Detour

Plot synopsis:
Piano player Al Roberts (Tom Neal) is drinking coffee at a roadside diner in Reno, hitchhiking east from California, when a fellow patron plays a song on the jukebox that reminds him of his former life in New York City. At the time, Al was bitter about squandering his talent working in a cheap nightclub. After his girlfriend Sue Harvey (Claudia Drake), the nightclub vocalist, leaves to seek fame in Hollywood, he decides to go to California and marry her. With little money, he is forced to hitchhike his way across the country.
In Arizona, bookie Charles Haskell, Jr. (Edmund MacDonald) gives Al a ride in his convertible and tells him that he's in luck: he's driving all the way from Florida to Los Angeles to place a bet on a horse. During the drive, he has Al pass him pills several times. That night, Al is driving while Haskell sleeps. When a rainstorm forces Al to pull over to put up the top, he is unable to rouse Haskell. Al opens the passenger-side door and Haskell falls out, striking his head on a rock. Al then realizes the bookie is dead. Fearful that the police will believe he killed Haskell, Al drags the body off the road, takes the dead man's money, clothes, and identification, and drives away.
After spending the night in a California motel, Al decides to drive to an urban area and ditch the car. At a gas station, he picks up another hitchhiker, Vera (Ann Savage). After some time, she suddenly asks him what he did with the real owner of the car. It turns out she had been picked up by Haskell in Louisiana; she scratched him and got out in Arizona after he tried to become too friendly. Al claims to be Haskell, but she calls his bluff and blackmails him by threatening to turn him in. She tells him that they should sell the car rather than abandon it.
In Hollywood, they rent an apartment, posing as Mr. and Mrs. Haskell to provide an address when they sell the car. However, Vera learns from a newspaper that Haskell's wealthy father is near death and looking for his son, who ran away as a youth after accidentally injuring his friend. Vera demands that Al impersonate Haskell as soon as the father dies, but Al balks at this notion, pointing out that he knows next to nothing about either man.
Back at the apartment, Vera gets drunk and they begin arguing. She threatens to call the police, running into the bedroom with the telephone and locking the door. She falls into a stupor on the bed with the telephone cord tangled around her neck. Al pulls on the cord in an effort to break it. When he finally breaks down the door, he sees that he has accidentally strangled her. He gives up ever seeing his girlfriend Sue again and returns to hitchhiking instead, imagining his probable future arrest by the police.

Tags: cult, murder, flashback

Review:
Later, at a gas station, he offers a lift to another thumb-jockey (Ann Savage), even though she looks like she 'just got thrown off the crummiest freight train in the world.' (Does the phrase 'self-destructive' strike a familiar note?) In fact, she's none other than the beast who sank her claws into the deceased  and plans to make an even bigger feast out of Neal....The stubble on Neal's unshaved chin can't disguise his pouty, pretty-boy looks, and he proves just right as this callow, ill-starred loser (a better actor would have added superfluous dimensions).
But it sweated off a raw power that other alert film-makers working on the fringes of the industry were quick to emulate; the next few years would see Fall Guy, The Guilty, Suspense, Violence, I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes, Decoy (the pick, along with Detour, of this particular litter)  all done with wannabes or has-beens in cast and crew, visually often ugly (the murky lighting more a matter of necessity than moody esthetic choice).
DETOUR, as many commentators here like to spoil for you by telling you THE WHOLE STORY is an excellent low budget film of one man's descent into accidental crime.
Tom Neal sadly actually went to jail in real life in a genuine DETOUR like way and vicious Ann Savage lived up to her name in a few more noir shockers for various crummy B/W outfits who specialized until the mid 50s in similar films.
She threatens to call the police and he is left on the other room pulling the telephone cord...The film works because all the elements are in place in this satisfying 67 minutes work and because of the great performances Mr. Ulmer got out of Tom Neal and Ann Savage.
As pointed out by Roger Ebert: "the bad guys in crime movies know they're bad and want to be, while a noir hero thinks he's a good guy who has been ambushed by life.""Detour" is told through the central character, Al Roberts, who recalls his story as one made through impossible coincidences and horrible luck.
However, her character "Vera" has a place in film noir history as probably the nastiest woman to ever make an appearance in this genre.Savage is so brutal that her insults, put-downs and nasty demeanor just make you laugh out loud.
