The Philadelphia Inquirer said that "with nothing more than three able actors, a lot of rugged scenery and their own impressive talents as producers, authors and director, Collier Young and Ida Lupino have brewed a grim little chiller." The Inquirer critic praised the performances and said the film was "directed with masculine strength by the amazing Miss Lupino." The New York Daily News gave the film three and a half of four stars, saying Lupino made "good and exciting use" of the real-life incident. The New York Times called the film an "unrelenting but superficial study of abnormal psychology coupled with standard chase melodrama." Critic A.H. Weller complimented the performances and Lupino's "brisk direction," but criticized the plot as excessively predictable. The Detroit Free Press said that the film performed a public service, by warning motorists about the dangers of picking up hitchhikers. Legacy The film has been widely praised in the years since its release, and holds a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 43 reviews. Critic John Krewson lauded the work of Ida Lupino, and wrote, As a screenwriter and director, Lupino had an eye for the emotional truth hidden within the taboo or mundane, making a series of B-styled pictures which featured sympathetic, honest portrayals of such controversial subjects as unmarried mothers, bigamy, and rape ... in The Hitch-Hiker, arguably Lupino's best film and the only true noir directed by a woman, two utterly average middle-class American men are held at gunpoint and slowly psychologically broken by a serial killer. In addition to her critical but compassionate sensibility, Lupino had a great filmmaker's eye, using the starkly beautiful street scenes in Not Wanted and the gorgeous, ever-present loneliness of empty highways in The Hitch-Hiker to set her characters apart. Time Out Film Guide wrote of the film, Absolutely assured in her creation of the bleak, noir atmosphere – whether in the claustrophobic confines of the car, or lost in the arid expanses of the desert – Lupino never relaxes the tension for one moment. Yet her emotional sensitivity is also upfront: charting the changes in the menaced men's relationship as they bicker about how to deal with their captor, stressing that only through friendship can they survive. Taut, tough, and entirely without macho-glorification, it's a gem, with first-class performances from its three protagonists, deftly characterised without resort to cliché. In January 2014, a restored 35mm