While hitchhiking cross-country, a piano player meets a scheming femme fatale and is innocently involved in sudden death. Long the beneficiary of an ardent cult following, Detour was made in a mere six days, almost entirely in a Poverty Row studio: its extensive road scenes were shot with rear projection, and the closest thing to a real setting in the film is a Los Angeles car lot. "No matter what you do, no matter where you turn, Fate sticks out its foot to trip you," bemoans Detour's Al Roberts (Tom Neal) in a film whose strangely compelling appeal involves an uncanny yet somehow very American admixture of passion and folly.