Road Games (1981)
Directed by Richard Franklin
I think I’ve seen mostly all of Jamie lee Curtis’s horror movies. Or at least I thought I did. I came across this a few years back but never got around to watching it. I recently got it on CED Videodisc (google it) and gave it a spin.
The plot is about a trucker named Quid (Stacy Keach) in Australia that notices a guy in a green van doing some bizarre stuff. Throwing out tons of trash, that his dog was obsessed with, carrying a cooler around, and digging a hole in the middle of nowhere. So he starts following the van around and comes to realize he’s a serial killer that the cops are after. Soon after the realization, the killer kidnaps a hitchhiker the trucker picked up (Curtis) and Quid is on the chase.
I was really surprised by the suspense of this movie. I honestly thought it was just another run of the miller slasher movie, but it is really more of a suspense thriller like Duel or Joy Ride. I always enjoy Jamie lee Curtis in anything, she’s usually pretty solid. Her role isn’t super big in this one, but she does a fair job. Stacy Keach is really good, he spends most of the movie talking to himself or his dog.
There isn’t much gore, or even kills in this movie to talk about. It is really all about the driving, scenery, and suspense. The movie slowly builds up, does it pay off? Not fully. We do get some closure but at the same time I guess I was hoping for a little more.
I did have a good time watching this and appreciated how suspenseful it is at times. I wanted a little more blood and kills but I was entertained for sure. The ending left a little to be desired, but maybe that’s why it was a bomb in the box office in Australia? Who knows. I give this a solid B. If you’re a JLC fan like me, you’ll enjoy it, but don’t go in thinking its a slasher movie, because it isn’t. The poster is a little misleading.
