Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Screenplay: Martin Goldsmith, based on the novel Detour: An Extraordinary Tale by Martin Goldsmith
Starring: Tom Neal, Ann Savage
Running Time: 68 minutes
Genre: Thriller, film noir
Penniless New York piano player Al Roberts (Neal) undertakes to hitchhike to Los Angeles. Along the way he is picked up by loudmouth bookie Charles Haskell (Edmund MacDonald) who drops dead on the road. Despite being innocent, Roberts is convinced that he will be convicted of murder, and so he decides to steal Haskell's clothes, money, car and identity. Later he picks up ruthless drifter Vera (Savage) who immediately sees a chance for blackmail.
This low budget film was allegedly shot in six days, and is full of technical errors, a plot reliant on almost impossible coincidences, however it is a kind of minor masterpiece. It does boasts razor-sharp dialogue, and performances which are one note, but surprisingly effective, with a sweatily anguished Tom Neal and a terrifyingly snarling Ann Savage. The film conjures up a bleak, unforgiving world, a shadowy twilit universe of unforgiving fate. Filmed almost entirely in a studio with minimal sets, and only one exterior shot, the characters are filmed usually in close-up or surrounded by heavy shadows, which emphasizes the traps that they are in and their inescapable fate. While there are many better films than this, almost none have managed to capture the same paranoid, doom-laden atmosphere that this one has.
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