Roadgames (1981)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Truck driver Pat Quid (Stacy Keach), transporting meat across Australia, believes a suspicious van driver he continually sees on his trip may be responsible for a series of hitchhiker murders. Along the way Quid picks up a hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) and tells her his suspicions. The two try to track the van driver while Quid becomes the police's number one suspect for the murders.I think Richard Franklin is one of the more under-appreciated directors from the '80s. He made several interesting films before fading into mediocrity in the '90s, a fate that befell many '80s directors. There's a strong Hitchcock influence throughout Franklin's work, including this film, which should come as no surprise for the man who would go on to direct Psycho II. For his part, Stacy Keach carries the movie with ease. He reminds me of some of the protagonists from great Hitchcock thrillers who were normal, easy-going guys that were thrust into dangerous plots. This is easily the best performance I've seen from Keach. Jamie Lee Curtis is likable in her small part as the hitchhiker, a role similar to the one she played in The Fog the year before.I've always enjoyed this movie. It's a fun, suspenseful thriller with a good cast and some dark humor. One of the better "killer on the road" movies I've seen.

This was a pretty odd movie at times. It's got some black comedy to it, and it's almost Hitchcockian at times, without Alfred's pizazz. I'm gonna go and give this movie plenty of credit. It definitely does have some suspense and two kooky leads in Stacy Keach & Jamie Lee Curtis that I dug a lot, along with ambiguous ending of sorts as well. I was kind of mislead by this one. For some reason I expected a little more of a thriller than I did. It was a thriller, but it was much more subdued than I thought it would be. I had something along the lines of Duel or something like that (odd. I know) but I still dug it somewhat. Stacy Keach is excellent in the lead. He's always been an underrated actor, and here he proves why. He might just be a little more insane than the killer himself! His obsession with finding the killer is a hoot to watch. I was also amused at how much he talked to himself as well. Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't have as much screen time as you may think. When she's on, she shows off that charm that she is well known for; loved her chemistry with Keach as well. Final Thoughts: This won't be for everyone's cup of tea. It took me a while to fully digest what I thought of it. My verdict is that it's an above average film that works well in spades, but is not something I'd go near again. It's worth a watch for sure, though. It's certainly well done6.5/10

Roadgames is a wonderful Australian thriller, directed by Richard Franklin (who also made Psycho II - my personal favorite Psycho movie), written by Everett De Roche (whose credits include Long Weekend and Razorback) and starring Stacy Keach (Fat City and the Mike Hammer TV series) and Jamie Lee Curtis. I first saw this movie on TV in the 1980s and then again a few years later, which was when I really became impressed with it's cult movie qualities and I recently saw it again on DVD.Stacy Keach is wonderful as a man who drives a truck (but doesn't consider himself "a truck driver") and passes his time on his long haul road trips with various games. He talks both to himself and his "dingo", passing the time with attributing his own names, identities and even dialog to the other motorists on the road (he also likes to quote poetry). Like other fans of the film, I think this is part of what makes the movie so likable and I loved his little nicknames for people like "Sneezy Rider". Early on, Stacy Keach notices a driver in a green van offer a lift to a hitchhiker and observes the same man intently watching the garbage bags being picked up the following morning while Stacy's dingo seems very interested in what's inside one of them. Later Stacy sees the same driver digging a hole in the desert, presumably for the picnic box he has beside him, stops when he sees that he is being watched. Stacy has heard talk on the radio and from a fellow road traveler about the Jack The Ripper style killer who is responsible for bits of bodies popping up in different locations. As the film goes on, Stacy becomes more and more absorbed with the idea that the green van driver is probably the killer, but has to decide whether and how to follow this train of thought. Along the way, Stacy picks up a young female hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) that he dubs "Hitch" (for hitchhiker, but Stacy himself is shown to own a Hitchcock book and the film itself is often cited as being Hitchcock influenced). Hitch disappears while investigating the green van, adding to Stacy Keach's troubles as he becomes unsure if Hitch is in mortal danger or if she was a willing accomplice of the killer all along.This film is a fine example of Australian made cult thrillers and horrors and stands very well alongside other classics like Mad Max (except without a Nuremberg dodger in the title role), Long Weekend and Razorback. It also stands well alongside other road movie horrors like Duel and personally I much prefer it to The Hitcher. It has wonderful performances, some nice humor and a quietly absorbing storyline. It's not a film to look for gore or big action scenes in, but it is a great thriller and road movie with a great script. Stacy Keach later played a truck driver after a killer in the 1992 TV movie Revenge On The Highway. Much better than the rubbish that Goebbels churned out! More films like this please!

After a few minutes of this film I was all set to switch off and pick up a good book. Well, the phone rang and when I got back things got interesting. Not being forewarned of the Hitchcockian overtones, I sat back to watch another "Duel". Well, it wasn't and it is not. Franklin, I think, pulls off a few tricks that Hitchcock never thought of. Edge-of- the-seat stuff. Just when you guess what the next trick will be, Franklin pulls a rabbit out of the hat. He handles the Australian landscape well, not overdoing the Panavision thing. Having traveled this highway many times, this film was true to the scenes and the characters. Yes, one can cross the continent on this road, the Eyre Highway, take a week to do it, and one can meet the same characters time after time. Franklin actually went to the site of the old telegraph station at Eucla, on the border of Western Australia and South Australia. He got that right. What the writers didn't get right is Quid's "dingo". A dingo is lean and wary. It doesn't bark. This dog, by the set of its ears, might have had a trace of dingo blood. Sadly, it doesn't conform to Hollywood's standards of dog obedience, but it is part of a very watchable movie. And the credits roll slowly enough to read! The Brian May music is good, but the general sound effects were poor. I mean, a semi is noisier than this.