User reviews

I'm not as fond of DETOUR as some of the other reviewers on here, purely because I found it an entirely depressing viewing experience. It's one of the darkest film noirs out there, leaden with a dreadful atmosphere throughout, full of foreboding, darkness, and misery. And I guess those are the reasons why it's so well remembered.

The film is directed by THE BLACK CAT director Edgar G. Ulmer in much the same way he would direct one of his horror pictures. Tom Neal makes for a rather unlikeable hero, trying desperate to hitch-hike from one end of the country to the other and coming unstuck when he falls in with a seemingly friendly driver. He takes a chance and thinks he's made it when in fact he's just about to meet Ann Savage's Vera.

Savage is the stand-out feature of this film and I hated every element of her angry, vengeful, selfish character. She's the worst femme fatale I've ever seen, a noxious character utterly devoid of redeeming features, to the degree that I found the movie hard to watch whenever she was around (which is most of the time). I admit that I thought the climax was excellent given what's come previously, although the only thing I came away from this feeling was relief, relief that it was over.

"Detour" is a standout noir, made in 1945 for pennies, and starring Tom Neal, whose art was later imitated in his life when he was charged with murder.

Neal is effective as a man who seems on the surface to be a victim of bad luck and poor judgment. Real bad luck and real poor judgment.

Trying to get from New York to LA by hitchhiking so that he can be with his girlfriend, Al, a talented pianist, is picked up by a guy named Haskell, who, at some point during the ride, dies of we don't know what - probably heart failure. The guy kept taking pills of some sort - my guess is it's digitalis because if it were speed, he wouldn't have fallen asleep.

At any rate, his death leaves Al with a dead body and a car. Feeling no one will believe his story, he hides the body, changes clothes with the victim, takes Haskell's driver's license and money, and leaves. First mistake.

Surely an autopsy would have confirmed the man died of heart failure, number one; and number two, Al in his narration makes reference to the body falling out of the car when he opened the door, indicating that there would then be a bump on the head and he'd then be accused of hitting him.

Uh, Al, I doubt it - the ground was wet and the guy was DEAD. But instead of driving to the nearest police station and explaining what happened, Al takes off.

Later on, he picks up a hitchhiker named Vera. It turns out that she knows he isn't Haskell and uses her knowledge to get him to do what she wants to get more money. If it was downhill in the beginning, now the situation becomes a sheer drop.

There is speculation by viewers that Al is a big fat liar and that his narration, which makes him look like a victim of chance, is skewed, that the facts don't fit his story and that his girlfriend Sue didn't exist.

That is a very interesting way to look at this film, and that conjecture may be true. On the other hand, Al may just be a loser and the victim of bizarre circumstances.

The whole film, and I saw a very grainy print of it, has a bizarre atmosphere. In the New York section, as Sue and Al walk through the streets, there's a fog machine going nuts, giving rise to the conjecture that Sue and Al's romance with her are just in his imagination.

The character of Vera is frightening and pathological; one minute she wants to be treated like a woman by being complimented, and she comes on to Al, and the next, she's threatening him and acting like a shrew. More inconsistencies.

The hard-looking Ann Savage is savage indeed in the role, which is by necessity a quite exaggerated portrayal. Handsome Tom Neal does a good job as Al, and his role includes a substantial narration throughout.

Is this narration what really happened, or is it what he is planning to tell the police if caught? We don't know. The ending was tacked on at the last minute and frankly doesn't feel right.

I like the idea of the ambiguity of the original ending, which matches the ambiguity of the story. The viewer does see this ending, but then it is followed up by another minute of film apparently demanded by the censors.

With Neal's subsequent real-life violent actions and his ultimately being accused of murdering his wife, this film takes on some really macabre aspects.

"Detour" will always remain perhaps the most unusual noir ever produced: made for no money, the strange circumstances of the story, a character who may or may not be lying to the audience, and a leading man who perhaps took his role too seriously. A striking film.

When the pianist Al Roberts gets tired of being miserable and missing his girlfriend who traveled across the country to seek her fortune in Hollywood, he decides to leave New York behind. He has no money to pay for the trip from one coast to the other, so he decides to hitchhike, something that proves to be his downfall. A man who picked him up dies during the journey and Al panics when he pessimistically expects to be accused of the death. He steals not only the man's car, but also his identity and stows away the corpse in a ditch. He then decides to pick up a hitchhiker named Vera, but he will soon regret it because she seems to know his dark secret and will not hesitate to take advantage of it.

