It is well known that the actress Ida Lupino was a director as well. In the 1950s she avidly wanted to make an expert (if small) film noir and she did, not only directing but also co-writing the tale of a cruel, criminal hitchhiker (William Talman) who traverses the desert with the two sad-sack men he has kidnapped.
For a product of Old Hollywood, The Hitch-Hiker (1953) is impressively hard-nosed. Virtually no women appear in the film, part of what makes it emphatically masculine. And it isn’t dated. Have fun, ladies and gentlemen.