The idea of a motorist getting terrorized on the highway feels like it's been done to death in the last four decades, but I'll be damned if "Duel" doesn't feel fresh. You get the idea how this will all play out - 18-wheeler stalks Dennis Weaver, puts the guy through psychological torment, vanishes only to reappear - but Spielberg keeps up that unrelenting dread beautifully with creative use of sound and camera panes around the tanker that really give it size. What's impressive here is that a big rig has such evil personality. Even more impressive is that such a taut thriller was made for TV.

This is obscenely enjoyable stuff.

8/10

There are two versions of this film. First, it was a made for TV film shown in the States. Second, a bit of new material was then added to it and the film was released theatrically in Europe. The version I saw is the longer European version. Perhaps, in hindsight, I should have seen the shorter version.

The plot is simple. Some guy (Dennis Weaver) is on a business trip and driving on a lonely road out west. He encounters some truck going extremely slow and passes it...only to have the truck then pass him and begin playing a game of cat and mouse with him...hitting his car several times as well as forcing him off the road in his much smaller Plymouth Valiant. This happens again and again and the truck driver is apparently some sort of crazed sociopath bent on killing him!

The problem with this film is that the plot is TOO simple...so the film was heavily padded. You hear the car driver talking to himself a lot, you have a lot of unnecessary scenes and the pacing is an issue. Additionally, to keep the film going, the film needs to repeatedly ignore various logical ways this duel could have been ended sooner. After all, at one point after he's forced off the road early in the movie, folks ask him if he's okay...and the car driver says he's fine and never mentions the crazed truck driver! He could have called the police as well...but didn't for the longest time. As for me, I sure as heck would NOT have gotten back in my car for a very, very long time after so many near-death experiences!! No one else ever seems to notice what is happening. The road is lonely...but not THAT lonely. And, when he meets up with a bus driver, he does an absolutely horrible job explaining what's been happening.

None of this makes a lot of sense but the young director does his best with the material he's been given--I doubt if other directors could have done much better. However, I think it's odd that many folks give this a 10....even if Fellini, Hitchcock or Truffaut had directed this, it never could have come close to being a 10 due to the super- thin plot. It is, in spite of this, very tense, very interesting and yet very flawed.

FYI--If you care, I used to drive an orange/red 1971 Valiant and it was an incredibly ugly but incredibly fast car. So the notion of a truck EASILY passing or catching up to it is really scary...and definitely hints at the supernatural!

Although Dennis Weaver is probably best known for his two small screen TV series McCloud and Gunsmoke, there are those that hold out for his career role being the frightened and harassed driver in Duel.

Some years ago I was with two friends and a passenger in a car going on the Thruway in Upstate New York. Some idiot truckdriver thought we had offended him some how and chased us through several miles. We eluded him by going into a service station and driving around until he could not maneuver that big rig. I know exactly what Dennis Weaver was going through.

Weaver plays Mr. Average man on his way home from a business trip when some how he offends a faceless truckdriver whom we never see, but whose power behind that tanker truck we definitely feel right along with Weaver. Unless you're driving a bus you are no position to play turnpike tag with a big rig.

In the end Weaver decides he's so mad he stops being frightened and looks to take him down any way he can.

Weaver's performance is a one man tour de force. As much as Spencer Tracy in The Old Man And The Sea. One not to be missed.