Rating: 
Summary: Classic Film Noir
Review: Film Noir flourished in the forties and early fifties. Bogart's Maltese Falcon supposedly is the first film with a destructive hard guy and scarlet woman pairing. Love rarely works out and you're more likely to get bumped off than score the perfect heist. The cinematography is black and white with plenty of fog or dark shadows. There's an underlying dread, a cynical Chesterfield cigarette on the lip of coming doom.
Detour is classic Film Noir. It's a B flick that is at first glance primitive, maybe shot in ten days. Tom Neal is in Ann Savage's web after he accidentally kills a man. It is so simple yet so intriguing. Ann Savage is forgotten, but not by me. She is the greatest evil woman ever in film. Rent this one immediately.
Rating:
Summary: The ultimate in film Noir
Review: Filmed in 1945 on what looks like a $39 budget does not at all detract from this great slice of cinematic excellence.A great film is a great film regardless of production values.This is a tale of a man caught in the tangled web of fate and his doomed attempt to get himself out.Tom Neal's character hitchikes his way from New York to Los Angeles to be with his girlfriend.His fateful ride comes courtesy of a man who proceeds to die on him in the car.Figuring the police will pin the death on his all too easy to railroad drifter self,he decides to ditch the body and ride on into Los Angeles in the dead man's car.At a gas station he picks up a hitchiking woman who turns out to be his worst nightmare.The hellish Fury of a woman(Ann Savage) strait out of Greek mythology turns out to be a previous hitchiker of the man who keeled over.She recognizes the car and proceeds to threaten blackmail.But she doesn't seem as interested in blackmail as she is torturing the poor man unlucky enough to have met her.Neal's character eventually manages to get away from the beast but the end of his troubles are only beginning as the film comes to a close.Without a doubt one of the most bleak,raw films ever made is made palatable by its short running time,about 65 minutes.This is a film everyone should see at least once.The fact that it doesn't seem so much a movie as it is a private peek into the dirty underbelly of twisted,wasted,insane and hopeless lives makes it a refreshing change of pace from the glamorized grit that usually passes for Hollywood "realism".
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest B-Movie Ever Made!
Review: First of all this is a real B-movie - the greatest ever made! Some Warner Brother publicist once promoted Casablanca as the greatest B-movie ever made, and it stuck. But, don't you believe it! Detour is the real thing and has the cheap production values to prove it. Just take a look at how the camera (probably strapped on to the back of a moving pickup truck) bounces around during the opening title shots of the open road! I'll bet they shot the whole movie in three days. But, a great B-movie needs a good plot and some great acting to back it up. You can't get any better than the combination of Tom Neal as the guy who can't escape fate and Ann Savage as the gal from hell. Film noir just doesn't get any better than this. Neal's terrific performance makes you wonder what happened to his career? Except for this movie and some bit parts here and there Hollywood pretty much passed him by. Well, it turns out that life is stranger than fiction and you could actually make a pretty good film noir about the real life of Tom Neal! A Harvard law school grad that ended up in prison for murdering some guy because of a dame! Wow! How's that for film noir? In any case, watch this movie and journey into the dark side of fate. I'll bet you never pick up another hitchhiker ever again!
Rating:
Summary: The highway of broken dreams. Destination Hell.
Review: Have you ever wondered how little things--a hitchhiker you pick up, a newspaper you buy--can change your life forever? Edgar G. Ulmer certainly did, and in his zero-budget 1945 film noir, "Detour," he demonstrates how they can ruin even the remotest chance of happiness. The film looks cheap--the photography is muddy, the continuity choppy, the sets out of Edward D. Wood--but Ulmer, a former assistant to F.W. Murnau, knew how to create memorable visual effects on no budget, so that most of the movie seems to be drifting in a hellish limbo. In "Detour," fate is totally a matter of chance, and any decision you make is bound to be the wrong one. What is particularly fascinating about "Detour" is that neither goodness nor street smarts are of any use: scheming, hard-bitten Vera (Ann Savage) gets no closer to achieving her dreams than does naive, well-meaning Al (Tom Neal). They are the couple from Hell, trapped in a B-movie "No Exit" in which they can never feel anything for each other except bitter hatred. (No wonder the French were the first to hail "Detour" as a masterpiece: this is existentialism distilled to its essence.) By now most fans of "Detour" know the film noir turns that Tom Neal's life took in reality; what is less well known is that Edgar Ulmer and Ann Savage had some noirish twists in their own lives. Ulmer, who emigrated to Hollywood from Germany in the early 1930s, started out as an A-list director; but when he ran off with the wife of studio head Carl Laemmle's nephew, he was henceforth and forever blackballed to Poverty Row. As for Savage, she retired from the screen in the early 1950s, only to find herself suddenly penniless in 1969 when her supposedly wealthy husband died, leaving nothing but debts. She was forced to work in a law office well into her old age, returning to the screen only briefly, playing an elderly nun in the 1986 B-movie "Fire With Fire."
Rating: 
Summary: Deserves Better Treatment
Review: Heres a piece of very good Film Noir that would have earned 5 stars had the transfer been better. A man plagued by bad luck which gets even worse when black mailed by a tough "dame" looking for a "soft buck". Good movie, bad transfer.
