20 Wild Horror Movie Casting Choices We Almost Got

The Hitcher is one of the greatest horror films of the 1980s, in large part because of Rutger Hauer's savagely brilliant performance as murderous hitchhiker John Ryder.

It's a role that feels like it was designed in a lab for Hauer's strengths as a performer, and 40 years later it remains his most indelible performance behind only Roy Batty in Blade Runner.

But the script actually described Ryder as a more "skeletal" character, and so director Robert Harmon originally intended to cast Terence Stamp in the part. 

Harmon was high enough on the Superman star that he even took pictures of Stamp to pitch meetings, but when Stamp read the script he declined the role.

This cleared the path for Hauer to make it his own forever more, though Harmon bumped into Stamp at a party years later and he admitted that, having seen the final film, he wished he'd done it.

Stamp would've clearly also been incredible in the role, but it's impossible to feel short-changed by who we ended up with.