Well Deserved Praise

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

If you have a friend or family member who asks you, "What on earth is film noir?" Show them this movie. It has all of the hallmarks of a great noir flick: deceit, blackmail, twisted love, very unfortunate circumstances, unforeseen tragedy; and it is shot in low-budget black-and-white with minimal yet atmospheric sets. However, it all works most wonderfully, or uber-suspensefully. Detour, unlike many other fine noir films, has breathtaking pace; it doesn't stall or get mired in overly clever - or hopelessly cryptic - dialogue. That's not to say that the dialogue is on the cheap or not sharp; why, it certainly is. The weave of action and dialogue is just perfect: It's not a run of garish violence or verbose mega-star monologues. In fact, I think I'll watch it again tonight. Oh, BTW, I stumbled upon Detour on a Friday night in the mid-80s. It was featured on that old Night Flight series. I've been hooked on film noir ever since. Enjoy!

When the pianist Al Roberts gets tired of being miserable and missing his girlfriend who traveled across the country to seek her fortune in Hollywood, he decides to leave New York behind. He has no money to pay for the trip from one coast to the other, so he decides to hitchhike, something that proves to be his downfall. A man who picked him up dies during the journey and Al panics when he pessimistically expects to be accused of the death. He steals not only the man's car, but also his identity and stows away the corpse in a ditch. He then decides to pick up a hitchhiker named Vera, but he will soon regret it because she seems to know his dark secret and will not hesitate to take advantage of it.The story feels more than a little strained on more than one occasion. It's hard not to fall in love the hopelessness that constitutes Detour. A low-budget thriller directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Sure, it's an extremely simple B-movie, but it is packed full of interesting quotes, friendly cynicism, pitch black darkness and at least as much rain. It is insanely entertaining to see Vera and Al throw sharp barbs at each other while the tones are so miserable that they find it hard to laugh at them.With a playing time of over 70 minutes says Detour goodbye long before it has time to start to feel tiring.

This is a fantastic Movie. One of the best movies I've ever seen of all time in cinema history.It is tight and carefully controlled all the way through.The pace keeps you on edge at every turn and you cant wait and cant believe what happens next in every scene.Nothing is wasted and every scene is precise with nothing more and nothing less. It is beautifully written, directed and performed. A great classic and one of my favorites of all time.A master class for all filmmakers to aspire to.

Detour stars Tom Neil as Al Roberts, a hitch-hiker trying to make his way from New York to LA to be with a girl that had left him behind for Hollywood. Just hours away from his destination he gets picked up by Charles Haskell, who's willing to drive Roberts to his destination but suddenly dies in his sleep on the way. Detour is a hugely impressive film when you consider the meager $30,000 budget it was allowed by PRC. (a studio I've never even heard of) I didn't realize this when I started the film. I thought something was a bit off, but I didn't manage to figure out it was a budget flick until I had reached the ending. The film manages to carve a well-rounded narrative out of four actors, three sets, and the director's car. That's definitely worth admiring. Tom Neil gives a good performance, but he's completely overshadowed by Ann Savage as the film's femme fatale Vera. Vera is a character that feels like she was written to come off as real rather than cinematic. She's a good looking girl with a short temper and an angry demeanor. She didn't have the obnoxious lighting other femme fatales used that made them look glow in the dark and the writers didn't bother trying to shoehorn any completely out of place romance into the film, she was just a tough chick looking to make some quick cash off Roberts, a frightened, easy target. Ann Savage seemed like she was delivering her lines exactly how Vera would say them. She was harsh and irritable, and when she got the upper hand on Roberts she was smug and arrogant. Her performance was persuasive; she was dynamite, baby.