Midweek Mention... Duel

Duel

 Sidey: Jewel. Jewel. Yeah, I had not seen this before. You'd not? No, it's not this's. My, this is my debut

Reegs: I had seen this and the reason I really remember it is 'cause my dad, who's not a film guy at all, this was a movie that he really liked. And so like when it came

Sidey: does it get a lot of road rage?

Reegs: I dunno. Yeah. No. Yes, he does a bit. Do you get a bit of road

rage? Yeah.

Sidey: So not to this extent, but my dad does.

Reegs: And he's a taxi driver, so that's

Sidey: More on holiday sort of when he is a bit baffled and he is not in control. Like he would be over here and he starts to lose his shit. But Pete, Chris and I were away on a little road trip.

Mm-hmm. So this was fun to, 'cause it was almost the same

trip. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dan: road. Road rage, I think is one of those things just set off too late.

This whole film is basically a guy who's set off

Sidey: No, I don't think he had had he.

Reegs: no, I don't think so.

Dan: Not the guy that ended up having no road rage, but the truck driver.

Reegs: Yeah. I think he's a serial killer

Sidey: I think, I think they we're getting ahead of himself. He's, he's kind

Dan: of [00:01:00] serial killer, but I, I think road rage like myself, I'm only ever angry on the road if I am in a rush to get because then everything's against you, But if you've left. 10 minutes before can cruise along, listen to and you're not, yeah, you

Sidey: Well, this is,

Dan: everybody just leave earlier?

Sidey: Yeah. This is a Spielberg debut feature.

Reegs: Yeah, it was a TV movie that was later kind of reedited into like a cinematic

Dan: Yeah.

Spielberg looked at this, he'd been doing Colombo before this TV stuff, and he had this body of television work and had. Been shown this story from a Playboy magazine.

Sidey: what was he looking at that for?

Dan: Yeah. No, his, his secretary said, oh, have a look at this. Like, and he goes, not the girls, the story inside. And then he followed it up and it had already been identified as a TV but Spielberg said, look, I wanna bit [00:02:00] more on out the park

Reegs: didn't you? And it's amazing how much stuff that you associate with Spielberg as a filmmaker is already in this movie.

Dan: He's young. He's young in this, and the actor, lead actor whose name is

Sidey: Richard Matherson. Yes. No, that's the dude. Dennis Weaver.

Dan: Weaver.

Reegs: That's right. Dennis Weaver.

Dan: he'd been in.

Sidey: Other things, touch Right.

Dan: He was the shopkeeper or a mad kind of character actor in, in that, for Oron Welles.

And that's where he'd been identified as somebody that Spielberg wanted for this. And he was a little bit older than Spielberg, this young lad, kid on the block. But he said, let's see what the kid's got. And he said he was just blown away kid had.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: I think it starts with him pulling out of his gaff, doesn't

Reegs: It does. It's in fact nearly four minutes before we see anything other than something from the car's perspective

Sidey: Just the radio changing and stuff, isn't it? Yeah.

Dan: Well,

it's one of those fascinating films that has like [00:03:00] one, two people in and there's the, the scene in the in the diner which halfway through the film, but other than that,

Sidey: a few garage attendants and that's it really?

Yeah.

Reegs: So yeah, we just cruise, go out of a sub the suburbs through a city onto the California

Sidey: He's going to meet someone whose account he looks after for work. To me, I was like, this seems like it's almost a flight away. 'cause I think he's, he has an overnight, doesn't he?

Reegs: think so, yeah. But they drive fast distances in America though,

Sidey: have to, I guess maybe there's no airports nearby, but Yeah, he's

Reegs: he's in his Red Plymouth Valiant. And the character's name is David Mann, which I think invites a sort of slightly metaphorical man versus machine type you know, reading of it and also, or cuck versus truck.

Sidey: I prefer that one.

Reegs: as we'll find out. Yeah. So it goes

Sidey: along for a while until we meet the truck. And it's greatly looking thing.

Reegs: Yeah. It's a load

Sidey: bad,

Reegs: oils [00:04:00] spewing out of it. Yeah. It is a 1955 Peter built 2 8, 1 tanker.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Spielberg did a lot of interviews for the truck. You know, he, he wasn't the first truck that he saw because being this was basically the, the enemy.

