Random Movie: Road Games (1981)

Written by: PBF

Road Games bares a strong resemblance  to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, only this one is on the road. This makes sense as the film’s writer/director Richard Franklin was a Hitchcock fan, and even directed Psycho II. While not nearly as good as Rear Window, at least it was better than the “update” Disturbia that was vomited onto movie screens years later.

Patrick Quid (Stacey Keach) drives a truck (“Just because I drive a truck, doesn’t mean I’m a truck driver”) and wants nothing more than to check into a motel and get some rest. He receives a call over the radio that he is needed to make an emergency delivery of meat to Perth. He reluctantly agrees when offered double time. At a gas station he notices a female hitchhiker the he passed on the road, who was picked up by a man driving a green van. They apparently take the last room at the motel while Quid was talking on his radio and he is forced to sleep in the truck with his dingo. In the morning, Quid notices the driver of the van watching the garbage men picking up the motel trash from his window. He finds this mildly suspicious but starts the long drive to make his shipment. Quid passes his time talking to his dingo and commenting on the other people on the road. He passes a different hitchhiker and is eventually passed by the green van on the road. Quid notices a cooler in the front seat. Quid is “tricked” into picking up a hitchhiker, Madeleine who says her husband left her on the side of the road. As they are playing a game to pass the time, they come across a man digging on the side of the road. It is the driver of the green van, who flees when he sees that he is being watched. Quid begins to put together that he must have killed the hitchhiker, threw some of her body away and was just burying the rest. This scares Madeleine, who runs from Quid, almost falling off of a cliff. Quid has another encounter with the green van before picking up another hitchhiker, Pamela (Jamie Lee Curtis), whom he calls Hitch. The two of them discuss the killer in the area, which Quid now obviously thinks is the other driver. Quid and the driver have several other encounters with the driver and while he is incredibly suspicious, the signs begin to point to Quid as having something to do with the disappearances and killings. For example, he is pulled over by the police and told that his name was on the register at the hotel, and they know he checked in with the now missing hitchhiker. He is let go and the encounters continue until the exciting (?) conclusion of the film.

Much like the road (and possibly this review), the film drags for a long time. We get decent character development and plot exposition, but it’s presented in a fairly uninteresting way. Perhaps a better script could have made it a little more interesting, as the dialogue is pretty boring. Keach and Curtis turn in decent performances (especially Keach), but the lack of suspense or interesting conversation is distracting.  This is no spoiler, but we know right away that Quid is not the killer and clearly the driver of the green van is, so that saps the suspense right out of the film. I suppose we are supposed to be pulled in by the fact that Quid could clearly be mistaken for the killer, and this is handled in quite a clever fashion, but it still was not enough. It’s odd that such a fan of Hitchcock would fail at suspense.

I hate films like this. It’s directed fairly well for what it is, solid performances, but just plain boring. It’s kind of like winning a free lunch at a restaurant that requires you to sit through an hour long business presentation. The food is free and good, but you really aren’t interested in the presentation.