MOTHER TRUCKIN’ MAY: ROADGAMES (1981)
"Just because I drive a truck, doesn't mean I'm a truck driver." - Pat Quid
Being a fan of genre films often means that you're well-acquainted with the weird and the other, when it comes to subgenres. Yet, as much as many are celebrated, the realm of Ozploitation always seems underrepresented. People are likely familiar with the Mad Max films, WAKE IN FRIGHT, LON GWEEKEND, and even RAZORBACK. Yet there are still so many films that aren't celebrated in the ways that giallo or slashers have been. Case in point is 1981's ROADGAMES. Directed by Richard Franklin, it's a masterclass in character and tension.
Deep in the Australian outback, Pat Quid (Stacey Keach) is a long-haul trucker, with the kind of boyish charm and self-pride that most wouldn't associate with the job. At the tail end of his most recent gig, he's ready for a nice hotel to stay at, but is thwarted at the last minute. Forced to sleep in his big rig, Pat notices a strange sight in the morning. His Dingo, Bozwell, is picking at some trash, while a mysterious figure in gloves watches carefully from his hotel window. Unbeknownst to Pat, he's stumbled into the path of a serial killer (Grant Page) with a terrifying green van, and their escalating cat and mouse game just might get anyone who gets in their way killed.
As he continually encounters the villain and his striking green van, Quid finds himself beset by a myriad of things vying for his attention. There's Frita Day (Marion Edward) who was abandoned by her husband on a family trip. Captain Careful (Bill Stacey) is an old man towing his prized sailboat behind him. Yet the most interesting of the bunch is a hitchhiker who seems to be moving along the highway faster than Quid himself, as he continually passes her.
When curiosity gets the better of him and he picks her up, he's met with the kindred spirit of Pamela (Jamie Lee Curtis). An heiress who ran away from her diplomat father in search of excitement. Which she more than finds, wrapped up in Quid's amateur sleuthing adventure.
It's a blistering work that highlights why Richard Franklin was one of the best genre directors of the 80s. He parlayed this and his earlier film PATRICK into the directing gig for PSYCHO 2 (a sequel that is far better than you could imagine). Following it up then with the family caper CLOAK & DAGGER, and orangutan butler slasher LINK, before his career weirdly petered out. Even though all his works benefited from some Hitchcockian theatrics, he made his calling card. He may not have been Brian De Palma, with the budgets and bombast, but he made up for it with sheer talent and ingenuity from what could have easily felt like a series of works.
As a whole, that best describes ROADGAMES. A lot of the characters, stunt work, and set pieces are good, but they don't come across as showy. The final confrontation between Quid & the killer feels relatively short. A lot of those might sound like a negative, but it's not. The events of the movie might seem implausible for the most part, but Franklin and De Roche ground it all to a degree in reality, allowing the discomfort of certain sequences to become truly unnerving.
A lot of that grounding is thanks to Keach's performance. Keach has the Everyman bit down, but it plays against his nature of being a fish out of water. He's smarmy, intellectual, and fun. Ready to play games with dispatchers and hitchhikers alike. What delights viewers is off-putting to the characters in the film. Funnily he feels like the spiritual brethren to Elliot Gould's Marlowe in THE LONG GOODBYE. He constantly finds himself in situations where everyone is ready to underestimate or judge him and even has his own catchphrase he repeats several times. Not to mention an animal companion central to the plot, along with a panache for talking to themselves. You don't have to squint to see it.
As fun as the movie is with Keach on his own, it becomes scintillating when Curtis enters the frame. She and Keach make a good pair, bouncing off one another with a rapport that works well on the long stretches of road they're careening down. Which makes it feel devastating when she disappears for part of the film. A fact that Franklin lamented years later, wishing he'd taken more advantage of Curtis' screen presence.
The biggest boon to the production, though, is the actual genesis of the project itself. Franklin gave writer Everett De Roche a copy of the script for REAR WINDOW, wanting it to be used as a template for their film, PATRICK. De Roche was taken with the script so much that he wanted to make a similar type of picture, albeit set in a moving vehicle. The result does have notes of the Jimmy Stewart pitcture, but also echoes another Hitchcock flick, in FRENZY. Mixing the everyman, wrong man, and paranoia tropes, with a dash of sleaze, makes it all come together. Even if it takes an unexpected approach to pull it off.
Today, ROADGAMES is embraced more than it was upon initial release. Maybe it was the voiceover, Keach's smugness, an anger towards dingos, or the execution of the subject matter that turned people off. All the pieces have aged well and allowed the taught thriller to garner the attention it rightly deserves. From its top-notch cast, smart script, lush cinematography, and engaging score, it's one of the most easily recommended Ozploitation films, for people who haven't dipped their toes in that genre's water yet.
As of this writing, ROADGAMES is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
