Filmed in six days on a budget of about 20,000 dollars and only 68 minutes long, Detour is hardly what one would think of as "important" Hollywood cinema. Nevertheless, it's great. Its simplicity (which is undoubtedly the result of the shooting schedule and budget) is wonderful and Ann Savage as the sneering Vera makes the whole film worth watching. She's angry, suspicious, needy, and flinty from the first second she's on screen. Her clipped, short-tempered delivery of "sap," "stupid," "sucker," and "shut up" is nothing short of perfect. It's kind of funny but also kind of chilling. If you're in the mood for a seedy, moody noir, you can't spend a better 68 minutes than Detour.
Roger Ebert sums it up nicely: ""This movie from Hollywood's poverty row, shot in six days, filled with technical errors and ham-handed narrative, starring a man who can only pout and a woman who can only sneer, should have faded from sight soon after it was released in 1945. And yet it lives on, haunting and creepy, an embodiment of the guilty soul of film noir. No one who has seen it has easily forgotten it."
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