Customer Reviews

The Hitchhiker, Volume 1 (HBO TV Series)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Hitchhiker (30 min.) HBO
Season 1 episodes 1-26 Nov 1983 to Apr 1986
Season 2 episodes 27-39 Feb - May 1987
Season 3 episodes 40-65 Apr-Dec 1989
Season 4 episodes 66-85 Sept 1990 - Feb 1991

This set, (Volume One) has 10 episodes:
24 Last Scene
14 Nightshift
46 The Miracle of Alice Ames
19 Ghostwriter
18 Man's Best Friend
17 W.G.O.D.
33 The Legendary Billy B.
31 Homebodies
30 Why Are You Here?
34 In the Name of Love

This series continued the 'wandering adventurer' style of storytelling wherein the main character is only a witness sharing his experiences. Like Route 66, The Fugitive, or The Incredible Hulk, to name a few, each story is unrelated to any other except by the conceptual vehicle of the perpetual wanderer. Like One Step Beyond or The Twilight Zone, The Hitchhiker himself is not a player in the tales. Occasionally stories involved supernatural forces, but most plot twists stemmed from the dark side of the human spirit.
In 1996, The Hitchhiker entered into syndication on the USA Channel and so was re-edited to remove the violence and/or nudity and sexuality that were featured on the HBO runs (and to make room for commercials). Originally the Hitchhiker was cast with Nicholas Campbell as the host, but Campbell was quickly replaced with Page Fletcher. In order to preserve continuity during the syndication runs, Campbell's scenes in the first three episodes were later re-shot with Fletcher. But because the character of the Hitchhiker initially had more interaction with the people in the stories, this caused certain scenes to appear very choppy.
There is a little confusion as to how many seasons the show actually ran since season one ran for two and a half years! The Hitchhiker ran for a total of seven and a half years with a ten month break between season one and two, and a two year break between two and three. There were a total of 85 episodes over four seasons on HBO (six seasons on USA Channel). The series is available on DVD in two different versions. The HBO two-disc sets for sale in the US contain episodes that are out of sequence to their original US broadcast order. The Canadian DVD box sets by Alliance Atlantis have the episodes arranged by season in the same order in which they were broadcast in Canada.

This was a spooky, gory and weird series that truly pushed the limits of HBO at the time. Kind of like The Outer Limits mixed with Tales From The Crypt, it features a hitchiker that kind of "introduces" a new story every episode. Many famous faces and directors got a start on this series. HBO used to run this show at about 11:00 at night to make sure all the kids were asleep!

Wow, there's a great collection of talent there! With episodes featuring award-winning actors such as Helen Hunt and Joe Pantoliano, and participation from fan-favorite director Paul Verhoeven, this surely is a must-have for any DVD collector
Koch Canada will release The Complete First Season on DVD April 20th. This 3 disc set will contain 26 episodes The show must have aired differently in Canada because what Koch considers the first season is actually the first 3 seasons according to the episode guide at EPGuides.com. It's not all good news though; the people at Koch Canada said that they don't own the Canadian rights to the second Canadian season so they're unable to release those episodes.

What a great volume and for the price it's available it's a steal!!!!
Well of course had to wait a year or two for it but I am a very patient person.

I remember this show briefly way before HBO was known as it today for their cable programs. This DVD set looks great the episode looks crisp and clear. The special features could have been better but we do get director's commentary on several episodes.

All the episodes were memorable. I liked the Paul Verhoeven episode, the Kirstie Alley episode "Legend of Billy B" I think it was called was a laugh a minute. I also loved the episode with Helen Hunt a pretty clever use of moving the camera on and off. What else the episodes with James Remar "Home Bodies" was also memorable. The episode with Joe Pantoliano "Miracle of Alice Ames" about the phony preacher was great. Margot Kidder as the diabolic nurse in "Nightshift" was also funny, realistic and entertaining. All the episode feature first rate actors who went on to do bigger things. I really do hope they continue to release more volumes.

This is a review of this product: The Hitchhiker Vol. 1 VHS. Amazon may display this review on the page of another version of this product, for which this review may not apply. After reading this review, please click on the link so that you can be assurred that the product this review applies to is the same one you thought it was for.
--------------------------------------------------

Includes the following three episodes.

"The Curse" - Jerry Maclachlan is the owner of a rundown apartment building who promises Serita, a tenant, that he will make repairs to the building. After he becomes involved with a strange woman Tanya, he discovers a snake tattoo on his body. Both Serita and Tanya tell him how to get rid of the snake. Stars: Harry Hamlin, Peter Yunker, Daryl Hayes, Janet Hodgkinson, Arnold Johnson, Deborah Lacey, Laurie O'Byrne, and Beah Richards.

"W.G.O.D" - Reverend Nolan Powers is a money hungry radio evangelist preaching on the air waves about the bible. 0ff the air, he's a self-righteous greedy man. A tabloid news reporter, Sato, digs up the story about how the Reverend killed his brother, Gerald. Gerald's ghost comes back to haunt the Reverend, ruin his career and pay him back for causing his death. Stars: Gary Busey, Robert Ito, Geraldine Page, Brioni Farrell, and Ian Forsyth.

