I saw this movie on Showtime late night when I was a kid, around the early ‘80s. Family in a car driving down a road in the rain; They stop and pick up a hitchhiker wearing one of those hooded yellow rain slickers, can't see his face or anything. Hitchhiker gets in, the family says something like, "Where you headed, etc?" Hitchhiker says nothing, and the family starts looking at each other nervously. Suddenly the hitchhiker grabs the father's face, and his hand is some weird looking claw. The car goes off the road. The mother wakes up in the hospital and they tell her that she and the hitchhiker were the only survivors. She says, "His hand…his left hand..??" and the nurse says, "The left hand was severed in the crash".
That's as far as I got. Any idea what this is? Nobody seems to ever have heard of it.
UNK SEZ: This sounds like a good one but I don't recall it. You know the drill kids, send us an email or leave a comment if you know what this is!!!
UPDATE: Jeff Allard of the incredibly great blog DINNER WITH MAX JENKE knew right away that this trauma was made possible by the anthology series HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR. He even gave us the episode's title, "The Two Faces Of Evil"!Thanks also go to Reader PhantomWolf who pointed us toward the clip below….
Oh, this is one of my favorites! It's an episode of the Hammer House of Horror anthology series called "The Two Faces of Evil". This scared the living crap out of me when I saw it on late night TV in the early '80s. It turns out that the hitchhiker is a doppleganger of the father but the wife can't be sure which one died in the crash – the real husband or the evil twin. When the "husband" is moved back home to recover from his injuries, it gets really creepy with the wife never being sure who she's taken back into her home. Plus, due to the injuries sustained in the crash, the husband can't speak and can only utter grunting noises. I don't want to spoil the whole episode here but it's definitely a winner – well worth seeking out!
That sounds good. Is it available on DVD?
Once again I can only find a clip and not the whole thing, sorry. I really want to see this now, looks rather intriguing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2vCkI69ZQw
A Season Set of Hammer House of Horror (thirteen episodes) was released some time ago and is still available on Amazon. Besides The Two Faces of Evil, there were a few other decent episodes that would make the set worth getting. Â
There were a lot of not-so-good episodes in that series, but this one was definitely exceptional! I used to watch this one all the time, and it never failed to freak me out. The last 5-10 minutes are some of the creepiest television has ever produced.
Another one I remember liking is one with Denholm Elliot, the name of which I can't remember. It was about him having a weird recurring dream that became harder and harder to distinguish from reality.Â
Glad to help out, Unk – hope you like the set! And by the way, Cam1020, that Denholm Elliot episode was called Rude Awakening.
I remember one episode of HHoH from the 80's where this woman is kidnapped by, and subsequently raped by, a werewolf (No. I am not making this up). The episode was later re-cut into a feature called 'Children of the Full Moon' complete w/ an introduction by Elvira. Who says the British are stuffy?
Children of the Full Moon.
Holy Crap!!! that's it! I was the guy who asked the question. Unreal, I'd posted that question on a couple boards over the years and nobody had a clue. Started to think I made it up in my head. Took kindertrauma like a day. Thanks for posting my question and thanks for the answer. I'll have to see it, at least now I know what is. Man, still pretty effectively creepy, I didn't remember that the hhiker mumbles and points, to my memory he was silent, but even creepier this way.