Way back in the 80's when horror was once again riding high on one of its trademark resurgence streaks HBO was the cable channel of choice for cutting edge genre programming. That gauntlet has seemed to have been passed to SHOWTIME this time around but back then, it was HBO. They had the awesome Tales From The Crypt episodes and they also had a Twilight Zone kind of show titled The Hitchhiker. The premise was pretty simple, the hitchhiker was our crypt keeper and as he wandered the country side we were led in and out of peoples lives and the strange and bizarre twists that they took.
Season Three has just been released on DVD as a 2 disc set and this collection offers up some of the better episodes in The Hitchhikers run.
The bigger name stars started getting involved this season and that inevitably rose the quality of stories that were being offered up. The likes of Bill Paxton, Lauren Hutton and Michael Ironside take there turns in learning morality dished out by The Hitchhiker.
My only real problem with this collection of 10 episodes is the glaring lack of any type of special features on the disc. There is nothing and I do mean nothing extra on this disc. Not even a hint of a special feature. Kind of strange in this day and age of even cartoon movies coming with commentary tracks. Gotta wonder why.
The shows themselves are not bad although none of them really stand out as "must see" gems. With that being said these 10 tales are probably the best 10 of the three anthologies that have been released so far. It really is kind of fun revisiting these shows after 20 years but I fear that the younger of you may find the stories kind of bland and dull.
The collection would have been greatly enhanced by a decent set of commentaries or featurettes instead we are just given the show presented as if you had taped them on your old VHS player.
Not bad, just nothing special.
The Hitchhiker Volume 3 is available now at your favorite retailer.