"Hired Help" - Kay Mason, abusive owner of a dressmaking sweatshop, is cursed by an angry worker who exclaims that she will be paid back by the devil for her actions. When she hires a mysterious stranger to do some odd jobs around the house, she doesn't realize he's the devil in disguise. Stars: Karen Black, Fernando Allende, and Donnelly Rhodes.

The first episode on each tape is complete, the other two are missing the beginning title sequence. All episodes end after the "Markowitz/Chesler Producing" logo (the "This Has Been An HBO Presentation" screen is omitted). The tape was duplicated in the SP speed. An interesting bit of trivia: the tapes in this series originally sold for a suggested retail price of $39.95 (according to the commercial on the Vol. 4 tape).

The Hitchhiker was an awesome show! I remember watching it on HBO when I was a kid. I also enjoyed the later episodes on USA network. This show could never jump- the stories were great. I just wish some network would show the Hitchhiker again

I remember seeing this late at night on HBO, and not really liking or understanding any of the stories. I just tuned in to see some naked women. The stories? It was stuff that was over my head. I just didn't get how anybody could shoot this stuff, and why on earth anyone would make up these awful stories.

In retrospect it's a kind of criminal-drama meets the Twilight Zone. It shows people acting just plain wacky and insane. Driven way beyond sanity by something I don't think the lay audience member, me included, understand.

At least with Rod Serling you understood that normal people were in over their heads in extraordinary circumstances. In The Hitchhiker, it's like these people make these really psychotic circumstances for the sake of it.

Fond memories of naked women from my youth, but beyond that I think the drama is just out there. I bought the DVD set some years back thinking to relive some memories, and watching it with a more intelligent and critical eye I'm a little baffled as to who the target audience is. But, whatever. I tuned in for the naked babes, not the wackos which creep me out even more now than then.

In retrospect some of it is kind of hammy as well. An erotic thriller series, to me, wouldn't involve nut-cases and psychos. But I guess someone had to do it.

A wonderful experience with faster than expected delivery and the product was exactly as advertised. I will definitely order from here again.

Below is a review of this product: The Hitchhiker, Vol. 1 DVD. Amazon may display this review on the page of another version of this product, for which this review may not apply. After reading this review, please click on the link so that you can be assured that the product this review applies to is the same one you thought it was for.
--------------------------------------------------

Ok, let me start right off and tell you that I do not own, nor have I even seen this DVD. However, I own the 3-disc 26 episode "Season 1" set released in Canada (feel free to read my review here on Amazon's U.S. site) and I feel that I should do a quick comparison of both.

This set gives you less episodes for more money than the Canada set. This set costs $31.48 US Dollars plus shipping for 10 episodes. The Canada set cost me $34.57 US Dollars *WITH* "Expedited International Shipping" for 26 episodes!

The Canada set contains the first 26 episodes of the series (seasons 1 - 3 here, season 1 in Canada), but in a different order from how it was shown in the United States. This set contains 10 episodes from Season 3 (Nightshift, W.G.O.D., Man's Best Friend, Ghostwriter, Last Scene), Season 4 (Why Are You Here?, Homebodies, The Legendary Billy B., In the Name of Love), and Season 5 (The Miracle of Alice Ames). The season 3 episodes are also in the Canada set.

The Canada set does have a lot of cheapness to it. For starters, there is an ungodly amount of compression artifacts found in the set. Practically EVERY episode has at least one noticeable artifact (though admittedly a few of these you'd have to have an "eye" for in order to see them). Also, it comes in a cheap top/bottom load slipsleeve (the cases easily fall out when you take it off the shelf). I wish it was a side loader like most DVD-set sleeves. Plus there are numerous errors in the text on the packaging (lots of cast members who aren't in the episodes on the discs, one director not involved in the episodes on the discs, and a few spelling and character name errors), which makes it seems quite unprofessional.

There are two episodes in the Canada set, which are also in this set, that have video/audio errors. In "Last Scene" there's an original tape defect at 28:35. In "Man's Best Friend" there is no audio from 12:42-12:46. The original Lorimar video I have has the audio. The DVD cuts out music and the dog panting and the first part of Michael O'Keefe's dialogue ("I mean..."). I wonder if these two errors are in this set as well.

Each episode in the Canada set has a 2.0 (stereo) and 5.1 audio track. I really see no need for the 5.1 track and would have preferred that they left it off (maybe there wouldn't be so many damn compression artifacts if they had that extra space on the discs to work with). From what I've read, this set has the original mono track as well as a stereo track. I would have preferred that the Canada set had this, especially since the stereo track is probably just a downsample of the 5.1 track (on rare occasion the stereo track has a stereo effect at the oddest spots - like in dialogue - which wouldn't be there if that were the original audio track of the series).

The U.S. set contains bonus features, namely audio commentaries on selected episodes, plus closed captions, and multi-language subtitles. The Canada set contains NO bonus features, other than the unnecessary 5.1 audio track.

I gave this set 3 stars only because I presume it doesn't have any compression artifacts like the Canada set does. I didn't include the audio commentaries in the rating because I never heard them and I'm trying to fairly compare both sets based on the episodes themselves.

If you want a more detailed review from someone who actually owns this set, read [...]

The Hitchhiker was an awesome show! I remember watching it on HBO when I was a kid. I also enjoyed the later episodes on USA network. The stories were great. I just wish some network would show the Hitchhiker again