Roadgames (1981)

The Age of Commercialism

Good concept, poorly executed.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Fans looking for standard slasher elements (i.e. nudity, gore, marauding and unstoppable killers) will undoubtedly be disappointed by this refreshingly different attempt at a serial killer film, which keeps the gore and violence to a minimum and mainly off screen (aside from the nasty but cheesy 'shock' scene at the film's close). Instead this is a film which concentrates on a battle of minds between the protagonist - taking the form of truck driver Quid - and the killer, played by a mysterious, little seen man in a green van. Franklin throws lots of ambiguity into his film, forever asking whether or not the green van man is the killer, and keeps us guessing right up until the end. It's one of those films where the protagonist ends up being blamed for the crimes and chased by the police, a plot element always overused but handled nicely here.With most Australian films I've seen, there has always been an element of quirky humour, and ROAD GAMES is no different. It's positively bursting with humour, most of it stemming from Stacy Keach's droll hero and his encounters with various bizarre folk on the road. I've always enjoyed Keach's performances and he gets to shine with a meaty role here, as the befuddled, yet obsessed truck driving hero, and he enjoys some fine interplay both with Jamie Lee Curtis, his pet dingo, and himself, chattering away on long distances of empty road. Keach's performance makes the film and cannot be undervalued. Curtis, on the other hand, only appears somewhat briefly in the movie, for about half an hour at most, and although her performance is as strong as always, her character is somewhat light on development. The film does have its fair share of plot holes and slow stretches, but the suspense, the script and the atmosphere keep it together nicely.Director Richard Franklin is obviously a big Hitchcock fan (no surprise that he made PSYCHO II a couple of years later) and litters his movie with Hitchcockian devices and references, which can be slightly overwhelming at times but which are for the most part entertaining. The set-piece that concludes the film, which sees Keach's truck, the villain and a police car driving into smaller and smaller roads before getting stuck, is ingenious and wildly different to anything else I've seen in a while, so it deserves kudos. Viewers who can get past the off beat humour and who can appreciate the mix between dark thrills and light-heartedness will enjoy this thriller, which is always good if not a great piece of entertainment. I for one thoroughly enjoyed it.

A basically good plot is damaged by casting Stacey Keach, who to this Aussie is just totally unbelievable as a long distance truck driver, who happens to bump into yet another American in Jamie Leigh Curtis standing on the roadside in the middle of nowhere. Why is i every time she appears it is in the middle of nowhere? Not at a truck stop or roadhouse. Not even at an intersection. Who hitches a ride and then gets out in the middle of a desert? Throw in the ubiquitous dingo in the back seat and make every actual Australian in the movie seem like a half-wit and you end up with something that rather makes me cringe. Maybe non-Australian viewers can find the concept plausible but it's one movie I can happily avoid watching again.

***SPOILERS*** Alfred Hitchcock admirer director Richard Franklin's homage to "The Master" has him copy two of Hitchcock's best films "Rear Window" and "Psycho" putting them into his trucker horror flick "Road Games" with limited success. The movie comes across more like the Stephen Spilberg 1971 road thriller "Dule" but this time it's the hero of the film sleep deprived cross country tuck driver Pat Quid, Stacy Keach, who's doing the stalking of this unseen psycho not like in "Dule" where the roles are reversed.For his part Quid does have a partner to keep him awake and conversing with his pet dingo Boswell or "Boz" as Quid calls him who like dingo's who don't bark keeps quit almost throughout the entire film. That's until the finial few minutes of the movie when Boz starts bow-wowing not just saving his master Quid from a wild lynch mob, who think that he's the highway killer, but getting him to think if in fact "Boz" is a dingo at all or, what seems more likely, a cross breed or hybrid.On his way to Perth with a truckload of ham hocks ribs chops and slabs of bacon Quid stops at this motel to get some sleep but someone else, with a teenage girl hitch-hiker, got there before him. It's later when the same person driving the green van who beat Quid to the motel is seen looking out his motel window by a barley awake Quid that he starts getting ideas about him. That's as a garbage truck was picking up the garbage bags outside the motel! It's then that Quid gets the strange notion that the garbage bags are loaded with human body parts that he, after murdering his victim, put there!The movie flounders for almost 40 minutes with Quid tracking this mysterious green van that he feels the killer is driving until he picks up hitchhiker Palala "Hitch" Rushworth,Jamie Lee Curtis, who turns out to be a teenage runaway. The very kind of person that this highway psycho specializes in both murdering and chopping up! It's then that both Quid and Hitch get it all together by chasing the mysterious green van all the way to Perth only to have Hitch kidnapped by the highway psycho! That's when without Quid knowing about it, he was busy trying to trap the psycho in a highway rest stop rest room, Hitch tries to make,for reasons known only to herself, conversation with him in his van!***SPOILERS*** The movie ends in a low speed car chase, about 15 to 20 mph, ending in Perth Australia that has Quid confronted by this wild crazy man, Grant Page, who seems to come out of nowhere! The crazed man who for some crazy reason, because he's crazy I guess, attacks Quid's 18 wheeler sticking his tongue out and spitting on the windshield as well as smashing in the truck's headlights only to almost get himself run over by an angry Quid who just had about enough of his antics. After being rescued by his faithful pet "Boz" who kept a Perth lynch mob, who mistook him for the highway killer, at bay Quid is not only allowed to deliver his cargo but ends up rescuing Hitch from the psycho killer who just happened to be the crazy man who attacked his truck!***MAJOR SPOILER*** The big surprise is at the very end when it's found out almost by accident where this highway killer stored the body parts of his victims! Which is why it was him, the highway killer, not Quid & Hitch who was really tracking the sleep deprived and confused truck driver by tricking Quid to follow him not the other way around!

Stacy Keach plays a truck driver Down Under, hauling frozen pig meat to Perth, who suspects a van-driving motorist of being the hitchhiker-killer being discussed on the news; unfortunately, he can't prove his theories to the police and, what's worse, the killer already has him half-framed for murder. Illogical, ridiculous Australian film from producer-director Richard Franklin, who also had a hand in the original story. A great deal of the narrative rests on Keach's chatty protagonist explaining everything he's thinking out loud--ostensibly to his dingo companion--which quickly grows tiresome, as does Brian May's WWII-styled score and a dramatic sequence undermined by an annoying car alarm. Advertised in the U.S. as a thriller, the picture barely makes the cut as a mystery. Jamie Lee Curtis, still somewhat awkward in her Scream Queen days, plays a politician's daughter who becomes involved--Keach calls her "Hitch", an homage to his hero, Alfred Hitchcock. *1/2 from ****