I Watch Films: Road Games

 

Road Games (1981)

Patrick Quid (Stacy Keach) is a truck driver in Australia. He notices a van driver checking into a motel, taking the last room while he was dealing with his dog (a dingo called Boswell) along with a woman. The next morning he spots the guy looking out the window at him and Boswell is interested in the rubbish bags. But no time for that; there’s a meat packer’s strike in Perth and he’s got a cargo of pork to take there.

He passes or is passed by various people, while talking to himself or Boswell, playing games to pass the time (this is the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor Plain, a famously long and desolate road). As he goes on news of a serial killer who rapes, murders and dismembers women comes on the radio. He encounters the various other travellers, including the van. At one point, having picked up a wife left behind by her husband, he spots the guy and the van burying something.

At the third try he picks up “Hitch” (Jamie Lee Curtis), who turns out to be Pamela Rushworth, the runaway daughter of an American diplomat. She’s unconvinced by his conclusions, thinking it just another game to make the miles go by. However when they pull into a stop and see the van they decide to find out.

Things go wrong, and the film comes to a violent conclusion. A sporadically suspenseful thriller, using the emptiness of the road to some effect.

Watch This: Creepy, slow burn road thriller elevated by a charismatic central performance
Don’t Watch This: Guy on the road does very badly at chasing a serial killer