10 Horror Movie Villains Who Would Have Won By Doing NOTHING
9. John Ryder - The Hitcher
A great case for not picking up strangers in your car was made by 1986's The Hitcher, in which Rutger Hauer plays a murderous vagabond by the name of John Ryder.
A cold-blooded psychopath, Ryder gets a lift from young car salesman Jim (C. Thomas Howell) and announces his plans to kill him. He tells Jim to try and stop him, which he does by kicking him out of the moving car.
Roll credits!
Sadly, this is not the end of the story, as Ryder goes on a relentless pursuit of his target. Much bloodshed and many corpses later, Jim finally kills Ryder, bringing this gory saga to an end.
Ryder's goals are intentionally ambiguous, as he seems to just kill for the hell of it.
Was his ambition to force Jim to kill him, turning him into the new Hitcher? If so, then why? He's dead at the end of all of this.
Had Ryder simply let Jim drive away when he was thrown from the car, he could have kept on murdering drivers to his little heart's content. Instead, he just causes a whole heap of trouble for no real reason.
PSA - hitchhiking is a bad idea.