The story feels more than a little strained on more than one occasion. It's hard not to fall in love the hopelessness that constitutes Detour. A low-budget thriller directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Sure, it's an extremely simple B-movie, but it is packed full of interesting quotes, friendly cynicism, pitch black darkness and at least as much rain. It is insanely entertaining to see Vera and Al throw sharp barbs at each other while the tones are so miserable that they find it hard to laugh at them.

With a playing time of over 70 minutes says Detour goodbye long before it has time to start to feel tiring.

Dear Me, PRC, the sub-Republic/Monogram indie studio that was considered the most cardboard of studios managed on this occasion to actually create a deliciously nasty noir. DETOUR, as many commentators here like to spoil for you by telling you THE WHOLE STORY is an excellent low budget film of one man's descent into accidental crime. So powerful are the screen images and the seedy tawdry drama that one almost forgets they are watching one of the cheapest (and profitable) films ever made. Monogram Pictures made several highly appreciated low end noirs (like the truly shocking DECOY of 1946) and must have been very envious of the now enduring $66,000 PRC masterpiece DETOUR. In fact I would not be surprised to find that Monogram were inspired enough to make DECOY as a result. Tom Neal sadly actually went to jail in real life in a genuine DETOUR like way and vicious Ann Savage lived up to her name in a few more noir shockers for various crummy B/W outfits who specialized until the mid 50s in similar films. NARROW MARGIN and KISS ME DEADLY are equals. DETOUR is one of the most rewarding grim descents into 40s desperation film making and the doomed loser played by Tom Neal certainly is the most tragic of them all. This is a great film. It is all it is meant to be and viewers who sit riveted to the unfolding emotional horror are genuinely rewarded. Originally TIFFANY STUDIOS in the 20s the lot became for hire after 1932 then was the home for GRAND NATIONAL from 1935 -39 and morphed into PRC in 1940. With a huge shed of snazzy 20s furniture and sets from the previous 15 years it allowed PRC's budget conscious front office to upgrade their art direction by virtue of all these classy fittings costumes bought and left there by the sophisticated view of those previous managements. I have seen a number of independent B grade30s pix made there with the same sets and outfittings inbetween management reincarnation. PRC in the late 40s were bought up by EAGLE-LION a US/Brit franchise headed by J Arthur Rank and rolled in 1950 into UNITED ARTISTS. As one journalist aptly wrote "No other poverty row outfit were able to cash in their chips so handsomely". Good on 'em! See DETOUR and gasp!!

A grimy, road-weary guy walks down a misty road late at night. He turns into a cheap diner and, in a foul mood, snaps at another guy for playing the wrong song on the jukebox. So what's eating him? Cue lengthy flash-back scene as he recounts his desperate tale of thwarted love and ambition, strange deaths, a femme-fatale (sort of) and generally just the worst luck imaginable. Yes, we're in the land of noir again and this short and bitter-sweet movie, despite its uneven construction and unlikely events nevertheless makes for a convincing genre-piece.

Tom Neal stars as our Mr "If it wasn't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all" clip-joint pianist who loses his singer-girlfriend to the bright lights of Hollywood who then decides to follow her there but with no money, has to hitch-hike his way there all the way from New York. On the road he happens upon a generous guy about his own age who agrees to take him the last part of his long journey when fate takes a hand and the world's worst series of unfortunate events start to happen to him.

As is usual with noir, a huge amount of disbelief has to be swallowed as unlucky and highly coincidental events engulf him, but this low-budget does what all good noirs must, create its own world of no-hope desperation leading up to the usual unhappy ending. For much of the film, we're left to watch Hoag scratch and fight with the mysterious young woman whom he casually picks up on the same road to L.A. And sparks certainly fly between them. These scenes are the dark heart of the movie and the suitably named Ann Savage really chows down as the heartless, driven, even deranged girl he tangles with.

Yes, you could pick holes a mile wide in the exposition and the film could have been wrapped up in twenty minutes if he'd only gone to the police in the first place, but of course that was never an option. It all ends badly for everyone as it inevitably must. Strongly acted and atmospherically directed this is a good little-noir, certainly worth detouring your attention for its brief but telling 67 minutes running-time.

