty and another of Benson's followers named Diana (Linda Avery) erupt for Benson's affections. I must say although the movie is a classic B movie genre, it appealed to me more like a first rate release that just did not get the respect it deserved probably because it did not have any A-lister film star in it, nor was it produced by one of the major film studios.

In my humble opinion the acting was good, the story line simple, and the film was interspersed with great music in a timely manner. If you watch the film on a DVD release stick around to hear the motivation of the writers/directors husband and wife team Ferd and Beverly Sebastian, as their personal messages are worth listening to.

I give this simple B-movie crime/drama film a more than decent 7 out of 10 rating.

Freedom

[blumdeluxe · 3/10 · 4 July 2017]

"The Hitchhikers" is the story of a young girl who leaves her parents pregnant and searches for a life on her own in the wild world outside her hometown. Soon she struggles with her decision and joins a gang of outlaws, who live on a ranch in the desert, making a living from robbing car-owners. A story of love and jealousy evolves.

The film is probably supposed to mix a bit of cheap eroticism with the feeling of freedom a whole generation was hunting. The camp situation kind of reminded me of the Manson family, even though the crimes depicted in the movie remain rather harmless. Still, I found it quite hard to identify with the "heroes" of the movie, because their actions are in large parts quite mean and lacking empathy. I wouldn't mind that in "Die Hard" or something like that, but with a character that is mainly based on feeling sorry for her, it doesn't go along too well. Otherwise the plot is nothing spectacular but well enough to keep the different pieces together. I've surely seen worse movies but all in all I could have lived without this one.

This said, if you're looking for a rather light-hearted film that rides on the wave of the Hippie movement, mixed with a bit of danger and crime, this could be a thing for you. Otherwise, maybe search on.

An Honest Review

[generationofswine · 10/10 · 3 January 2020]

Most of the time I give a film 10 stars if it entertains and 1 if it stinks in kind of a thumbs up or thumbs down vote... because picking the numbers in between seem a little too artificial for someone like me has no problem pointing out trash, liking trash, or criticizing a flawed movie that I ultimately still enjoyed.

However, with movies like this, unless they are absolutely horrible, I feel the need to give them 10 stars on principal because you always get exactly what they advertise that you're going to get.

In this case you get boobs, nudity, and hippies. The film bills itself about being about boobs and hippies. The plot makes it clear that you aren't going to get anything deeper than boobs and hippies.

If you sat down to watch this movie and expected anything other than boobs and hippies than either you were grossly misinformed or you were attempting to delude yourself because you felt guilty about watching a movie that is about nothing more than boobs and hippies.

However, there is a pretty funny line here and there that will make you laugh out loud and the soundtrack is actually exceptionally good... and those are two things that you don't really expect in a movie that is about really nothing more than boobs and hippies.

Some of the actors actually have pretty decent comedic timing and a few of them actually know how to deliver a believable line... which is, again, kind of shocking in a movie that is only about boobs and hippies.

And what makes it better is that, yeah, this was a drive-in sleaze movie in the era where these kind of movies played regularly at such fine institutions of American culture. There is something absolutely HYSTERICAL about putting an enormous film about boobs and hippies up on the big screen, where anyone driving by can get an eye full. I kind of miss that America, you know, the one without Puritanical Prudishness. The America where you might be driving down the road at night, and look off to the drive-in just to get an eye full of eight-foot tall boobs bouncing on an IMAX size screen somewhere in Middle America.

So, if you want boobs and hippies and 1970s drive-in sleaze this is one of the better ones you can watch.

Entertaining road movie

[paul-ayres-60784 · 7/10 · 28 August 2018]

I found this movie to be very entertaining. It's light hearted and it rolls along at a good pace. Perfect for an afternoon viewing. Maybe not for the younger viewer though as there is quite a lot of partial nudity and teasing camera work. The characters are likeable even though they are crooks and the acting, although not challenging is more than adequate.It's very much a 70's road movie and a good example at that.

