The Devil Thumbs a Ride

Short and sadistic, Felix Feist’s The Devil Thumbs a Ride showcases the brutal charms of Lawrence Tierney as homicidal drifter Steve Morgan, who hails a ride with the clean-cut, recently married Jimmy Ferguson (Ted North) as a means of evading consequences for his assault and robbery of a theater employee. The unlikely duo offers a ride to two young women whom Morgan proceeds to taunt with brilliant lechery (“You’ve got skin like they drool about on the radio” and “them hard-to-find Technicolor eyes”), a sign of his aggression to come. Before long, Morgan offers to take the wheel (and control of the foursome’s fate), which unleashes his broken psyche and violent tendencies; ultimately, he fakes a breakdown so that the group is forced to take over a private cottage where one of the female passengers, Agnes (Betty Lawford), reveals her own sinister nature and bonds with Morgan (“This boy’s gonna be my meat”) until death is inescapable. The story strains credulity on more than one occasion, but Tierney roars through the 62-minute film like psychopathic thunder, and Feist doesn’t spare us any of the degraded details.