Is Detour just a bad dream? Or a masochistic reverie dredged up out of the sumps of self-loathing? Long before setting out on the road trip that took such a disastrous turn, Tom Neal was a picky eater at life's banquet. Pounding the ivories in a Manhattan nitery, he sulks that his talent goes unappreciated (when a drunk tips him a ten-spot, it's 'a piece of paper crawling with germs'). He sabotages his rapturous renditions of Chopin and Brahms waltzes with a left-handed boogie-woogie beat. When his girl, the club's shantoozie, tells him that he'll make it to Carnegie Hall 'someday,' he snaps back, 'Sure, as a janitor. Maybe I'll make my debut in the basement,' and 'Yeah, someday – if I don't get arthritis first.' Neal's lousy with what we now call issues.

When his fiancée heads to Los Angeles to try for the lush life, he lets her go, then, suddenly lonesome, decides to hitch out to the coast. In Arizona, he thumbs a ride from a pill-popping driver (Edmund McDonald) with scratches on his wrist from tussling with a 'wild animal' – a woman he had picked up in Louisiana. When Neal takes over the wheel during a rainstorm, McDonald up and dies – and conks his head on a rock as he slumps out the passenger door. Looks bad. Since he casts himself as eternal victim, Neal, though blameless, guiltily drags the body into the desert and assumes its identity (along with car and wallet). Later, at a gas station, he offers a lift to another thumb-jockey (Ann Savage), even though she looks like she 'just got thrown off the crummiest freight train in the world.' (Does the phrase 'self-destructive' strike a familiar note?) In fact, she's none other than the beast who sank her claws into the deceased – and plans to make an even bigger feast out of Neal....

The stubble on Neal's unshaved chin can't disguise his pouty, pretty-boy looks, and he proves just right as this callow, ill-starred loser (a better actor would have added superfluous dimensions). If he and his self-absorbed predicament start to wear a little thin, it ceases to matter when Savage arrives halfway through to give a performance that beggars all description. Owing either to Ulmer's or her own genius (or to exigent production values), her hard face stays stripped of glamor – when she does slap on the war paint, the effect is primitive, alarming, with eyebrows that looked slashed on with a stiletto under an unkempt riot of hair. She starts off slowly, until, supposedly dozing in the shotgun seat, her eyes fly open to size up and devour Neal. It's the most terrifying instant in Detour. From then on in, she's all shrew all the time, drunk or sober, intimidating or seductively manipulative. Thus Savage's Vera entered film history as the hardest-boiled of its femmes fatales. And Neal never knew what hit him.

Insolently original – a classic in a class by itself – Detour is by no stretch of the imagination a conventional masterpiece (if masterpieces can be counted as conventional). It shows evidence of starting out to be something – a longer, more fully developed movie – quite different from what it ended up . Groundwork gets laid for developments that never come to pass. What seems to be intended as the plot's centerpiece – a scheme to pass Neal off as McDonald, the lost scion of a wealthy family – comes to nothing. As does Savage's ominous cough, a clue to her subsequent indifference ('I'm on my way anyhow') to that 'perfume Arizona hands out free to murderers.'

Somewhere along the way, Detour ran out of time, or money, or film stock, and was cobbled together out of footage already in the can, with the aid of peculiar voice-overs (in the last-ditch manner of The Magnificent Ambersons or My Son John). Against all odds, it still worked, and remains one of the best known and most unforgettable titles in the film noir canon, a stunningly effective piece of work that manages to encapsulate, in 67 minutes, all the inchoate angst that informs the cycle. It may have been an accident, but it's the kind of accident you can't peel your eyes off of.

When the noir cycle began to coalesce in the early 1940s, it looked like it was going to take the high road of starry, big-budget prestige productions (The Maltese Falcon, I Wake Up Screaming, The Glass Key, Laura, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce). Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour took the low road. A Poverty-Row production empty of box-office names, it was shot on a few cheap sets in a matter of days. But it sweated off a raw power that other alert film-makers working on the fringes of the industry were quick to emulate; the next few years would see Fall Guy, The Guilty, Suspense, Violence, I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes, Decoy (the pick, along with Detour, of this particular litter) – all done with wannabes or has-beens in cast and crew, visually often ugly (the murky lighting more a matter of necessity than moody esthetic choice). It was often inspired movie-making on the most frayed of shoestring budgets.

And yet, with a few exceptions, this second-feature slot was the niche into which film noir would settle until it ran its course in the late 1950s. Which raises a question: Without Detour paving the way for quick-and-dirty, sensational fodder to fill up double bills – B-movies that the suits in the front offices didn't much care about and so paid little attention to – would the noir cycle have been but a brief flash in the pan? Would it have stayed the passion only of a handful of French cineastes? Would it have amounted to a cycle at all? The debt owed to Detour may be greater than acknowledged.