Detour, a 1945 low-budget Thriller and near-perfect example of Film Noir excellence, was severely marred by the scene-chewing antics of Ann Savage, who literally bulldozed her way through her part like a rabid bitch in heat.Detour lost significant points all on account of this wretched Savage wench.
It was a good thing that her character wasn't present for the first half of this film, otherwise Detour would've been a total write-off in my books.But once Savage's presence was firmly established in Detour's last half hour, the story deteriorated at an alarming rate and became so unbearable to watch at times that I almost turned it off in pure disgust.Prior to Savage's savage entrance, Detour was an exceptionally intriguing Suspense/Drama about a honky-tonk pianist from NYC, named Al Roberts, whose life takes an unexpected and unpleasant U-Turn when he suddenly decides to hitch-hike out to Los Angeles in pursuit of his girlfriend (not Savage, thankfully).Murder, blackmail, and sheer desperation all await young Al Roberts as he travels along the road, heading in the direction of the land of milk and honey.Regardless of its low budget, Detour (filmed in black & white) obviously had excellent high-production values.
The film concerns upon a drifter(Tom Neal) ,he wants gather together his girlfriend and with no money converts as hitchhiker .He's picked up by a strange driver and terrible events happen.Afterwards he offers a lift to ruthless femme fatal(Anne Savage),being accompanied for her the evil spark was struck and a raging torrents of emotion throw up that he can't control.This unusual picture is a screen's great masterpiece economically directed and plenty of mystery,thrill-loaded and matchless suspense.Awesome movie sometimes ironic and experimental with thoughtful plot thus the starring with off-voice is guided for passivity and gets involved in dark fatalism.It's a tough,terrific adventure in grand larceny that gets him deep in the roads and deeper in danger with a beguiling and tempestuous Anne Savage on the trail on a fortune in hot money.Classic B noir film without budget and unknown actors .Hollywood only gave to excellent director Edgar G.Ulmer for making ¨quickies¨ but he directed two magnificent noir films and competently constructed ,this one,and ¨Strange illusion¨(Story of a how a boy revealed the clue that led to solution of murder of his father exposing the infamy of the man worshipped by women who proved to be a monster of cruelty).
Savage's Vera is not the prettiest femme fatale, but she is the sexiest, most devious, and fatal in a hatchet-face sort of way.But it is Goldsmith's masterful script and Ulmer's brilliant direction that make Detour a cinematic masterpiece.Like a punch in slow motion..
("It seemed like an awful shame to leave all that money there.")Convinced that he's done the right thing, Haskell crosses the border into California and soon finds himself picking up a fellow hitchhiker named Vera (Ann Savage).
It helps to make a good movie a great one, but more important is a good story and fine characters, and if anything, "Detour" more than makes up for its literal flaws with strong storytelling.5/5John Ulmer.
"Fate, for some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me, for no good reason at all." It tells the story of Al, a petulant loser played by Tom Neal with troubled eyes and a tired mouth, a nightclub pianist who's in love, or says he is, with a singer.
Ulmer, who was an assistant to the great Murnau, and granted one of the associations between German Expressionism, with its overstated lighting, camera angles and melodrama, and the American film noir, which contributed slang and shame.The distinction between a crime film and a noir, I think, is that the bad guys in crime movies know they're bad and don't mind it, while a noir hero believes he's a good guy who's been trapped by life.
Ulmer, could just as well be called "Fate" due to the film's preoccupation with it and the way it throws up every conceivable misfortune at Al (Tom Neal), a man hitch-hiking from New York to Los Angeles to see his girlfriend in L.A.; while taking a ride with Charles Haskell Jr (Edmund MacDonald), Haskell, obviously with some type of ailment, fulls asleep during a rainstorm.
While driving, Al picks up super-slut and femme fatale Vera (Ann Savage), who knew the real Haskell and blackmails Al into giving her all his money and using him as her will dictates.Made by cult director Edgar G.
Either way, it's a Poverty Row quickie, probably the best film to come out of the Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), with leads you've never heard of before and never will again (Tom Neal was convicted of manslaughter, and served four years in jail).
A disgruntled piano man(Tom Neal) doesn't have the dough to hook up with his songstress girlfriend(Claudia Drake)in California; so he decides to hitch-hike the highway and gets involved with a sultry femme fatale(Ann Savage)who introduces him to crime and murder.
