Down The Road

Down The Road holds to the conventions of the thriller from the titles onwards, and when a driver collects a hitchhiker something seems amiss even before his silhouette briefly becomes that of Hitchcock.

With bold lines, reminiscent of American newspaper comics from the forties, the black and white and grey of Dick Tracy or The Phantom, Down The Road plays oddly, but in a good way. There's a genuine air of unease even before the driver, a priest, begins his conversation with his passenger, a strange little man with empty eyes who claims to be a psychic.

This is a frantic, classic piece, with a sting in the tail. Despite a fleeting interlude that harks back, impossibly, to Bambi, it is brutal, uncompromising, and brilliant.