Rating: 
Summary: Detour ...
Review: I am a great admirer of "Detour" which is probably the best low-budget film noir ever made. But this DVD is a piece of junk. It is transferred from a lousy, battered 35mm print that has badly spliced gaps and screwed-up film footage in crucial scenes, obliterating some of the best dialogue. The company that put this out should be ashamed of itself, especially considering this film is now considered a low-budget masterpiece. If you have no copy of this, get the Sinister Cinema VHS. It is a much higher quality print.
Rating:
Summary: A discovery
Review: I had never heard of it before, but Detour was advertised on the cover as "putting the noir in film noir." I thought the sentence was silly, but I got the idea. Being a fan of film noir myself, I was intrigued. Well done, it is a truly engrossing experience--an eye into the lives of the "other half." The cover also went on to laud the performances of leads Tom Neal and Ann Savage (never heard of them, either) and, surprisingly, told the truth. This film was a ride. I wouldn't say it was well done, but it you can handle Roger Corman flicks, this should be a breeze. The acting is first-rate, the story is interesting (although the wraparound story is unnecessary and the ending is a puzzler), and the mood is set perfectly. The middle of the film is the best part. The way Neal and Savage interact with each other creates fireworks. I'm not sure I would recommend purchase (the DVD contains the film and naught else), but at only 68 minutes one viewing is definitely required.
Rating: 
Summary: Great movie, poor transfer to DVD
Review: I love the way this story unfolds, in flashback, which is relatively common in film noir. This story opens with Neal looking back on events as they unfolded, similar to the way Fred MacMurray opens Double Indemnity with his narrative. The dialogue exchange between Neal and Savage is wonderful too, even hilariously unbelievable at times, like when they first meet. The only trouble I have with the DVD is that the master was apparently in sad shape. In more than a few places, it is apparent that this movie is in deperate need of a restoration. Several scenes have visual noise and thin vertical lines running across the frame. Even the audio fades and crackles at one point (where Neal and his girlfriend kiss goodbye), which is jarring when one considers this is a DVD. I do not regret buying this DVD because I love this moive--I only hope that it will be restored one day.
Rating:
Summary: Film Noir Lean and Sharp as a Razor
Review: I saw a double bill of "Criss Cross" and "Detour" at a film noir festival, and although "Criss Cross" is definitely the A picture of the two with extraordinary performances and great visuals to boot, "Detour" doesn't take a back seat on any account. At the centerpiece of "Detour" is Ann Savage as Vera (favorite bad girl name of noir). When Savage comes on the scene, look out! She's so tough, she seems to spit nails when she talks. In spite of the low budget and the lousy prints in existence (such as the one I saw which crackled periodically), this film is extraordinarily stylish and effective and unsurprisingly, has a cult following -- probably many filmmakers and directors among its fans. Part of this effectiveness is due to director Edgar G. Ulmer, who began as a set and production designer at the heart of German expressionism. Both story and visuals are almost poetically dark, the hardboiled fatalism aided by striking lighting, smoky fog and seedy hotel rooms.
The plot involves a talented pianist and "everyman" Al Roberts (played by Tom Neal) who is getting nowhere fast at The Break O'Dawn nightclub in New York where the saving grace is his chanteuse girlfriend Sue (Claudia Drake). When Sue decides to try her fortunes in Los Angeles, the lovesick Roberts eventually decides to join her. Low on cash, he makes the cross-country journey by thumbing a ride. When he is picked up by Charles Haskell (Edmund McDonnell), his life is fatally and irrevocably changed. About an hour into the trip, he notices the deep scratches on Haskell's hand and inquires if Haskell had had an encounter with an animal. Haskell says he did -- with the most dangerous kind, "a woman"; after picking her up, he'd wound up booting her out of his car. Later Haskell unaccountably dies while Roberts is taking his turn at the wheel and in a panic that he'll be accused of murder, Roberts hides the body and assumes Haskell's identity. Further on Roberts picks up Vera (Ann Savage) on the road and as cruel fate has it, she is the dangerous hitchhiker who left her scars on Haskell. Recognizing Haskell's car and putting two and two together, she now has Roberts under her thumb.
Yes, this is a great portrait of an average joe caught in the unforgiving wheels of fate. It's also immensely entertaining. Ann Savage is largely to credit for its delicious fun with her "wrong side of the track" savagery and occasional pitches for love. The black and white visuals are terrific as is the dialogue with its classic noir philosophical cynicism. The close-ups of Neal's soul-weary face are fabulous. I'd say this ranks with the very best of noir.
Rating:
Summary: Perversely Encouraging
Review: I saw this in the middle of the night on cable more than 10 years ago and still haven't forgotten it. This may be the most despairing noir ever made. According to this, we are all just playthings in the hands of a sadistic god. But there's a kind of gallows humor in the movie that is perversely entertaining. The Tom Neal character is such a sad sack that he is more than a little responsible for bringing catastrophe on himself. And what catastrophe! It becomes so bad that it resembles a sick, shaggy-dog joke. And facing up the the worst in literature and film, if done with wit and compassion, is always cathartic. This is a stinky little gem.
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