Mm-hmm. This was the other guy

Sidey: in the film.

Dan: He wanted to make sure that the truck had personality, and with that split screen and the mirrors

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: the big headlights that kind of looked like it's almost got a face. You

Reegs: and it's belching out smoke and it's grimy and oil covered. It looks like it emerged from hell itself.

Dan: the other number plates on

Sidey: which I, which I think of different victims, right?

Yes, they're, yeah.

Reegs: And he picks up behind it, goes past it you know, without much fuss or anything. It's just a normal thing, and then suddenly it's coming up behind him and overtakes him. And then just slows down really slow in front of him.

Like [00:05:00] what? And this kind of goes on

Sidey: I think it beeps at him as

Reegs: the second time he goes past him, he beeps him really hard on the horn, which is like his war cry.

Sidey: Then they come to the first garage stop,

Reegs: they?

do, yeah. After this has been going on

Sidey: he comes in, he asks for some

Reegs: Well, just, there is an important moment where he stops.

'cause he sees the guy get out of the truck and all, but all

Sidey: he's looking at shoes.

Reegs: boots, his shoes. And he sees his blue jeans and his brown boots. And I think he sees his cowboy hat and hair on his arms. But that's the most you see of

Sidey: Yeah. And he says to the guy, 'cause we get a little bit. Sort of backstory, which is kind of irrelevant really. It's to phone home. He, he gets some change and he makes a call, and while he is on the call or while he is messing around in the garage, the guy says, oh, you got a problem with your radiator hose.

Reegs: Wonder if that, I wonder if that'll pay off. It's not completely irrelevant though, because it fill in a bit of a man's backstory because his wife, his mate, had made a pass at his wife at a party.

That's why I said the cuck versus

Sidey: Oh, yeah. Because he says, she says he, he practically raped

Reegs: Yeah. And he's like trying to play it down and you know, he'd had too many [00:06:00] to drink, whatever. It's, so he's gonna go on this journey. He's this kind of vanilla kind of milk toast, downtrodden kind of guy, and he's gonna kind of, over the course of the movie, toughen up a bit.

Sidey: The guy while he's dealing with the, the pump attendant, the truck's like beef, pulling his horn, you know, like he needs, he is angry, he wants to get well, he's just angry.

Full stop. And he said, yeah, in a minute, I'll deal with you in a minute. And he pulls away and within no time at all, the

Reegs: the truck's there

Sidey: comes by. There's, I think if this bit of the truck actually gets in front of him again and is slowing down. And then comes to section Road and he just

Reegs: he waves him through and you're like, ah, thankfully it's all over

Sidey: and there's a guy coming the other way.

It's a total stitch up there.

Reegs: He tried to kill him. Yeah. And

Sidey: is the point where he realizes killed two. It's like, fuck, this isn't just like some, some, you know, irritating guy. A fucking psycho. Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: And he's chasing him. He's putting his car up to 80 or 90, and we know he is not a fast driver. And I think he does like eventually [00:07:00] like crash near a small town, doesn't he?

Sidey: Yeah. He stacks it into sort of fence.

Reegs: Yeah. As he's trying to escape from him. Yeah.

Sidey: a guy comes over and says, are you all right? I think he's got a bit of bloody lip or something,

Reegs: and the truck carries on and goes past, doesn't it? So he goes into the diner to kind of sort himself out. And then while he's in there, is that when he looks out the window and sees that the truck is parked?

Sidey: Yeah. This, because this, like you say, with the boots, he's looking round and he is like, which one are you fuckers? Is it, and you get the occasional and

Dan: looks like all of them.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: You get the occasional voiceover in his head. You know, where where he is sort of thinking and he's looking.

Reegs: clumsy. The narration stuff,

Sidey: Yeah, it's a bit dated. And eventually he pick someone out. And it gets a bit of hiding.

Reegs: Yeah. He goes over to confront him, what were you doing over there?

And the guy doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, but eventually ends up beating him up anyway.

because he's like, he's really nerdy. He's got like the nerdiest hair and like the comb over, not comb over, but

Sidey: just like a Biff businessman,

Reegs: Yeah.

