A drifter gets into a spat with a customer and the owner of a local diner. As a song plays on the jukebox, it takes him back just a few months to when he was a nightclub singer in New York. His girlfriend had decided to go out west to see if she could make it in Hollywood, and after she had been out there a little while he decided to go out there and marry her. Taking to the road by hitching rides and having a tough go of it, he finally encounters what appears to be some good luck toward the end of his journey in Arizona. A seemingly well to do slickster offers him a ride and picks up his meal checks. Then one night when he has taken over the wheel, the car's owner dies. In a panic, the man steals his car and wallet and assumes his identity in fear that he will be mistaken for his killer. Then, just when he is about to ditch the car and hope to be free from this mess, he offers a ride to an icy woman with ties to the dead man who puts the drifter in a precarious position and seals both his and her fates. Detour is a B movie by Edgar G. Ulmer starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage in fine performances. It was shot in a matter of days and does not contain the best production values. However it is such a competent and well directed picture with such a tangibile feeling of doom that it was one of the first and most influential of all film noirs. With its ne'er do well leading man, femme fatales, murder plots, and shadows cast in black and white, Detour first made for exhilirating entertainment, and second helped lay the bricks for one of America's coldest and most beloved genres.
