Detour

A2zcds.com Remastered Edition of "Detour" is a piece of junk.
Five stars for the movie. I agree that this is a great work of film noir.

I knew upfront that the print quality of this film would be less than perfect. So, in order to get the very best print, I purchased all three DVDs that were available - Alpha Video, Image Entertainment, and the A2zcds.com Remastered Edition.

The A2zcds.com Remastered Edition of "Detour" is a piece of junk. Don't waste your money. It has the picture quality of an amateur You Tube video. The various shades of black and gray are broken down into large digital cubes. The digital cubes are about a half inch in size and dance all over the screen when there is any movement - which is very distracting. Also, for more than half of the movie, from the point of the movie where Tom Neal picks up Ann Savage and they begin talking in the car - the voice audio track is not in sync with the lip movement. You hear what the person says before their lips even move.

The Alpha Video release...

Want a ride?
An unshaven and weather-beaten young man sits brooding over a cup of coffee in an anonymous roadside café. A man of means by no means, as Roger Miller would put it. But Al Roberts (Tom Neal) is king of no road, and by the end of DETOUR we wonder whether he is even sovereign over his own soul.
A potential ride in the form of a friendly trucker strikes up a conversation. Where you coming from? West. Where you going to? East.
Roberts is wrong, though. He's coming from Hell and he's going to Nowhere, and the last thing he needs is a chatty trucker along for company.
DETOUR is told in a flashback from that lonely stool. Roberts and his girlfriend work as pianist/singer in a fleabag club out east. Comes a foggy night and she splits up with him to pursue fame out west. Weeks later he calls and they agree to get back together. He'll come out west and they can be married.
Being down at his heels Roberts is forced to hitchhike to California. All goes...

Gloriously Cheap, Dark Little Noir Gem
'Detour' manages to do in 67 min. what most films dream about in two hours. Made for almost nothing in 5 days by a small-time studio, this goes to show that you don't need money or big studio support to create an enduring movie. You can sense the tight budget all around. Take into consideration for example that Ulmer shot a big portion of the film inside cars (notice how the first few cars have the driver's seat on the left side, like English automobiles), a cheap nightclub and a creaky apartment. Also in the flashback sequence when Tom Neal is sitting in the restaurant, Ulmer simply put out the lights, made a close-up on Neal's face and shed a rectangular light onto his eyes to create the flashback effect. All this techniques, while not very innovative, add to the effect of this bleak little gem. A dark little drama that is deserving of it's cult following. Tom Neal is the ultimate screen chump as an innocent man who happens to land on Ann Savage's deadly lap. Ann Savage...

Click to Editorial Reviews