Autostop rosso sangue
Tags: cult, violence

Plot synopsis:
Somewhere in northern California, Walter Mancini (Franco Nero), an alcoholic reporter, and his spitful wife Eve (Corrine Clery) are on a road trip with a trailer heading back to Los Angeles. Their marriage is strained over their long conflict over Walter's drinking, and Eve's suspected infidelity. During an overnight stay at a local campground, Walter gets a little too roudy with some of the other campers and breaks his left hand.The next day, as Eve is driving with Walter along a deserted two-lane road, they pick up a hitch-hiker (David Hess) whose car has just broken down. The hitchhiker introduces himself as Adam Konitz and he intially asks them to drive him to the nearist gas station so he can get to a phone to call a tow truck for his car. When Eve and Walter protest over driving their guest over a long distance, Konitz pulls out a gun on them and reveals himself to be a sadistic escapee from an institution for the criminally insane, and he is running from the law after robbing two million dollars from a bank in a nearby town with his partners. Holding the couple hostage, he orders Eve to head to Mexico. They are soon stopped by two policemen for speeding. After Walter attempts to signal them by writing "SOS" on his matchbox, Konitz shoots them both. He threatens to kill both of them if they pull another half-baked stunt like that again.While the three stop for the night off the road, Konitz's two partners, whom he had betrayed to get all the loot for himself, shoot at Konitz and take control of the money and the car. They decide to keep the Mancinis alive until reaching the Mexican border. While driving, they are attacked by someone in a truck. The attacker turns out to be Konitz who kills his former associates and again takes the Mancinis hostage. After they reach a secluded place, Konitz rapes Eve and forces Walter to watch the act. As Konitz gets ready to kill Walter, Eve shoots and kills him with Walter's hunting rifle.Despite Eve's opposition, Walter decides to keep the $2 million for themselves instead of going to the police. After four young motorcyclists the couple meet at a gas station pass them and pour oil on the road, the Mancinis' car goes off the road and crashes. One of the youngsters steals Walter's wallet and Eve's purse taking $200 in cash from it and leaves the couple in their wrecked car for death. But the thugs leave the suitcase on the back seat untouched (they do not know about the stolen cash in it). After the road thieves ride away, Walter wakes up and sees that Eve is badly hurt and she requests help from Walter. Walter brings Konitz's body from their trailer and plants it on the accident scene. He then tells the dying Eve that the thieves had only helped him. He had planned to stop after 15 to 20 miles, kill her and make it look like an accident. The sadistic Walter lights up a cigarette and sets the car and the trailer on fire. Eve is burned to death. Walter starts walking and, hearing a car come by, thumbs a ride.

Review: A tough one about self-hatred, mayhem and self- destruction: Franco Nero as a down-&-out reporter, Corinne Clery as his sexy, completely hollow spouse, plus David Hess doing his usual good- humored-and-mean-as-hell thing.
There are clear-cut villains (no surprises: David Hess) in this film, but the complete absence of really likeable characters makes this uncomfortable viewing.
I agree with the other reviewers who lament David Hess's minor film career--his three key roles (Last House, House on the Edge, and Hitch Hike) showed amazing sleaze potential (he could've been the wisecracking villain in summer action movies if his time had come 20 years later).
It's an uncommon little B movie with the gloss and name actors (Franco Nero, Corrine Clery) of an A picture, along with a surprising moral slant, gay stickup men, and twists galore.
Like most Italian exploitation films, "Hitch Hike" sometimes bogs down in a bit too much excess talk, but it helps flesh out the characters--they're not mere victims or heroes, but people, too.
Intense, off-beat Italian thriller is an underexposed classic.Fueding married couple, traveling across the country, make the mistake of picking up a hitch hiker who turns out to be a violent bank robber.
The terrific David Hess makes for another great villain, also having played a crazed criminal in both Craven's Last House on the Left (1972) and another Italian exploitation film House on the Edge of the Park (1979).For those who are seeking an unconventional thriller or just a fan of Hess, this film will be a well rewarding watch.*** 1/2 out of ****.
"Hitch Hike" is one of the best road movies I have ever seen.
The legendary David Hess pulls off another great performance as the brutal hitch-hiker whilst the loving couple Franco "Django" Nero and Corinne Clery as Walter and Eve make for compulsive viewing.Involving and always engaging.
From the moment it starts, it grabs your attention and doesn't let it go until the film ends; moody, dark, exciting and brilliant; Hitch Hike is a rare gem that should not be missed by anyone lucky enough to get the chance to see it.In the familiar style of the more well known hitchhiker films such The Hitcher, Hitch Hike follows the fortunes of an Italian couple; a reporter and his wife that are traveling across America.