DETOUR is without a doubt the best B-movie/film-noir of all time.
(Directors of today take note!) It may be that this film was Ulmer's high point, as it was Neal's, and neither of them realized it at the time, as they were just making a movie and going with the flow.
In a gas station, he gives a lift to Vera (Ann Savage), a woman that knew Charles and blackmails Al with tragic consequences."Detour" is a good film-noir, but with a flawed screenplay.
Detour is a very good film that has a good cast which includes Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Tim Ryan, Esther Howard, Pat Gleason, Don Brodie, Roger Clark, Eddie Hall, and Harry Strang!
If you like Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Tim Ryan, Esther Howard, Pat Gleason, the rest of the cast in the film, Thrillers, Crime, Dramas, Film-Noir, and interesting classic films then I strongly recommend you to see this film today!.
This is one of those direct interpreted films in the mood that is film-noir (as it is hard to classify it into a genre)- much like with Stanley Kubrick's the Killing or Wilder's Double Indemnity, Edward Ulmer's Detour takes what is essentially a pulp novel and translates it directly to the screen, without cutting the fat, keeping what is necessary to tell the story.
Enter in the troubles of hitchhiking, first in the form of a well-off businessman Charles Haskell Jr, and in the aftermath of a plot thickening point I won't reveal, a hitchhiker Al picks up, Vera, in the best performance of the film by Ann Savage.
Detour (1945)This is a movie with a huge reputation and if you aren't into films big time, or into film noir in particular, or if you don't have a taste for the funky and low-budget, you'll be only partly interested here.
Nobody likes an unreliable narrator in any form of story telling, and Ulmer's 1945 Noir masterpiece gives us one of the most questionable purveyors of facts the genre has seen.Tom Neal plays Al Roberts, the man who we're supposed to entrust for the truthful retelling of recent events in his life, but about halfway through the film one can't help but be at least somewhat suspicious of Roberts' recounting of his tale of the cruel indifference of fate.Its like this: when a child does something wrong and they know they're going to get into some deep trouble for it they'll go to great lengths in order to make up a story so as to make them, the guilty , seem like an innocent person, while those around them were the ones conspiring against their well being.
This film is an interesting and very entertaining addition to the film noir category.It's most interesting, first, because it is a B movie that worked, and worked well; second, it must be one of the least expensive  I nearly wrote 'cheapest'  films made in the 1940s; third, it gave the movie audience the poisonous and perilous Vera (Ann Savage), whom many would argue was the deadliest femme fatale in cinema history (I wouldn't go that far, but, man, she was baaaaaad!); and finally, it gives the audience perhaps the morally weakest male protagonist, in my opinion, to be seen in film  the night club king (ha!
Other films that complement that moral stance include The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Postman always rings twice (1946), The Killers (1946), The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947), Out of the past (1947), They won't believe me (1947) and many others.Where Detour fails to come up to the same standard as those above has very much to do with the tight budget, B-grade cast  notwithstanding Ann Savage and Tom Neal  and very obvious lower quality of production.Where it succeeds, and comes very close to the others however, has everything to do with the direction and cinematography.
Well, waste not, want not, was the obvious watchword for this film: there's not a wasted frame, nor wasted line in the entire 67 minutes (mind you, there wouldn't want to be, for such a short movie).If you love film noir, you should see Detour, one of Hollywood's better earlier efforts for this genre..
Approach this film for what it is....a major low budget masterpiece that will cause you to ask the question,"What ever happened to Ann Savage?" Well, we know what happened to her....she's alive and well in California with a following of die-hard fans who cherish her greatest performance and wonder why she never got the breaks that would have made her a top flight star.
Vera is a caricature of the noir femme fatale because he's trying to convince us that everything was her idea or an accident or fate based on his act of true love - trying to get to his girl in California - and he's completely innocent.On the technical side, this one showed a great use of light, shadows, and music, and fine direction by Ulmer to keep the mood.
Yes, we're in the land of noir again and this short and bitter-sweet movie, despite its uneven construction and unlikely events nevertheless makes for a convincing genre-piece.Tom Neal stars as our Mr "If it wasn't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all" clip-joint pianist who loses his singer-girlfriend to the bright lights of Hollywood who then decides to follow her there but with no money, has to hitch-hike his way there all the way from New York.
