Added to the National Film Registry in 1992.

Based on screenwriter Martin Goldsmith’s novel of the same name, Detour opens with disheveled drifter Al Roberts (Tom Neal) hitchhiking cross-country to marry his sweetheart. When one of his drivers suddenly dies, Al evades the law by adopting the dead man’s identity, leading himself down a more dangerous road. Cited as a high point of the noir genre, this independently produced picture shimmers and simmers thanks to the direction of B-movie auteur Edgar G. Ulmer—a Jewish-Moravian Austrian-American filmmaker known for his arresting visual style and prolific output with the low-budget Poverty Row studios—coupled with Ann Savage’s unbelievably sinister turn as Vera, a femme fatale for the ages.