And obviously, that turns out to be a bad decision....Hitch Hike features three outstanding performances from it's three main leads; Franco Nero, who was made famous for Django, Corinne Clery, the beautiful young lady that would go on to play James Bond's love interest in Moonraker, and of course, David Hess; a man that horror fans will recognize from the shock horror classic; The Last House on the Left.
All three of the leads portray their characters excellently, especially Franco Nero, at certain points in the movie, such as the part in which his wife is brutally raped, he really draws you into his character and you can feel his anger flowing from the TV screen.
And finally; Corinne Clery, undoubtedly the least outstanding of the three in terms of character strength, gets to flex her acting muscles somewhat too as the victim of most of the film's brutality.What makes Hitch Hike so thrilling is mainly its free flowing and meandering plot structure.
This is done multiple times in the film and it really keeps the audience on their toes.Aside from being a thrilling exploitation flick, Hitch Hike is also an interesting character study.
This is a great thing for this movie, as you never really know where you are with the characters and they can always surprise you; the shocking and ironic ending epitomizes this best.
The movie has a great way of drawing the viewer in with it's attention-grabbing banter, and yet at the same time making them wish they were somewhere else due to the tenseness and foreboding feel of danger about it.Hitch Hike also features a fantastic soundtrack from a man that is probably the best composer there ever was; Ennio Morricone.
His music adds texture and vibrancy to the picture and really succeeds in making the powerful images on screen that much more powerful.Hitch Hike is a tense, exciting and efficient thriller and overall I find it hard to pick any faults with it, and the only real fault I can muster is that the dubbing isn't always great.
Not surprisingly (considering it's an Italian exploitation movie), Bond girl Corrine Clery spends half the film at least partially naked, but what is surprising is that she would have been excellent regardless.
It is an Italian-produced piece of drive-in drivel featuring European megastar Franco Nero as a drunken, bitter journalist touring the US with his gorgeous young wife Corinne Clery (best known to British audiences for her role in Moonraker); a dysfunctional couple at best, the flaws in their relationship are well and truly exposed when they pick up a stranded motorist who unfortunately turns out to be a psychopathic bank robber on the lam (played by mop-topped David Hess, reprising his patented 'complete scumbag' routine familiar from Wes Craven's highly unpleasant 1972 D-movie dog turd The Last House on the Left)...
At best a film of two halves, Hitch-Hike is quite accomplished technically (an action scene in which Hess guns down two dopey cops is shot with Peckinpah-like style, whilst the several stunt sequences involving speeding vehicles are also pretty decent), and largely well-acted (Nero is particularly good), but the film is nevertheless undone by the mostly unimaginative script (the dialogue, of which there is a lot, is inane in the extreme, never more so than when Hess tries to persuade Nero to write a book about him, treating him to several deeply uninteresting anecdotes from his childhood, whilst the early scene in a campsite must be one of the worst-written, and most ineptly post-synched, pieces of film I've ever seen), the seedy emphasis on threats of impending sexual assault against the shapely Clery, and the many dumbly illogical things it requires the characters to do to drive the plot forward.
This angle leads to the disturbing scene in which Hess finally succeeds in having his way with Clery, whilst the hog-tied Nero watches in horror, which is incredibly crass as it portrays the wife as actually enjoying the act (a conceit in itself that might account for the flick's obscurity, as it would generally result in any film getting an instant red card from censors).
The last quarter of Hitch-Hike admittedly drags it out of the ordinary (and out of the gutter), as it skilfully sketches the Nero character's final moral collapse, and ends the film on a considerable (and logical) downer.
Same with Franco Nero, a very good actor but he seems to have been asleep or something during this movie because his acting is horrible.
Here you go."Hitch-Hike" is a rip off of Mario Bava's classic road-horror, "Kidnapped," with a dash of "Last House on the Left" and sprinkle of "Race With The Devil" thrown in for good measure.
I thought he pulled it off wonderfully.There are many, many Italian exploitation/sleaze/horror films that you should have seen before this one if "Hitch-Hike" shocks you at all.Oh yea- the soundtrack is awesome.7 out of 10, kids..
Ennio Morricone's score is again, quite unique and adds quite a lot to the film and the cinematography is outstanding and looks beautiful on the region 2 Anchor Bay disc.
The simple, straightforward direction, the visually beautiful locations, the atmospheric score, and Franco Nero's great performance (I know David Hess has his fans also, but he really doesn't display much charisma in this role; imagine what a Henry Silva could have done with this!) are all positive qualities of the film.
