I saw it for the first time the other night and it had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. I was riveted to the television. Having seen it I now consider it to be the best car chase movie of all time, eclipsing Bullitt and The French Connection, among others.
But what the hell was up with the driver? Road rage? Psychosis? Vengeance? Wikipedia has an article on the movie that sheds little light on the subject except to say that the abundance of license plates on the is a potential indicator that this was not the first time the truck driver had done this. IMDB’s message baord on this movie (a surprisingly active one, I might add) puts forth the idea that the driver was hired by the victim’s wife to kill him because a) she had apparently had an affair and he knew about it, b) the first thing she asked when he called was “Were you in an accident?”, and c) there’s really no other motive in the movie quite as strong as that one. I regard that to be reasonable but flawed theory because the truck driver had many opportunities to kill him outright and failed to take advantage of them, preferring to toy with him instead.
So, what do you guys think? All I know is that I absolutely have to get a copy of the movie. It is a movie that all should see.
There is no logical explanation. The truck is just plain evil and no explanation is given or needed. (Actually, it’s much better that there is no explanation, and trying to find one is just plain silly.)
The truck is evil. There is no driver per se; it is the truck. Yes, we do see the driver’s arm several times and his feet at one point, but he and the truck are one.
Stephen King compared the truck in this movie to a dinosaur and Dennis Weaver to a caveman. It makes just as much sense looked at in that light.
Finding a motive other than the driver’s desire to taunt and torture would be a let down. The driver is never really shown because no one person could ever look as menacing as that truck. And even in this early film Spielberg knew that the unseen and the unknown can be scarier than that which we have a grasp of.
If I remember correctly, this may have been a story in Playboy before it was a movie. But I’m not supposed to know anything like that. :o
I think that the victim (or viewer) not knowing why he was being targeted was part of the suspense and you were not intended to know why. BTW, I can’t remember where I read this, but this is supposedly the top rated movie in France.
Well, there’s no logical explanation. And yet, anyone who’s been a driver long enough knows that some people (mostly males) regard driving as a competition, and take a certain pleasure in passing other drivers, in cutting them off, in playing games with them.
From my own experience: a few weeks ago, I was behind a pickup truck going about 5 miles per hour in my neighborhood. I was late for work and in a hurry, so I drove around him to get to the highway. Well, wouldn’t you know it, this guy who HAD been driving as if he had nowhere to go suddenly revved up, and started racing to catch me. On the highway, he zoomed past me, got in front of me, and (naturally!) flipped me the bird!
Face it, in real life, there are people like this, for whom driving is a war of sorts. To that pickup driver, it was a matter of pride to “beat” me!
Well, similar macho games are played by drivers every day. I’m certain almost every SDMB poster has similar stories to tell. Well, in “Duel,” Dennis Weaver got into such a macho pissing match with the unseen truck driver. But in this case, unlike mine, Dennis was up against a jerk who wanted to do a lot more than extend his middle finger! He was up against a psycho, to whom being “dissed” on the highway by a guy in a little sedan was intolerable.
So, to me, the truck driver isn’t supernatural, or a symbol of evil. He’s just an all-too-typical jerk who takes a petty feud to the next level.
Not knowing the guy’s motive make it a lot scarier. How can I avoid doing what Dennis Hopper did to incur the trucker’s wrath if I don’t know what it was?
I loved this movie. I caught the beginning of it once - before the chase actually really began, and was riveted. But I had to go out, and missed the rest of the movie.
Then I managed to catch it again, and what a phenomenal movie! The ending was perfect. Loved every second of it - true “edge of your seat” action.
Been a long time since I’ve seen Duel, but I always had the impression that the truck driver was some kind of demon or other evil supernatural entity, not a human being. I never believed that the “driver” Weaver’s character confronted in the truck stop was the actual driver of the truck.
Basically, the driver’s motive was that it was evil, and toying with people on the highway before killing them was what it did because, well, that’s what it did.
The truck, which was innocent in all of this, met with a firey end, but the driver would go on to get a new truck.
The great Richard Matheson scripted this, by the way. It may have been a short story before he turned it into a screenplay. IIRC, Matheson said it grew from an incident he had with a truck on the highway, perhaps on the day Kennedy was killed (I seem to remember).
Although, it is true that the lack of motive makes it scarier, and the poster above was correct in saying that looking for a motive is sily, it is still fun.
Here’s my theory. The driver had cowboy boots, perhaps he was a man of the country, one of simple means and low education, who hated the classes who looked down on him, and perhaps he saw in the nebbish Weaver a prime example of the upper classes who belittled him, and took revenge the only way he could. Please don’t say I’m belittling everyone who wears cowboy boots.