The film concerns upon a drifter(Tom Neal) ,he wants gather together his girlfriend and with no money converts as hitchhiker .He's picked up by a strange driver and terrible events happen.Afterwards he offers a lift to ruthless femme fatal(Anne Savage),being accompanied for her the evil spark was struck and a raging torrents of emotion throw up that he can't control.

This unusual picture is a screen's great masterpiece economically directed and plenty of mystery,thrill-loaded and matchless suspense.Awesome movie sometimes ironic and experimental with thoughtful plot thus the starring with off-voice is guided for passivity and gets involved in dark fatalism.It's a tough,terrific adventure in grand larceny that gets him deep in the roads and deeper in danger with a beguiling and tempestuous Anne Savage on the trail on a fortune in hot money.Classic B noir film without budget and unknown actors .Hollywood only gave to excellent director Edgar G.Ulmer for making ¨quickies¨ but he directed two magnificent noir films and competently constructed ,this one,and ¨Strange illusion¨(Story of a how a boy revealed the clue that led to solution of murder of his father exposing the infamy of the man worshipped by women who proved to be a monster of cruelty). This low budget tale is considered a cult movie and has been remade numerous times,even with starring's son,Tom Neal Jr(1992). The motion picture will like to classic moviegoers.

When I got my first VCR in 1985, the two movies I immediately rented were "Baby Doll" and "Detour." I have revisited the former many times but it's been 20 years since I saw "Detour." I like it even better.

It moves in a seamless manner. The narrator is drawn as we watch into further and further degradation.

The movie has a beautiful look. I'm sure it's a cliché to note this but it resembles a Hopper painting. It also bears the trademarks of Edgar Ulmer's movies: Literate dialogue and classical movie, no matter how low the budget.

Tom Neal is a mournful, appealing protagonist. He's weak, not really bad. Ann Savage, of course, is terrifying as Vera, the hitchhiker from everyone's worst nightmare.

Al's descent from blonde soubrette Sue to consumptive, murderous Vera is terrifying. Yet, though it passes by us quickly, it is fully believable.

"Detour" is a true work of art.

You can quibble about details, but it's hard to deny that this is a classic in its genre. Al Roberts (Tom Neal) makes a series of bad choices that bring him low. They're the choices of a not particularly bright young man under increasing pressure. Vera (Ann Savage) is the quintessential Bad Girl. Their repartee, indeed much of the dialogue throughout, is a big part of the attraction of this film. The plot, presented in flashback, barrels on relentlessly to its conclusion. The characterizations, dialogue, plot, photography--all contribute to make this taut, gritty film a must for film noir enthusiasts. My only real disappointment is with the rather abrupt end. On the whole, though, great fun.

This is one of the all-time great examples of film noir. It can practically be used to define the genre: shadowy black and white cinematography; a star-crossed protagonist ("...fate sticks out a leg to trip you."); a femme fatale (the unforgettable Ann Savage as Vera); cynical voice-over narration; ambiguous morality. All these elements are brought together magnificently by director Edgar G. Ulmer, who incredibly made this movie in several days on a shoestring budget. His direction is so masterful that the low budget sets only add to the film. This is a great masterpiece and one of the marvels in film history.

Down and out Al Roberts (Tom Neal) recalls his life as a New York nightclub piano player. His singer girlfriend Sue Harvey (Claudia Drake) rejects his proposal and seeks fame in Hollywood. He follows her west but with no money, he is forced to hitchhike. He catches a ride in the desert from degenerate gambler Charles Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald) on his way to L.A. Haskell dies and Roberts fears being blamed for a killing. He hides the body and takes his identity. Along the way, he picks up hitchhiker Vera (Ann Savage) who happens to have ridden with Haskell before. Soon, she has him wrapped around her finger.

Ann Savage has a fitting name. She savages the wannabe player. She's a real man eater. This is a small budget film. It can be strip down and thread bare. Its core is a B-movie noir. It's pulpy melodrama. It's not always the most technically sound but Savage rocks and it's usually a compelling watch.

Detour, a 1945 low-budget Thriller and near-perfect example of Film Noir excellence, was severely marred by the scene-chewing antics of Ann Savage, who literally bulldozed her way through her part like a rabid bitch in heat.

Detour lost significant points all on account of this wretched Savage wench. It was a good thing that her character wasn't present for the first half of this film, otherwise Detour would've been a total write-off in my books.