Recommend for fans of road trip films, Franco Nero fans, and camping enthusiasts.
I had never even heard of it before today and it was so good that I wish I had so I could have enjoyed it sooner.David Hess is one of the kings of exploitation and he rules in this film as the hitchhiker that destroys a bickering couple's trip.
The story is great and even better than most exploitation films because it's very well thought out and has a lot of clever plot twists that you will never see coming.
Great action/drama about a married couple who hate each other that pick up an escaped convict played by the man, David Hess.
Movies from the seventies are notorious for their high levels of sexual situations and violence as compared to films today, thus they're always worth checking out just on those merits alone."Hitch-hike" was no exception.
Walter Mancini (Franco Nero) and his wife Eve (Corinne Cléry) pick up a young man with a suitcase full of stolen money, Adam (David Hess).
Franco Nero does not play a hero - his character Mancini takes as much pleasure in humiliating his wife as the criminal does.
'Hitch-Hike', it must be said, provides a great opportunity for David Hess to play a raging lunatic, who enjoys telling his life-story, pleased with himself to a ridiculous degree.
The film is beautifully made with majestic visuals, great Morriconne score and for a film with so little actual story, completely captivating direction, helped enormously by good dialogue, gobbled up and spat out by true heroes of exploitation cinema.
the film is so good that although ostensibly a road movie, it takes on a life its own and grabs you as it goes.
Hitch-Hike...what a great road movie.
The plot follows an unhappily married couple who pick up a disturbed hitch-hiker (played remarkably well by David Hess) and the nightmare ride that ensues.
Genre staple Franco Nero and Corinne Clery play Walter and Eve, a couple whose marriage is on the rocks.
Hitch Hike (1977) *** (out of 4) Bickering couple Walter (Franco Nero) and Eve (Corinne Clery) are on vacation when they decide to pick up hitch hiker Adam (David Hess).
Before long the couple realizes that their arguing is the least of their troubles.HITCH HIKE is a rather interesting Italian movie that you probably think you know what's going to happen going into it.
Hess was always great at playing a bad guy and this here is one of the best performances I've seen from him.
I think a tad bit more editing would have made for a much better movie but there are still plenty of great things in HITCH HIKE and it's certainly worth watching..
A European couple on a long road trip in California picks up a hitch-hiker who turns out to be a psycho.
It appears that Nero and Clery, playing a bickering couple in a troubled marriage, are dubbed, but it could just be bad acting.
With a cast that includes Italian icon Franco Nero in the lead, 'Mr. Evil Psycho' David Hess as the villain, and the stunningly beautiful Corinne Clery in the female lead, a fan of Italian 70s cinema simply cannot go wrong.
Before seeing this, many people might expect another imitation of Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left", but these are unjustified preconceptions, as this is a very tense and original film of its own right, that doesn't have much in common with Craven's film other then David Hess as the bad guy.The constantly drunk Italian journalist Walter Mancini (Franco Nero), and his sexy wife Eve (Corinne Clery) are making a cross-country tour of the United States, and constantly fighting while doing so.
When they pick up a Hitchhiker named Adam Konitz (David Hess), their marital disputes soon turn out to be the least of their problems...Franco Nero is one of my favorite actors, and once again delivers an excellent performance here.
Corinne Clery is gorgeous, and fits very well in the role of the seductive, overtly submissive and masochistic wife Eve. It seems odd that a goddess like her would fall for her scumbag husband, but the fact that she bares it all several times makes the film all the more recommendable.
There are several brutal outbursts, as well as scenes of rape and sadism, and beautiful Corinne Clery gets naked on several occasions.In many ways, this film resembles Mario Bava's "Cani Arrabbiati" ("Rabid Dogs", 1974), which, in my opinion is one of the most essential Italian cult-masterpieces of the 70s.
I have to say that this violent Italian thriller exceeded my expectations, making up for an overly familiar central situation (the hostage/road movie type) by being pretty smart overall – but it keeps piling on the twists and, consequently, goes on twenty minutes too long!
The film also benefits from being well-cast: Franco Nero as the alcoholic small-time reporter husband, Corinne Clery as his desirable, wealthy yet indignant wife and David Hess in his all-too-typical role of the psychotic criminal (which, in the accompanying interview, cites as being his favorite).
David Hess is at it again as another rapist-psycho in the exploitation "road-thriller", HITCH-HIKE.
