Roadgames

Pat Quid, an American driving a truck across Australia's long empty roads, kills the boredom by naming the vehicles he passes and inventing stories about them. In the middle of that game he works out that the driver of a green van is killing women. Unable to convince anyone, he goes after the man himself, and before long he is the one being hunted. The film is not interested in the serial killer. It is interested in the head of the man doing the watching: Quid talks constantly, guesses constantly, and can only prove he was right at the end of the road. The suspense comes less from the chase than from not being believed. The form is a direct borrowing from Hitchcock. Richard Franklin built it out of Rear Window, with the truck cab standing in for the window and the road for the courtyard. The landscape is entirely Australian desert. At the time of release it was the most expensive Australian production ever made: shot on a budget of A$1.75 million, it took only A$100,000 at the box office. Stacy Keach plays the driver, Jamie Lee Curtis the hitchhiker. Who it is for: viewers who like road movies and genre cinema from the turn of the eighties. Who it is not for: anyone wanting fast suspense. Much of the film is one man talking in a cab.