But once Savage's presence was firmly established in Detour's last half hour, the story deteriorated at an alarming rate and became so unbearable to watch at times that I almost turned it off in pure disgust.

Prior to Savage's savage entrance, Detour was an exceptionally intriguing Suspense/Drama about a honky-tonk pianist from NYC, named Al Roberts, whose life takes an unexpected and unpleasant U-Turn when he suddenly decides to hitch-hike out to Los Angeles in pursuit of his girlfriend (not Savage, thankfully).

Murder, blackmail, and sheer desperation all await young Al Roberts as he travels along the road, heading in the direction of the land of milk and honey.

Regardless of its low budget, Detour (filmed in black & white) obviously had excellent high-production values. And actor Tom Neal, as Al Roberts, was superb. I'd say that his performance was close to being on par with anything that I've ever seen from the likes of Robert Mitchum.

Al Roberts (Tom Neal) is a depressed NYC piano player whose girlfriend leaves him to try her luck in CA. He follows her by hitchhiking his way. He's picked up by a man who (inexplicably) dies while Al is driving. Naturally Al does everything wrong...like dumping the body and then picking up Vera (Ann Savage) a totally amoral woman. Then things barrel horribly out of control.

You can quibble about plot points (a certain death is highly implausible) but this IS a masterpiece of the genre. It's one of the grimmest film noirs of its time. It was made by a poverty row studio (PRC) on no budget. Actually the lack of budget helps the story--everything appears dark and grim fitting the tone of the story. Also they had an excellent director (Edgar G. Ulmer) and a great script by Martin Goldsmith. Also Neal was very good as Roberts and Savage is exceptional as Vera (there's a scene where she explodes at Roberts in a car which is truly scary). It's also all wrapped up in a tight economical 69 minutes. This has deservedly been a cult movie for many years.

Good luck finding a clear print with good sound.

I saw Detour for the first time on TV when I was 7 or 8 years old in the mid 60's. It used to play quite often, and I never missed it. I used to have dreams about it when I was a kid, and make believe that I was on the run, and impersonating a millionaire's son.

I lost track of the film until recently. I was flipping channels and came across it on TCM. I knew immediately it was my long lost film. I enjoyed it as much the other night at the age of 43, as I did at the age of 7. It is a true classic, and simply ageless.

Made on a shoestring budget of $100000 on 3 sets with some location shooting in under a month, Edgar G Ulmer's 'Detour' is poverty row filmmaking at it's finest. Often heralded for it's gloomy atmospherics, the film has come to be known as one of the best noirs of the postwar era. Unlike many others of the genre, it has no guns or goons and a straightforward narrative.

Baby-faced piano-player Al (Tom Neal with some five O'clock shadow to compensate) regales us of how he hitch-hiked across America in pursuit of his girlfriend Sue (a relatively angelic Claudia Drake) only to be detoured, over a cup of coffee in a dingy diner. It's a tale of double manslaughter, extortion, mistaken identity, and the uncontrollability of one's destiny (or as he'd prefer, fate). Ironically, Neal himself would be convicted of manslaughter sixteen years later under far less dubious circumstances.

Just as America was discovering it's superpower status at the end of World War Two, Ulmer offers a vision of the American Nightmare with the odd couple dynamic of Al & Vera (Ann Savage, whom our protagonist meets in the latter half of the picture) posing as husband and wife slumming it in a motel room. The American woman is also depicted as equally powerful if not more so than her male counterparts (not that that would last with the social reversion of the coming decade).

'Detour' is full of loose ends and unfulfilled plots, but that's what sets it apart from other film noir. It's criminals aren't professionals, they're as inept as any of us, and maybe that's why it resonates so much.

It's a tribute to Edgar Ulmer that "Detour", made for about thirty thousand dollars, still keeps an interest with new fans who discover it. According to some comments, "Detour" has not been seen in this country in quite a while, but we recall the first time we saw it when it was presented at New York's Film Forum as part of a Film Noir festival in the late eighties. The copy shown recently on TCM has a poor quality, while the print we saw at Film Forum was in better condition.

What makes "Detour" a must see, is the clever way its narrative unfolds on the screen. Al and Sue are seen first in the small bistro he plays the piano and she sings, in Manhattan. Sue sings a happy rendition of "I Can't Believe You're in Love with Me", and Al shows he can improvise on a theme by Chopin as he jazzes it up. When Sue decides to pack it and move to L.A., Tom promises he'll follow. The tragic mistake he makes is to intent crossing the country hitchhiking. Even in the forties, it's a miracle he made it alive!