An Italian film shot to look as though it was filmed in the desert of the U.S. south-west, HITCH-HIKE is an often tense and entertaining film, that despite a good bit of relatively graphic violence, rape, and other "strong" content, never really seems to cross the line into blatantly sleazy exploit territory.
An exploit film definitely - but one with a bit more substance than most...Playing a role much like the ones he's portrayed in LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and HOUSE AT THE EDGE OF THE PARK - Hess puts on a powerful performance as a bank robber picked up by a drunk reporter and his extremely tolerant wife - the daughter of a publishing mogul.
Franco Nero as the rough-and-tumble alcoholic reporter and Corinne Clery as his tolerant wife shine very much as well (especially Clery, who is gorgeous and spends a good bit of the film in various degrees of undress...).
It's a truly harrowing homicidal hitchhiker opus with a stand-out psycho perf by the ever-intense David Hess as a dangerous highway bandit who forces both Franco Nero and Corrine Clery as a bickering unhappily married couple to give him a ride.
It's expertly directed by Pasquale Festa Companile, with uniformly excellent acting from the whole cast (Hess in particular is wonderfully repulsive in his finest screen scumbag role to date), a tasty Ennio Morricone score, and several jarring outbursts of blood-curdlingly brutal violence, this unsung gem is well worth picking up.
Bickering couple Franco Nero and Corinne Cléry pick up hitchhiking bank robbery suspect David Hess out in the California desert.
I abide by a simple rule when driving: never pick up a hitch-hiker, especially if he looks like David Hess.
Bickering married couple Walter and Eve Mancini (Franco Nero and Corinne Cléry) do just that whilst driving cross country, quickly coming to regret offering stranded driver Adam Konitz (Hess) a lift when they discover that their passenger is in fact an escaped lunatic and armed robber who is on the run with $2m in his suitcase.While Hess is no doubt the most loathesome character in the car, the depraved killer quickly showing his true colours, Walter and Eve are no angels either: Walter is an egostistical, drunken, misogynistic, failed reporter living off his wife's money, while Eve is something of a spoiled ***** (although Corinne Cléry's stunning beauty cuts her a lot of slack in my eyes).
The fun is in being along for the ride, not knowing where the film will take you.At 104 minutes, Hitch-hike is possibly a little too long, heavy on dialogue that might have benefitted from some judicious trimming, but director Pasquale Festa Campanile doesn't allow the pace to drop too much, delivering enough exploitative content at regular intervals to keep fans of '70s sleaze more than happy.
With an uncompromising dark tone, effectively depraved moments, and committed performances by its star trio, "Autostop Rosso Sangue" (American title: "Hitch-Hike") is a solid and compelling exploitation feature from co-writer / director Pasquale Festa Campanile.
Played out against some stunning rural vistas, it's got enough gore, sleaziness, and nudity to satisfy devotees of this genre.Franco "Django" Nero plays a reporter named Walter Mancini who's going on a trip with his wife Eve (Corinne Clery of "Moonraker").
Most of the rest of the movie shows what happens when Walter and Eve find that they can't get Adam out of their lives."Hitch-Hike" is potent stuff, with two motorcycle cops getting gunned down and a pivotal scene involving Adams' rape of Eve. The stunning Ms. Clery shows all of the goods in a couple of shots.
HITCH-HIKE is a moralistic Italian crime thriller with a sleazy feel that comes from the presence in the cast of David Hess, playing up to his usual sadistic LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT persona.
He plays a volatile hitch-hiker who is picked up by bickering couple Franco Nero and Corinne Clery and subsequently holds them hostage on a lengthy road trip.
****SPOILERS*** One of the better "Hitch-Hiker from Hell" movies that has Walter & Eve Mancini,Franco Nero & Corinne Clery,held hostage by this escaped from an institution the criminally insane hitch-hiker Adam Konitz,David Hess,in an effort to get him across the border into Mexico.
A psychological road-thriller, mixed with exploitation elements and the voice used to dub David Hess laughs like Elmer Fudd...
I can't say it never works, the psychological warfare comes off pretty good at times, but overall the plot is too contrived and the characters / actors fail to get the right mood across - it basically gets stuck in the b-movie exploitation genre.
For approximately 80 minutes, "Autostop Rosso Sangre" is a gripping & compelling mixture between road-movie, psychological thriller and down-to-the-ground exploitation.
Hitch-hike is an Italian exploitation effort.
All 3 of the main actors have been in far better movie.Nero will be forever Django, Clery will be forever O (as in Story of), and Hess will always be Krug (ok in Hess's case probably a bit of type-casting there).