I always thought the driver was Randall Flagg. 
(Please don’t beat me up for anachronisms.)
I don’t think that would have mattered. The truck driver was crazy, and I don’t think he cared if he ruined a ton of other lives on the highway just to get to Dennis Weaver. After all, we know he didn’t care if there were witnesses later on when he’s practically running over people just to get to Weaver. But it wouldn’t have been as dramatic.
One question I have: Was the driver ever seen in the truck stop? I know we never find out his identity, but did he actually go into the truck stop and then quietly leave?
A bit of trivia: in “Jaws”, after the shark blows up and is sinking in the water, the roaring sound is the same as the sound the truck in “Duel” makes when it’s falling over the cliff.
I couldn’t watch that movie. Yeardley Smith’s voice was just unbearable to me, after five minutes of hearing her (I came into it partway through) I couldn’t watch anymore.
The updated “Trucks” was not too shabby though, as far as made-for-TV Stephen King movies go.
Another movie villian like the truck is the Terminator from the first Terminator film.
He can not be reasoned with, he can not be stopped. He is just a killing machine.
What I find interesting is the idea of man vs machine is an old idea of story telling-well as old as the industrial revolution. Now we see more the idea that computers or thinking machines as the enemy. Duel is sort of a throw back to a simple machine as the threat.
I think the lack of motive is key to the film. If there is a motive then the victim might be able to make things right and avoid the confrontation, but with no motive the victim cannot do anything to lessen the confrontation.
As for the Driver, who else do we know with cowboy boots? A certain mr Bush, huh. The story all makes sense now doesn’t it 
Naw. The never-seen driver was part of Richard Matheson’s script. It’s a basic concept to the whole story. And SAG actors working at scale don’t cost that much.
The Car (1977) has a similar plot. I remember being scared shitless as a child. To this day, black cars still give me the creeps.
Something like this happened to me once, going uphill on the San Diego Freeway in California, at night. I noticed a large truck coming up behind me, getting uncomfortably close, then didn’t see his headlights anymore. WHUMP! He hit the back of my car and his headlights were above my roof. I honked, he hit me again. Thinking someone might notice, I looked around, but no other driver in the high-speed, heavy traffic seemed to look my way. Then he started pushing me, faster than I wanted to go. Now a Fiat X 1/9 may look sporty, but it has very little power, especially going uphill on the San Diego Freeway, so I sped up a little, and he hit me again. Finally, knowing that if I stepped on the brakes, I would be dead, I was able to speed up just enough to pull off to the shoulder. He passed right by me at full speed.
So I followed him to the next exit, where he ignored my honking until he came to his final destination. When I confronted the driver, “WTF are you fucking doing, fucking banging my car?” He claimed he knew nothing of what I was talking about and never hit anybody. Then I had a bright idea, and I backed up my car to touch his bumper and we got in the truck’s cab. Sitting in the driver’s seat, you couldn’t see my car at all.
So my theory was, as he just rented the truck, he had his hands full with an unfamiliar vehicle. As he went up the hill, he came close to a small car, then didn’t see it anymore, so he sped up. The truck was so massive that the bumps didn’t register in his mind as collisions and he couldn’t hear my horn over the general noise.
The cops declined to cite him, saying they had no proof other than some tiny paint scrapes, and no witnesses (except the entire fucking freeway, but that was California) and there was nothing to file an insurance claim for.
So Duel has a special meaning for me. :eek:
Don’t forget Warrior of the Lost World.
“Megaweapon! Megaweapon! Megaweapon!”
I’ll admit it: I have that issue. It’s a damn good story, too–it works as well in print as it does onscreen.
(Oh, and Mbwun_lives: there is nudity in that version! :D)
Well, it’s good you didn’t believe it, since it’s obviously untrue. That character leaves in a huff and drives off in a pickup truck.
Of course, Weaver’s character could have avoided the tussle in the diner. He could have started by asking, “Say, are you the driver of that big 16-wheel tanker?” But no, he starts off with, “I want you to cut it out.” It’s typical of Matheson to have a protagonist who’s a bit unstable himself.
I blame society.
I loved Duel.
Then, it was at least partially ruined for me when they used scenes from Duel in a TV episode of “The Six Million Dollar Man”. Steve Austin vs. a Nasty Diesel!
I was appalled. But apparently the parent company that produced “TSM$M” owned the rights to Duel and could use it any way they pleased. :eek: :eek: :eek:
Oh, and I seem to recall they also used Duel footage in an episode of “The Hulk”. Old Greeny vs. a big truck.
I wonder if SS allows anybody else to recycle his movies these days?
Something bad has happened to the driver of that truck. It wasn’t Dennis Weaver who did it to him. He has suffered something BAD.
Well, legally Duel is not “his” movie. The only claims to it he has are the same that any first time director of a made-for-TV movie would have: Next to none. When Duel was released to theaters in the US and was touted as SS’s first movie, he had no control over it. It was just the rights holders trying to capitalize off of Spielberg’s fame.
I seem to recall that Spielberg himself has said that the Truck was mostly a metaphor. It was the unstoppable force relentlessly pursuing the hero to the end. Unthinking, uncaring, relentless. I seem to even recall reading the comparison to the truck and the shark in Jaws (before this thread).
Great movie. I’ll have to see if it’s out on DVD.
On the Jaws DVD they did say that the sound they used for the truck going over the cliff was reused in Jaws as the shark drifts to the bottom.
For the 25th Anniversary Special Edition, the truck will be digitally replaced with a radio.
I personally think it don’t matter about the motivations of the truck/truck driver. This is about the main character and his short comings in dealing with conflict. He choses to run from his conflicts instead of taking them head on i.e when he knows his wife is having an affair but chooses to do or say anything about it. To me the truck is representation not only evil but also of a forced conflict in Weaver’s life. The more you run from those conflicts the more your conflicts will chase you. Its not until you take on your conflict head on (the show down on the cliff) where you actually fix whatever issues are plaguing your life.
I also believe the reason why Dennis Weaver keeps going in the same direction despite the resistance from the truck again is him preferring to run away from conflict (his cheating wife) instead of dealing with it head on. And ironically enough the truck/truck driver is causing him alot of issue but Weaver insist on going the same direction, and clearly whatever meeting he is going to he surely will miss it or at least be extremely late. So it makes sense he should turn around and go back home. But he chooses not to. He would rather deal with the truck then to go back home. I almost took the truck as a figment of Weaver imagination until the snake lady and school bus driver got involved. My hope is after defeating the truck he would later have the courage to go back home and handle whatever he needs to handle.