In Arizona Al meets the kind Charles Haskell, who happens to be going all the way to L.A. and offers him a ride. The two men develop an easy friendship until the point when Haskell dies of an apparent heart attack. Al disposes of the body and keeps going, assuming now, Haskell's persona. At the nearest gas station he sees a pretty woman, Vera, who appears is hitchhiking, and offers her a ride. This will prove to be his biggest mistake.

Vera turned out to be Al's worst nightmare. She knows Al is not Haskell since she, herself, knows the man. Al ends up a virtual prisoner hiding in the apartment they have rented in Hollywood. He can't escape. When Vera realizes there's a lot of money to be made by having Al pretend to impersonate the dead Haskell, he refuses. She threatens to call the police and he is left on the other room pulling the telephone cord...

The film works because all the elements are in place in this satisfying 67 minutes work and because of the great performances Mr. Ulmer got out of Tom Neal and Ann Savage. Edmund MacDonald and Claudia Drake played Haskell and Sue.

"Detour" was shot in two sets and it shows. It's a small film that doesn't pretend what it's not, and that's basically why audiences seem to like it as it's discovered.

I'm many ways Detour is worth the investment of your time especially because, with a runtime of only 68 minutes, it's not a very costly one. It's filled with every noir cliche imaginable: stilted dialogue, foggy streets, (often overbearing) narration by the main character, seedy roadside cafes, the hapless patsy played convincingly by Tom Neal and the scheming hard-hearted dame played brilliantly by Ann Savage. Of course, since this is a rather early noir it's fair to say many of those cliches had not yet been fully established and, besides, isn't that exactly what we love about the genre?

The problem here is in the writing. If the terrible and terribly improbable things that happen to Neal's character don't strain our credulity, his responses to them will tear it to shreds. At every single opportunity he makes the absolute worst choice. And given that we need him to make those choices to drive the plot the whole story is rendered rather silly.

Still, if you're a fan a noir, you could do a whole lot worse.

Or he is lying. The entire film is told in flashback as Al Roberts (Tom Neal) sits in a dingy diner. At the beginning of his story, Al is a piano player in a low rent club in New York and his best girl is the singer. But then she grows tired of their professional stagnation and decides to go out west and try to get into pictures. Al gets lonely, calls her, and says he is coming out there too. She enthusiastically embraces the idea. He has no car and so he hitchhikes. He gets all of the way to Arizona before his bad luck hits. By the film's end Al has implicated himself in two deaths that were accidents in both cases, but would be impossible to prove they were not murder, and is held prisoner by a dragon lady who wants to get him involved in a preposterous fraud scheme that he rightly decries as being impossible to pull off.

The acting and much of the dialogue is very melodramatic, bordering upon soapy, but it fits the story as so much of it involves conveying the emotion and doing so from the point of view of Al. Bogart and Mitchum wouldn't have been right for this lead role. Either one of them would have come across as either too cool or too tough to put up with such a domineering femme fatale as Ann Savage's Vera and seem so depressed and pathetic. Instead, Tom Neal is perfect as a guy who sees himself bound by fate and doomed.

But maybe the entirety of the story is made up. Al's voice over could just be him sitting in the cafe creating an alibi story. Ann Savage's performance as Vera was over the top maybe because it's Al telling the story, and he wants to make himself look good. I don't buy half of what he tells us; I think he was much more complicit in all of the deaths than he wants the audience to believe. Vera is a caricature of the noir femme fatale because he's trying to convince us that everything was her idea or an accident or fate based on his act of true love - trying to get to his girl in California - and he's completely innocent.

On the technical side, this one showed a great use of light, shadows, and music, and fine direction by Ulmer to keep the mood. It's too bad nobody has restored this one as it resides in the public domain. This is one noir that will stay with you.

If you're like me you'll certainly be glad that "Detour" only has a brief running time of just 68 minutes.

This 1945 crime-drama about "dangerous dames" not only took the term "WTF!?" to a whole new level of absurdity - But, I swear this picture must also hold some kind of world's record when it comes to the likes of voice-over narration overload, as well.

Filmed in stark b&w (on a $30,000 budget) - Yes. "Detour" certainly had the potential to be quite an engrossing (but cheap) slice of vintage "noir" - But, unfortunately, with the introduction (at the story's half-way point) of the frigid "Vera" character (repulsively delivered by Ann Savage) this picture seriously deteriorated into a shrill, redundant bore in no time flat.