70's Drive-In Americana

[lazarillo · 4 September 2004]

OK, this movie isn't very good--but it IS the early 1970's. It has the hippies, the free love, the short-shorts, and not a bra in sight. It has the groovy, pleasantly awful early 70's folk-rock music. It is meandering, amoral, and ultimately completely pointless. It's a road movie that doesn't really go anywhere. Like many movies of the time it tried to exploit the infamy of the Manson family, but its anti-hero "Benson" is not nearly as crazy or vicious as the real-life Manson, and his "family" consists of only a few under-dressed women whom he uses to hold up horny male motorists, all to finance his evil master plan of buying a broken-down school bus. Misty Rowe stars as a teenage runaway and "Benson's" main squeeze, and she demonstrates all the raw talent that would later lead to her unforgettable work on "Hee Haw". There's some (mostly Misty-related) nudity, but there's very little sex for this kind of flick and even less violence. But if you have a soft spot in your heart for early 70's drive-in Americana, you could do worse I guess.

An enjoyably inane piece of 70's drive-in fluff

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 9 September 2006]

This enjoyably goofy'n'duffy piece of 70's drive-in fluff centers on a six woman outlaw gang who prey on hapless backwoods motorists. The gals are owned and trained by the amiable, scruffy, pleasantly mellow Manson-like Benson (shaggy hairball Norman Klar), a charismatically breezy anti-establishment type who wants to raise enough money to purchase a bus so he and his female family can go to California. Naive, pregnant teen runaway Maggie (the lovely, busty, lusty blonde fox Misty Rowe, who was a regular on "Hee Haw" and played Marilyn Monroe in Larry Buchanan's tawdry biopic "Goodbye Norma Jean") joins the loose, fun-loving, law-breaking bunch and winds up fighting with possessive, rabidly envious and clinging iceberg bitch Diana (statuesque brunette Linda Avery) over who's got exclusive dibs on Benson.

That's about it for the admittedly flimsy story and frankly who cares about some fancy-schmancy plot? In its place there's sunny cinematography, lots of roadside robberies, a generous sprinkling of gratuitous nudity, sexy chicks in skimpy apparel (Rowe in particular looks mighty enticing in a skimpy mini-dress), the inevitable skinny-dipping scene, a rowdy pot party, catchy folk-country songs grooving away on the soundtrack, some trashy melodrama (Maggie gets raped by a sleazy jerk and has a miscarriage), charmingly dated hippie slang ("Far out!"), a couple of catfights, a playfully amoral tone, and absolutely no pretense to get in the way of the giddy tongue-in-cheek silliness. Sure, it's dumb, pointless and meandering, which basically means that it's a sweetly stupid grindhouse relic from the halcyon heyday of exploitation cinema and hence a most entertaining source of undemanding no-brainer fun.

One of the Worst!

[chris-146 · 5 March 2000]

"Hee Haw"`s Misty Rowe stars in this god-awful exploitationer made to cash in on the Manson cult murders. After being impregnated by her boyfriend, she decides to hit the road and ends up with a group of convicts who specialize in robbing motorists. Complete amateurism in terms of acting, photography, etc., but the real crime is the ENDLESS padding of every other scene to lengthen the film`s running time. Rowe fans will also be disappointed in the scarceness of her (fleeting) nude scenes.

"Have A Good Day!"...

[azathothpwiggins · 18 May 2021]

THE HITCHHIKERS stars Misty Rowe as Maggie, who, upon discovering that she's pregnant, goes on an odyssey of sorts on the open road. This is a rough journey for Maggie, who is both robbed and sexually assaulted along the way.

This all leads to a desert ghost town, where Maggie is taken by a man named Benson (Norman Klar). She's introduced to women who work with Benson in his criminal enterprise, involving the movie's title. These folks are sort of a non-homicidal Manson Family, whose approach to larceny is certainly novel. Maggie joins in on the felonious fun.

Ms. Rowe is good in her rather naive, debut role, making the best of this early 1970's drive-in fodder...