Biff businessman. Yeah. Weedy and all that. Yeah. [00:08:00] So, and he watches that guy then that beat him up, that he's absolutely sure is the truck driver at this point.

And then he gets into some other truck and drives off. So,

Sidey: I think he just hotels out there after that, doesn't he? He does and he comes across his school bus.

Reegs: Yes. Yeah,

Sidey: there's a, there's a school bus that's broken down and there's a load of kids milling about and he's like, oh

Reegs: they're all running in the middle of the road as well.

It's quite

Sidey: I think he's written off the appointment. I think at one point he's sort of said to himself, well, I'm not gonna make that appointment now. And his wife's already given him a load of shit about being back on time. 'cause his mother's going around and she's like, it was not my mother.

Reegs: Yeah. Giving him a load of shit.

Yeah

Sidey: So the Good Samaritan and he pulls over to try and help these this boss and these kids, and I think he somehow gets his. His bumper wedged under the back of the Yeah. Car. 'cause his wheel's

Reegs: he's trying to push the, the school bus out. Yeah.

Sidey: But they're, they're just the other side of a tunnel. And then as he is sort of looking around and he's, he sees the truck again.

Yeah. And he starts trying to tell this guy, you know, the, the bus driver, there's a fucking lunatic chasing [00:09:00] me guy's. Like, listen, if anyone's fucking crazy about it, it's you.

Yeah,

Reegs: exactly. Yeah. He ambulance. So he does, so eventually gets his car kind of free, like jumping manically on the bonnet to free it.

And he sort of hightails it off. And the, truck comes back really menacing through the tunnel and actually ends up pushing the school bus out and saving him and all that sort of stuff. And then it's back again, the sort of cat and mouse back and, you know, speeding and all that stuff. Speeding and slowing down and all sorts of shit.

Sidey: I think the next one is the, the railroad crossing.

Reegs: Yep. Tries to push

Sidey: quite tense 'cause there's a big, long freight train thing coming through.

Yeah. And he's stopped there and then the truck pulls up behind him. But this time it's like. Goes right up to him, bangs onto the back of his car and is trying to push him in front of the Yeah. Train, which is quite unnerving.

Reegs: Yeah. And there's been a few bits, I think in this sequence as well. There's a bit where he like undercuts him, throws him a dummy and goes on a little road to get ahead of him, thinks he's got a way and all sorts of stuff. So

Dan: it? it was really interesting in the way that Spielberg made [00:10:00] story of the film. 'cause he is just got it all on one huge piece of paper

Reegs: Mm-hmm. and the

road, each of the starts

Dan: and each they had 10 days I think to film this. He did it

Reegs: in really, I think

Dan: 12,

Or 13 days, but it was a really tight schedule, 400 you'll have

Sidey: suggest the same. Yeah.

Dan: And it was obviously just hell fire go, go, go all the time and had to have part of the film done So you make the most of that kind of budget. So all he did was this huge piece of paper and the, railway and everything that was done so they could use each and every moment of the, they had 'cause the light [00:11:00] and Perfectly, and they ended up using same film Incredible Hulk

An

episode just about ripped off. Exactly. Even

used the

Sidey: Oh, really?

Dan: the truck going over

Reegs: Oh, that's interesting. I didn't

Dan: spiel. Yeah. Spielberg then wrote into all his contracts anything

Sidey: After the train bit. He kind of pulls over to one side. Yeah. 'cause the truck goes through and he thinks fuck him.

Just let him go for a while.

Reegs: He has a sleep in his car, doesn't he? I think

Sidey: And then he is just gonna sort of put it around at his own pace. Not get, try and not get

Reegs: he's finally given up on the meeting. He's like, I just want to survive now, so I'm just gonna let that guy fucking go. And that's when he goes to Sally Snake Orama, isn't it?

Is that right?

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: goes to that snake lady's place, he pulls over again. She like, as soon as she opens his bonnet, she's like, your radiator hose is fucked. Like the same thing that the guy had said [00:12:00] before.

Sidey: yeah. She's got cages of tarantula.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Some rattlesnakes. A massive iguana lizard thing.

Reegs: Yeah. She says, I'll go and have a look while

Sidey: like, why is this place? It's so bizarre.