I’ll tell you one thing, that truck was hella intimidating. If I ever saw anything like that I would turn around and run for my life.
I guess trying to divine the intent of the truck driver ruins the movie, but all the same you sit there watching and saying to yourself “Hey, what’s his problem?!?!”, and I was wondering about some of the other theories.
One thing that I wondered about was why he didn’t just stop (like when he was at the truck stop/diner), turn around, go back to the highway, and tell his wife to suck wind. It’s almost like his pride overcame his common sense and he was determined to go the way he wanted to go truck be damned. Of course, that would make for a boring movie, but part of what made it so compelling to me was that he was making things worse for himself by continuing to go that way, knowing full well that the truck driver wasn’t going to leave him alone.
The story is reprinted in a marvelous collection called Reel Terror which also includes the original stories for ‘The Colour Out of Space’ and ‘It’s a Good Life’ (the kid wishing people into the cornfield story.)
Agreed. The movie is an exercise in paranoia, except in this case someone really is out to get you.
There was a well-known incident of a real-life ‘Duel’ in central Pennsylvania a couple of years ago, in which a semi driver on one of the interstate highways near Harrisburg took exception to a motorist he felt was going too slowly in the passing lane. He rammed her car from behind, causing to stall, at which point he pushed it, terrified driver inside, at speeds well above 70 miles per hour for more than twenty miles before finally being pulled over by State Police. Sorry, couldn’t find a cite but I remember the news stories well.
Well, that’s the key of the movie, and not just in the “we have to make it longer” sense. It gets back to what astorian brought up: it’s kind of a “what makes a man?” question. If Weaver had just turned around, it would’ve been like giving up, backing down, and conceding defeat. It was important that his wife was involved in the story, because it’s additional pressure to Be A Man.
In a way, it’s important that you don’t know the motives of the truck driver, because that just simplifies the story too much. Random guy pisses off a truck driver, goes through hell for a couple of hours, the end. When you don’t know why the truck is doing this, it becomes more symbolic – it’s just another pressure in this guy’s life. He has to deal with all kinds of things beating him down from all different directions with no explanation, and he has to be a man, stand up to it, and defeat it.
It’s no wonder the studio brass, after having seen Duel, thought SS would be perfect for Jaws. Sharks don’t think about why they attack, they just do. Just like the truck.
I used to drive trucks for a living, and they’re really sweethearts. Every now and then though, there’s a bad Mack in the bunch.
Why does everyone insist on blaming the truck? Really, the truck didn’t do anything. It was just sitting in the lot minding its own business, having a drink of deisel with its buddies, and a being in cowboy boots that looked like a man, but wasn’t took possession of it and started driving it along the highways and byways, wreaking havoc, causing terror, and generally making life unpleasant for people on the road.
I saw this at least 10 years ago. I remember thinking (rather mundanely) “oh, the guy did something that pissed the truck driver off, possibly even unaware that he did it.”
I guess I was figuring that no one would be so evil without good reason.
Other menacing truck movies:
Stephen King’s “Maximum Overdrive”. (weak)
The solid, though slightly obvious “Joy Ride” with Steve Zahn, Paul Walker and Leelee Sobieski. Very “Duel”-like. The director, John Dahl, also directed “The Last Seduction”, “Rounders” and “Red Rock West”, so there’s some cred there.
I’ll recommend it if you’re looking for a little escape. And, while this may be impossible, don’t try comparing it to Duel all the way through, because it will come up short.
One other thing… SOMETIMES directorial decisions are made on a purely practical level, for totally non-artistc reasons, but the results work so well that the director ends up looking brilliant.
To use a different Spielberg example, look at “Jaws.” Many of the best, scariest sequences in “Jaws” are ones in which the shark is never seen! And Spielberg freely admits that he came up with those scenes primarily because Bruce the mechanical shark was constantly malfunctioning, and often unavailable for filming.
So, Spielberg made a virtue of necessity.
Now, “Duel” Was a made-for-TV movie in the USA (I’m told it played in theaters overseas), which means it had a limited budget to begin with, and Dennis Weaver’s salary ate up much of that. If Spielberg had SHOWED us the truck driver, he’d have had to pay the actor playing the part a lot more than he paid the stunt driver he actually hired.
In other words, it’s entirely possible that Spielberg made a simple budgetary decision (“I can’t afford to pay a real actor Equity scale to play the truck driver, so I just won’t show the driver at all”) that paid off artistically (NOT seeing the truck driver, like NOT seeing the shark, made many scenes eerier and more chilling).
