DUEL is a riveting little psychodrama that glued me to my seat as a teenager back in the sweltering Seventies and still does. One of Steven Spielberg's early directorial efforts, it is a classic among TV movies. Simple story of a working family man just trying to drive his car across the barren dust-beaten rural Southwest following, then being followed, by a truck. Soon the truck is trying to drive the poor urbanite off the road. A cat-and-mouse game ensues until things get nasty and it becomes evident that getting killed is a distinct possibility. The goings on take place on a simple stretch of interstate highway. The visual menace is the imposing truck with its exhaust, its metal, its speed. The psychological menace is in the intent, the perceived motive, the senselessness, the isolation. Its driver is faceless---we see a boot here, a rear-view window reflection there, a glancing back-of-the-head shot there. The terror experienced by this poor guy was predominantly in the expansive, intangible universe of his mind where civilized common sense gave way to paranoia and then to rudimentary survival. The lead was played by the always underappreciated Dennis Weaver whose TREMENDOUS performance I will never forget. The scene where he is trying to outrun the truck , with his car's radiator overheating,  struggling to get the faltering vehicle beyond the highway incline so that he can coast the rest of the way is memorable. The scene where he walks into a diner in a paranoid daze and surveys the farmers and truckers for possible complicity is a beaut. This was a tense, suspenseful, riveting TV movie and a classic one. Hopefully, it will actuate movie companies to put more of those lost but great late 60's and early-to-mid 70's TV movie gems out on DVD.
DUEL is a riveting little psychodrama that glued me to my seat as a teenager back in the sweltering Seventies and still does. One of Steven Spielberg's early directorial efforts, it is a classic among TV movies. Simple story of a working family man just trying to drive his car across the barren dust-beaten rural Southwest following, then being followed, by a truck. Soon the truck is trying to drive the poor urbanite off the road. A cat-and-mouse game ensues until things get nasty and it becomes evident that getting killed is a distinct possibility. The goings on take place on a simple stretch of interstate highway. The visual menace is the imposing truck with its exhaust, its metal, its speed. The psychological menace is in the intent, the perceived motive, the senselessness, the isolation. Its driver is faceless---we see a boot here, a rear-view window reflection there, a glancing back-of-the-head shot there. The terror experienced by this poor guy was predominantly in the expansive, intangible universe of his mind where civilized common sense gave way to paranoia and then to rudimentary survival. The lead was played by the always underappreciated Dennis Weaver whose TREMENDOUS performance I will never forget. The scene where he is trying to outrun the truck , with his car's radiator overheating,  struggling to get the faltering vehicle beyond the highway incline so that he can coast the rest of the way is memorable. The scene where he walks into a diner in a paranoid daze and surveys the farmers and truckers for possible complicity is a beaut. This was a tense, suspenseful, riveting TV movie and a classic one. Hopefully, it will actuate movie companies to put more of those lost but great late 60's and early-to-mid 70's TV movie gems out on DVD.