Reegs: And then as he's looking, she's filling up the

Sidey: makes a phone call, doesn't he? He does. He's in the phone booth. And then you can just see the truck and I fucking, Hey,

Reegs: It just turns up real menacing at the end of the road. Just honks again and just fucking barrel straight for him, doesn't it?

Dan: Single take.

Reegs: Yeah. And then just keeps going round in a circle. Like definitely not trying to kill him, but also not, not trying

Sidey: kill. Well, it definitely would've killed him if he hadn't got outta the phone booth. Yeah. He was dead.

Reegs: but he honked it so he would know. Like it's, he obviously wants to finish this in the

Sidey: This poor woman's just like, oh my animal.

Reegs: Yeah. My snakes. Yeah.

Sidey: He David Mann sort at one point, he looks down, he is, got tarant on his legs if things weren't bad enough. He's like trying to shoo that away. The guy's just looping around, just twitting all these animals.

Cages all over the place. Eventually he's able to get in his car and fucking off

Reegs: well, he runs after him, doesn't he?

And that's when he like, almost like [00:13:00] backs off. Isn't it? Is this at this point?

Sidey: No, it is later on when he stops and there's a, there's a sequence where the truck is just, is pulled to one side, but, but blocking the road anytime he moves the car towards it.

Yeah. He.

He just pulls the truck out to either squash him or just block him. But it's not until he gets out of the car and then finally realize he's gonna have to fight him or do something when he runs towards him as just as a dude. The guy fucking run. He

Reegs: he, he backs off because

Sidey: he gets in the he the truck just goes, yeah, it doesn't want to Physical confrontation.

Reegs: It's not about being man or man.

It's machine versus man. Yeah. Where are we

Sidey: Well, they just get they after that bit, after that sequence. 'cause he, he tries to get two old people that, that come along in a sort of morrisey

Reegs: Oh, that's right. They're trying to get

Sidey: tries to get them to phone the police and they're like, get away from us.

Crazy man. Yeah. And after that sequence is where we get the payoff of all the radio hose chat, where they're going up a, a hill. And wouldn't he know it or he'll, you know, he is looking at gauges and all that, and then suddenly his car starts[00:14:00]

Dan: he'll radiating hose.

Sidey: There's, there's steam flying out of everywhere and fluid coming out of the radiator and his car's kaput.

Yeah.

Reegs: He's trying to get to the crest of a hill, isn't it? So he can sort of take the gravity downhill.

Sidey: Yeah, exactly. He does manage to get there, but I think he's been doing about 10 mile an hour at the time he gets to the top and then he, and he puts it in neutral and he is able to FreeWheel down.

Reegs: Yeah, but then he can't control

Sidey: But there's gonna be a point where, you know. He crashes, basically goes to the bottom. He's going too fast and he hasn't got any control and he stacks it into a 'cause I'd actually thought at this point there's hard, barely a mark on that fucking Plymouth for the amount of shenanigans. It's spinning,

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: on top of

Sidey: But this bit Yeah. Yeah. It totals it and he, he's able to spin it round and go back up. This kind of like slip road.

Reegs: They're doing some bridge building work or something, and the road is incomplete around there.

Sidey: Yeah. And when it gets to the top of that, there is an area that's just fenced off you can't get through.

And if you've checked the run time at all in the film, you know, it's probably about that end

Reegs: and you now get it, I think from the truck's perspective as it comes up to the top of the hill where, and the Plymouth valiant is now sitting on the [00:15:00] edge waiting for the truck in many ways.

And then he, this

Sidey: fairly careless.

Reegs: he jams the briefcases, you know, his symbol of his like nerdiness into the accelerator and accelerates the car at the truck. Yeah. Diving out of it at the last minute. And then the truck accelerates to push it over the edge. And there has been a thing about earlier, a guy was really careless, filling up the the car with petrol or diesel, whatever, and it

Sidey: the time.

Reegs: a load of, and it gets set fire to, at this point all of that petrol and obscures the truck driver's vision as he ends up.

Barreling the pair of them over the edge and he puts in a raw, do you know he reused that raw for the T-Rex

Sidey: Oh, did he? Yeah. Wow.

Reegs: the raw in jaws as well. It's just, it's obviously his raw, so as the truck goes over, it's this real slow motion kind of.

Sidey: They had to do this in Nana 'cause they just didn't have the money to do it again. And some people I think were a bit disgruntled. It doesn't explode, but

Reegs: Oh, it's perfect to me. No,

Dan: to me. Well, it does say flammable at

Sidey: stage. Yeah. 'cause the [00:16:00] whole time you've been looking at the back of this thing was massive flammable. Yeah. You know, flammable side. And it doesn't

Dan: at one point he thinks he sees a police patrol car, but it's just pest

Sidey: Did you see the name of it?

Yeah. And it's

Spielberg backwards. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dan: It's,

Sidey: it

Reegs: well, and then he just sort of dances like a mo, like a fucking neanderthal. Like, you know, he's framed with the sun behind him. He's, and cheering like,

Sidey: and then we just get the view then of the wreckage looking at him and there's a wheel and it just stays with it till it eventually stops.

Reegs: Stops. And then

Sidey: that's it.

Reegs: You get some different shots of the truck that's mangled bits. But you don't see anything of the driver?

Sidey: No. Never.

Dan: The, the, the driver, Carrie Loftin

Reegs: like

that? Yeah, Kerry Lofton.

Dan: And he was asking Spielberg, what's his motivation? He just says, well, you're just a meme motherfucker.

Reegs: And then the credits, you gotta love it when a movie just ends like that. Just it's [00:17:00] done. Yeah. And

Dan: I, I mean. What a debut.

Sidey: Mm, strong. It's really good. This it, isn't it? It's

Dan: fantastic suspense the whole way.

I think it TV a couple of

Reegs: it does that brilliant shot that Spielberg does loads of times where in, when there's cars more than one car and he starts on one and he comes out through it and goes round to the other one and back round it. He's seen him do it so many times, but here it is in 1971, done for Fuck All, like

Dan: I mean, they had cameras where it was shot really low to try and get the speed

Sidey: of Yeah. 'cause they couldn't obviously drive at a hundred mile an hour. They just couldn't do that. They had to drive about 30. So they had to make it look like that.

And,

Dan: all those

Sidey: shots when you have a film that when you bald boil it down, you know, it is one car going in front of the other and then the other one chasing it. So you have to do things to make that interesting. And it obviously, it couldn't have a long run time 'cause you couldn't stretch that out anymore than they do here, but it's very tightly plotted, you know?

Yeah. Really

Reegs: good. And then there's just enough like interesting stuff going on thematically to like elevate it just a little bit, you know? So [00:18:00] yeah.

Super strong in

it.

Dan: just really clever that you. Don't need lots of actors, you don't need clever, CGI or anything like that to make an

Reegs: mean, mm-hmm.

Dan: he's done it with effectively five One mainly, a, driver. You never see a truck,

Reegs: It's not even that strong an idea just on paper.

Like, you know, it feels like there's a bit missing to that plot. If somebody described you, I was making this movie now, you'd be like, but then what? There's

Sidey: Well, you'd get a, something. No, you'd get this and then you'd get the prequel of the guy's backstory and where the truck came from. Yeah,

just leave it like this. This is good.

Dan: But it, you know, the, the red car

against

Sidey: and the blue car had a rose.

Dan: That landscape and everything.

It just brought all out. So visually it really works.

Reegs: Mm. And

Dan: I say the, the cuts the [00:19:00] pace of the film,

Sidey: did

time see that in the cast? There was a guy called Sweet Dick Whittington.

Dan: I did not

Sidey: that.

Yeah. Plays is the radio interviewer. It's actually on the credits that come up. It's just Dick Whittington.

Reegs: there is some bizarre stuff on the radio. I think it's supposed to be like, sort of filling in a bit of like backstory to his sort of lack of manliness. 'cause there's a story about a guy who likes to wear women's clothes while he does the housework.

Somebody's wearing meat

Sidey: he starts chuckling to himself about it and you're like, what are you listening to?

It reminded me of you know, on Grand Theft Auto when he could change the radio station. All that flicking through all that weird stuff. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: I dunno what Maybe

Sidey: there I know.

Dan: But. If you do or you don't, you should definitely

Sidey: record. It's available on Prime, so you can check out for now if you've got Prime.

Very good.