The Hitch-Hiker (The Twilight Zone)
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“The Hitch-Hiker” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.
[edit] Details
- Episode number: 16
- Season: 1
- Original air date: January 22, 1960
- Writer: Rod Serling (story by Lucille Fletcher)
- Director: Alvin Ganzer
- Producer: Buck Houghton
- Director of photography: George T. Clemens
[edit] Cast
- Inger Stevens: Nan
- Leonard Strong: The Hitch-Hiker
- Adam Williams: Sailor
- Lew Gallo: Mechanic
- Dwight Townsend: Flag Man
- Russ Bender: Counterman
- Mitzi McCall: Waitress
- George Mitchell: Gas Station Man
- Eleanor Audley: Mrs. Whitney (voice)
[edit] Synopsis
The story begins with a woman, Nan Adams, conversing with a mechanic as he puts a spare tire on her car on the side of the road. She's on a cross-country trip from New York to Los Angeles. Here in Pennsylvania, she's had an accident that the mechanic tells her, by all rights, should have been fatal. He tells her how fortunate she is to have survived a blow out at the speed she was traveling, commenting that instead of her calling a mechanic, someone should really have been calling a hearse.
When the mechanic finishes putting on the spare, he tells her to follow him on into town so that he can get her a new tire. As she gets in her car to drive, she notices a strange-looking man hitchhiking. He's not exactly menacing in his appearance, but she is unnerved nonetheless and she drives away quickly.
Now at the mechanic's shop, she pays him for the new tire. As she awaits his return with her change, in her compact mirror she notices the same strange looking hitchhiker and freezes. When the mechanic returns, he notices her strange demeanor and asks her what is the matter. She replies that she's looking at the hitchhiker. But when they turn to look, the man is no longer there. She muses that someone must have picked him up but thinks its odd that she saw him out on the road by her accident also. The mechanic offers that someone must have picked him up there right after they left and brought him as far as town.
Nan resumes her journey as she narrates her thoughts for the viewer, expressing her apprehension at seeing this man, which increases as she continues the trip because she continues to see him every place she goes, always looking to her for a ride. No matter how fast she tries to drive, he always manages to be where she's going, standing there with his thumb extended for her. She drives on frantically becoming more and more afraid of this man.
At one point she comes to a railroad crossing as the lights are flashing and bell is sounding to signal an approaching train. When she stops, she notices the hitchhiker on the other side of the tracks. As always, his thumb is out as he looks to her for a ride. Unnerved by the sight of him, Nan decides that she can beat the train across the tracks and decides to hurry off. However as soon as her car gets on to her tracks, it stalls, leaving her stranded in the path of the train. Terrified, she refuses to abandon the car and continues to work the ignition, trying to get it restarted as the train barrels down upon her, its horn blaring. Only at the very last moment is she able to restart the car and back it up off of the tracks as the train whizzes past at the next moment.
Nan now again narrates her thoughts for the viewer. She says that the hitchhiker was beckoning her. He wanted her to start across the train tracks. She is now certain that he wanted her to die.
Nan frantically continues her journey, still unable to separate herself from the omnipresent hitchhiker. She's not even sleeping. Just continuing to drive, stopping only for gas or food. And every time she makes such a stop, the hitchhiker is there. Upon reaching New Mexico, she tries a side road in an attempt to elude the man. However, she runs out of gas late at night. She walks a quarter mile to a station, but the owner has retired for the evening and refuses to serve her until the morning. She tells him about the man she's been seeing and her fear of him, but the station owner is unsympathetic, telling her to return for service in the morning.
At this point, a man comes up from behind her, startling her terribly. However, as she turns to him, it's not the hitchhiker she's been seeing, but rather another hitchhiker: a sailor on his way back from his leave returning to his ship in San Diego. Eager for protection from the man she's been seeing, she offers to drive the sailor to San Diego herself. He eagerly agrees, rouses the station owner to insist that he give them some gas, and the two of them are off.
In the car, Nan continues to be distracted by her thoughts of the man she's been seeing. She asks the sailor about the possibility that a hitchhiker could keep getting ahead of her throughout her whole journey. Without telling the sailor specifically about the man she's been seeing, she offers, trying to convince herself as much as anything, that perhaps a hitchhiker could continually being picked up by cars that are traveling faster than she is, and that might allow someone to pull off the feat. The sailor asks why she's so concerned about something like that, but she tells him that she was thinking out idle thoughts to pass the time.
As they travel along, she suddenly spies the man again on the side of the road. She panics and when the sailor asks what is wrong, she tells him of her fear of the man. But the sailor says he didn't see anyone. Now, when Nan sees the man, she accelerates the car intentionally trying to run him over. When the sailor grabs the wheel and asks her what she's doing, she tells him now about the man who's been following her. The sailor insists that he never saw any man and, thinking that she's insane, or at the very least, desperately in need of some sleep, the sailor decides that continuing on with her is unsafe and leaves. Nan tries asking him to stay, begging him to stay, even a bit of seduction, which almost works. But ultimately he decides it's best that he find another way to San Diego and he leaves her.
As Nan reaches Tucson, Arizona, she stops to call her mother. She's looking for someone who can give her some sort of grounding in reality again. However, the person who answers the phone is not her mother, but a Mrs. Whitney. Mrs. Whitney says that Mrs. Adams is in the hospital. When Nan asks why, Mrs. Whitney replies that it happened suddenly—a nervous breakdown after finding out that her daughter, Nan, was killed in an auto accident in Pennsylvania six days ago, when the car she was driving blew a tire and overturned.
Suddenly, Nan's fear of the man is gone. All she feels now is coldness and numbness. She narrates her thoughts for the viewer again as she returns toward her vehicle. She offers that she knows she'll be seeing the man again as she goes on, and now she finally thinks she knows why.
As she sits back into her drivers seat, she looks up into her mirror, and sees in the reflection, the face of the hitchhiker, now sitting in the back seat. He softly offers to her, “I believe you're going...MY way?”
Nan has no reaction beyond acceptance of the truth — that the hitchhiker has not been a man who wanted her to die. But rather, he has been the personification of death itself, just patiently and persistently waiting for her to realize that she has been dead all along.
As Nan accepts her fate, starts the ignition and begins to drive on to eternity, Rod Serling narrates the final lines: “Nan Adams, age 27. She was driving California—to-Los Angeles. She didn't make it. There was a detour—through the Twilight Zone.”
[edit] Trivia
- In the original story, the character of Nan was a man. The story had earlier been adapted as an episode of Suspense in 1942, starring Orson Welles.
- In the comedy Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray and Robert talk about this episode.
- The plot of this episode is similar to that of the cult horror film Carnival of Souls, which was released in 1962.
