Duel: Trucks Have Never Been This Scary.
Steven Spielberg’s 1971 film Duel isn’t your traditional scary movie with ghosts or masked chainsaw wielding murderers. Instead the film uses a more cleaver antagonist to bring the horror to the film; a big rig truck. Actually it’s a 1955 Peterbilt 351 towing a tanker trailer.
The premise of the movie is simple yet frightening. A man is going to work driving his Plymouth Valiant on some back roads in the desert. He comes across a Semi-truck and quickly passes it, but moments later the big rig comes roaring passed and proceeds to slow down intentionally. From their on in it becomes increasingly clear that this tanker truck is driven by a psychopath and the plot moves along as the truck continually tries to kill the business man in his Valiant. Every time it looks like the truck might be gone it pops up again in the rearview mirror.
The driver of the truck is never revealed except for one shot of his or her cowboy boots, but there are plenty of creepy shots of the Peterbilt closing in on the poor Valiant. The movie is certainly creepy enough to make you check your mirrors twice when you pass truckers on remote roads.
I will go out on a limb and say it is the best car genre scary movie I have seen.
A good watch for the Halloween minded car enthusiast.
-Bill Mertz
Duel, Steven Spielberg, scary, big rig
November 2nd, 2006 at 2:20 am
I LOVE this movie. What was that other movie similar to this, I think it was the 80s, about that car that kidnapped people? It was like a Trans-AM or something.
November 4th, 2006 at 1:16 am
Wow, that does sound familiar. The only movie I can think of is Christine, which is a John Carpenter/Stephen King flick. It came out in the early ’80s and is about a ‘58 Plymouth that becomes possessed. Is that the one?
October 15th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
I saw another movie that was familiar, called Joyride, about a phycopathic trucker that communicates through CB radio, killing people that get in his way. In this case, it was two borthers who decided to play a prank on the trucker, and end up in a death-defying run for life. It’s not bad, but it was kind of a ripoff of Duel.
October 26th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
[...] Duel: “A duel is about to begin between a man, a truck, and an open road. Where a simple battle of wits is now a matter of life and death.” Steven Spielberg’s first directorial outing - years before Jaws, and way more scary. Released in 1971. [...]