Daniel Mainwaring took this story right out of the headlines of the day,
penning this true story of a mass murderer who was eventually executed
in San Quentin's gas chamber. Released during McCarthy's witch-hunt,
Mainwaring was not given credit because Howard R. Hughes, who produced
it under RKO, refused to give credit to any "radicals." The story is
that of two men on a fishing trip who pick up a hitchhiker. He turns out
to be a sadistic psychopath who has committed multiple murders, a
sociopath who hates
humanity because of his own abuse as a child.
He also has an affliction
which terrifies these two men: an eye which is permanently open, thereby
never allowing them to know if he is really asleep or just faking
it--something which he does with regularity to scare them...letting them
take off and then meeting up with them just as they feel they have
escaped from him. A tense thriller skillfully directed by the only
female director of the time, Ida Lupino, it is a suspenseful tale of
terror on the highways. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi
