Two summers following the Manson Family murders, a man maintains a small group of women in the desert Southwest, but they need to find a way to earn money, so they lure men by pretending to be stranded travelers. "The Hitchhikers" (1972) falls into the counterculture genre that was popular from the late 60s through the early 70s. While biker movies of that time were another distinct category, there was some overla…

I usually rate movies with a simple thumbs up or thumbs down, assigning either a top score or the lowest possible mark—anything in between feels too contrived for someone who’s comfortable calling out bad films, appreciating guilty pleasures, or critiquing something flawed that I still enjoyed. But certain movies warrant a perfect rating, simply because they deliver precisely what they promise, regardless of quali…