Twilight Zone - The Long Haul / The Hitch-Hiker

 I couldn't help but remain impressed by the end of this episode because I still, after hundreds of times watching "The Hitch-Hiker", have goosebumps when Nan Adams looks into her review mirror and sees the "shabby, scarecrow man" who seems to pursue her from Pennsylvania to Arizona, never letting up, always ahead or just behind. It could the music (familiar to us obsessive Zoners) and her narration admitting that since she learns of her death in a booth in Tuscon all of the fear and worry that has followed her since seeing shabby scarecrow man has left. Once she realizes that her trip to LA was actually just meant to reach a totally different destination...a destination she would inevitably make her way to.

Inger Stevens has some acting pieces in the episode I take for granted. I've just watched "The Hitch-Hiker" so many times, mainly during marathons over and over, that I sometimes move to the next episode, shaking my head to the episode's power and twist in appreciation without getting the chance to let it breathe in my mind. There are times the episode is even background "music" while I'm doing something else because "The Hitch-Hiker" is often on. It is like a friend I never want out of my life because of the impact. Stevens couldn't have possibly known that this television role would be of such iconic status 62 years later. She couldn't have realized how powerful a single scene -- where she doesn't speak, after her car is nearly slammed into by a train, lured towards the tracks by the shabby scarecrow man -- set to narration could be. She had to convey what she was thinking without saying a word. I think that is an artform that isn't lost. There's great acting all over the place. But this performance just sticks to me, remains with me. She just wants him away, gone. Getting so desperate she'd run him over, much to the shock of her passenger, a sailor (Adam Williams, who plays a funny dunderhead in "A Most Unusual Camera"), Nan is under stress and looking to get rid of him out of fear for her life. And after that phone call lets her know that "Nan is dead, her car blowing a tire causing a wreck that took her life", Stevens is able (again, without saying a word) to communicate these other feelings, of letting go, no longer harboring this urgency to get away. A multi-faceted performance that shows a lot of different emotions, often without dialogue, there is a reason this performance has stood the test of time. Granted, her performance is helped by being featured on The Twilight Zone, but I imagine if there were fan festivals as rabid as today for genre shows back then, Stevens would have been inundated by folks wanting her autograph. It is just too bad she never knew what her work meant to others.

I was thinking to myself about when to watch this episode, even considering time of day. I am weird like that. Marathons that show this at 1 PM, for instance, since a majority of the episode is Nan driving cross country, the bright of day. So many rural locations, as she mentions, from Tennessee through Arkansas. Eventually hitting a gas station or rest stop in New Mexico, eventually stopping off in Arizona. Almost all during the day. And there are even shots of her in her car driving down roads, highways that are awful lonely, I can only assume. All the while, none of it was real. Nan was dead.