While hitchhiking, he is picked up a by a mysterious man who offers to take him all the way to his destination, but he is then forced to take a little detour.The beginning of the film is a little slow, but the pacing is very good once the story starts to unfold.
Ulmer had little to work with - a strong but depressing plot, some well-developed characters, an excellent femme fatale (Ann Savage), and a script which, at times, seems to have ambitions that exceed its scope and budget.
Think structure and plotting: The story takes a few catastrophic twists along the way, people die, the film is shadowy (but not nearly as stylized as later noir), there is an unforgettable femme fatale (Savage), voice-over narrative and a lot of driving.Don Neal passably plays a talented pianist engaged to a lovely, vivacious jazz singer (Claudia Drake).
I won't discuss the plot twists - which are the film's key elements, except to say that they are why Detour is worth watching - especially Ann Savage's exceptionally tough and yet powerfully sympathetic performance.Road movies are a a strong but uneasy subgenre in Noir.
'I'd hate to see a fellow as young as you wind up sniffin' that perfume Arizona hands out free to murderers,' Ann Savage's hardnosed femme fatale Vera (voted one of filmdom's top 10 villains by Time) snarls to Tom Neal's luckless Al Roberts who finds himself sucked into a spiralling sequence of events that can only spell trouble for him.The foreshadowing of doom lays heavy over the whole proceedings, making it something of a treasure for fans of darkest noir.
However, it is an interesting example of 1940s film noir, with Savage a riot playing the femme fatale from hell who tries to use Neal to get easy money.
They're driving on a highway, after all, but cramped interior sets, the classic noir narration told with a sense of pessimism not yet present in the character with the flashback scenes, add to the noir flavor.There's also the femme fatale, Vera, who has a weariness to her that most film noir heroes end up with at the end of the movie.
Detour (1945) starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage is an excellent movie and deserves all the honors and "best film of it's type" listings it always gets everywhere.
Detour (1945) starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage is more than just a film for masochists who enjoy being made unhappy by watching a skillfully made movie bound to summon negative mental emotions.It takes it's place among honored literary (if grim) art by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and Franz Kafka, and beside the work of honored studio artists such as Goya, David, and Picasso.
The acting is decent, considering the movie's poverty row background: Ann Savage fits her role as Vera perfectly and steals the show from the quiet protagonist softly played by Tom Neal, who occasionally doesn't come across as convincing as the other, bolder actors.
The 1945 version of "Detour" is a good movie.But, as far as I'm concerned, the main interest of the film is the chance it provides us to see the controversial actor Tom Neal at work.I don't know whether there are better prints of this film in existence than the one I saw, but the print I saw had such an awful soundtrack that at times it was extremely difficult to follow the dialog.I understand that this movie was made in six days.Perhaps the production values were simply so low that the original sound and picture quality were just awful(?).....that would seem to be the case, from the print I got to see.The star of this movie, Tom Neal, was an ex-boxer in real life.He later served time in prison on a murder conviction.He was best known because of the fact that he beat actor Franchot Tone so severely that he broke Tone's nose and gave Tone a brain concussion..
Along the way, he meets Vera (Ann Savage)--an opportunistic harpy, who bears the psychological scars of a harsh life."Detour" is a surprisingly effective film noir tale.
"Detour" Is Classic Low-Budget Film Noir.
One such "B" movie classic is Edgar Ulmer's 1945 flick, "Detour." Starring Tom Neal as a drifter hitchhiking his way across the country, "Detour" takes his character, Al (no last name required), through a series of missteps which serve to tighten the proverbial noose of classic film noir around his neck until the (basically) decent man is faced with spending perhaps the rest of his life behind bars.
Yet the work of director Ulmer and star Ann Savage (here playing femme fatale Vera) were re-evaluated during the 1980's and up to the modern day, and Detour has become one of the key film noirs, and I remember studying it at University amongst others.
It's a great noir film similar to movies such as Shadow of a Doubt and The Wrong Man. So if you liked those, you'll like this.Tom Neal and Ann Savage are awesome in their parts and very convincing.
Detour may be a modest and low budget film noir; but it's also one of the best!
This is a very good low-budget film-noir, and much of the credit goes to director Edgar G.