alannasaddress Review of Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker

Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker (1979 TV Movie)

Great classic 70s made for TV movie!

[10/10 · 22 September 2022]

In the days when social awareness about various societal ills were coming more and more into mainstream consciousness and mass media this made for TV movie addresses the dangers of hitchhiking in America. With all the fun of teenage life mixed with serious trauma and melodrama, "Diary of a teenage hitchhiker" is a real, poignant look at this issue, the movie acts as an entertaining PSA to all ppl warning of the dangers of hitching and what could potentially happen when stepping into the "wrong car". The setting is late summer, 1979 in the fictional seaside beach town of Port Kirby, located in sunny Southern California. The main protagonist is Julie Thurston, a recent high school graduate who spends her days contemplating her future and hanging on the beach with her best gal pals, Cathy, Dana, and Francine and her boyfriend Nick. She shows an interest in sculpting and art which she feels her bf and most ppl don't support. Things start out peachy and carefree but radio reports warn young ppl of a scary psychopath picking up young ppl in the area and murdering/raping them. However her pals still hitch, Francine to beauty college, Dana because she totaled her car, Cathy because she's afraid to drive and is looking for a Dr. To terminate her secret pregnancy she hides from everyone except her friends, with Julie being her true support through it all. The consequences are dastardly, Cathy gets raped, beaten and suffers a miscarriage after a bad ride, Dana gets killed by the same psycho who picks her up and then crashes due to speeding from the police. Francine meets perverts but luckily is careful. Julie, who since has broken up with Nick and has obtained a job at Karps Kave, the local beach hangout/burger joint is trying to save money for a car although her nervous parents are urging her to be more careful and to quit the job if it means she had to hitch to get there. Also in the interim Julie meets Ron, a handsome young architect who starts dating her and encourages her sculpting. He takes her to Los Angeles for her 18th birthday and tries to advance her artistic career, as Julie tries to make it back there for a big break, she meets with the most terrifying ride of her life...will she make it? With her dreams, her ambitions...her life??? This movie ends on an interesting note but now it shows Julie's younger sister is starting to learn to hitch....yikes....all in all this movie is very entertaining and tries to have a great moral message about scary and dangerous hitching and thumbing rides can be. One chilling scene, in particular, shows 2 innocent teen girls at night who get in the wrong car after hitching and then it cuts to a scene showing the psychopath running over their bloody clothes with his car after presumably murdering them. I found it a great dark chick flick, and as far as made for TV movies of the time this one definitely shines. And the cast is relatively famous too, Katherine Helmond from "Soap" is Julie's mom, her boyfriend Nick is Christopher Knight from the "Brady Bunch" Dominique Dunne from "Poltergeist" is Cathy, Dick Van Patten from "Eight is enough" is Julie's dad, Less from WKRP in Cincinnati is Dana's dad Craig T. Nelson plays a guy who picks up Julie hitching etc. Etc. It's definitely worth a watch, and I really enjoyed it! Only thing I couldn't understand is why the friends continued to hitch knowing how it affected all their friends but I guess you gotta to leave that all up to your imagination.