Search

» » Le autostoppiste (1972)

Short summary

Maggie learns she's pregnant so she runs away from home. Before long she gets involved with some other girls on their own who have found a way of supporting themselves. She joins them in hitchhiking around wearing sexy outfits and robbing the men who pick them up on the road.

User reviews


  • comment
    • Author: one life
    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 !
  • comment
    • Author: Ishnjurus
    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.
  • comment
    • Author: Tojahn
    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.
  • comment
    • Author: Todal
    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.
  • comment
    • Author: Ariurin
    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.
  • comment
    • Author: Hawk Flying
    "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.
  • comment
    • Author: Kizshura
    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.
  • comment
    • Author: Quemal
    "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.
  • comment
    • Author: LoboThommy
    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 .
  • Cast overview:
    Misty Rowe Misty Rowe - Maggie
    Nick Klar Nick Klar - Benson (as Norman Klar)
    Linda Avery Linda Avery - Diana
    Tammy Gibbs Tammy Gibbs - Hitchiker
    Kathy Stutsman Kathy Stutsman - Hitchiker
    Mary Thatcher Mary Thatcher - Hitchiker
    Denny Nichols Denny Nichols - Truck Driver
    Ted Zeigler Ted Zeigler - Church Deacon
    Efrem Dockter Efrem Dockter - Store Manager
    Lou Joffred Lou Joffred - Doctor
    Bleu McKenzie Bleu McKenzie - Reb
    Lee Morley Lee Morley - Used-Car Salesman
    Jim Sherwood Jim Sherwood - Nemo
    Prince Johnny Reb Prince Johnny Reb - Rebel
    All rights reserved © 2017-2024 hd.thomson-multimedia.com