HITCH HIKE

Walter Mancini and his wife Eve are on vacation in Central America, but between a hunting trip and a drunk in a crowded campsite, the couple does nothing but argue due to Walter's difficult character. As the couple drives towards Mexico, Eve decides to pick up a hitchhiker, Adam Konitz; but unfortunately for them, Adam is a psychotic criminal on the run towards the Mexican border who carries a suitcase full of money. Walter and Eve will thus be hostages of the crazy criminal who does not miss an opportunity to humiliate and treat his two victims with violence. At the end of the 1970s, genre cinema in Italy was so varied and free that it managed to give life to numerous gems that are still imitated and cited today even by the most authoritative Hollywood directors. It often happened, moreover, that productions were born that exploited trends in vogue abroad, thus creating examples of imitation that often proved to be on par with the original. "Autostop rosso sangue" fits precisely into this category, proving to be a solid and enjoyable on-the-road thriller that, on the one hand, exploits the clichés of a certain underground American cinema of the time (from Craven to Peckinpah), and on the other creates a completely original product capable of serving as a precedent for some future Hollywood cults. Numerous are, in fact, the analogies with the rape & revenge films inaugurated by Craven with "The Last House on the Left" (starting with the choice of David Hess in the role of the psychopath), but even more evident are the debts that Robert Harmon will have with this film for his "The Hitcher" (which arrives almost 10 years later!). Although the director of "Autostop rosso sangue" is Pasquale Festa Campanile, an authority in the field of box-office comedies (his are "Il merlo maschio", "Culo e camicia" and "Bingo Bongo"), the result is of great seriousness, thus demonstrating that if one is specialized in a genre, it is possible to provide good-level examples even in diametrically opposite genres. If David Hess, now become an icon of hard and raw cinema between the 70s and 80s, provides an interpretation as usual over the top but totally credible, equally suitable are the two protagonists of the story: a great Franco Nero and a fascinating Corinne Clery. Nero plays Walter Mancini, a violent and frankly odious man, a tough guy capable of handling the situation but too proud to show his weaknesses; the Clery plays Eve Mancini, the typical doll submissive to male authority and helpless victim of her husband's abuses, first, and Konitz's, later. At first glance, "Autostop rosso sangue" could be accused of excessive machismo... and perhaps it is really macho, since the female figure in the film is treated exclusively as an object, but in the end this is a peculiarity of the genre, found in much of the rape & revenge and dramas containing rapes and humiliations. In reality, the main theme of "Autostop rosso sangue" is human avarice, the engine that drives man to kill his fellow man to submit to the god of money; and in this perspective, Pasquale Festa Campanile's film manages to surprise and make one think, thanks also to a surprising and brilliant ending. In short, "Autostop rosso sangue" is a thriller absolutely worth watching, unjustly forgotten but still today of great emotional impact. Unfortunately, it is now very difficult to find on the Italian market. The rating has been rounded down.