Duel was Spielberg’s first feature film. It was a made for TV movie with a shooting time frame of thirteen days and it was about a giant killer fuel truck. Everything about that sentence spells out mediocre, except for the fact Spielberg directed. He has some sort of magic touch, and it saves Duel from being road kill.
The movie starts out with a surprisingly effective credits scene that is quite eerie and really sets the mood for the rest of the movie. It is not long until we meet the mysterious black fuel truck and the story begins, only to end about an hour and a half later. During this hour and a half I was not only thoughrly entertain, but I thought the movie had a real suspense about it. There is inherently something creepy about a giant beast stalking you – the entire movie is really a simple cat and mouse game, which works surprisingly well. It reminded me of Psycho actually.
However, it isn’t all just a truck chasing the main character. There are some great scenes such as the, in my opinion, brilliant restaurant scene. The narration was just so effective, and Denis Weaver really shows off his abilities the best in this scene. He was actually surpassingly great in all the scenes however, so there was no hammy TV acting to be found. An interesting detail is the villain of the movie is a giant truck. The driver is never shown. While I think the truck give a bit of a wooden performance (has it ever heard of expressions or emotes? J ), it was a very formidable and intimidating villain. One of my favourites, actually.
I think the bottom line for me is it a cult masterpiece. Not that I would put it in my top twenty or anything, but I think it is a very overlooked little movie, hence its cult status. It is not perfect, but for sheer thrills and tension, entertainment, and technical achievement it is a worthy movie of loving. I am not sure how it will hold up on second viewing, but for now I give it a strong rating. A cult classic actually deserving of the title.
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