ROAD GAMES

Jamie Lee Curtis and Stacy Keach

ROAD GAMES (aka Roadgames/1981). Produced and directed by Richard Franklin.

Pat Quid (Stacy Keach of Butterfly) is a truck driver in Australia hauling a load of pig carcasses. He begins to suspect that a man in a green van may have done away with a woman that this other man shacked up with in a hotel, As his suspicions mount, he picks up a gal named Pamela (Jamie Lee Curtis), who is seemingly taken away by that man in the van. Or did she just shack up with this other guy of her own free will? Quid is torn between forgetting the whole thing or obsessively following the van to find out for sure what's up. Complicating matters is the fact that the police are beginning to suspect Quid of being a serial killer ... 

Stacy Keach

Road Games won some acclaim when it was released, primarily because Richard Franklin was clearly more talented than the average director of slasher films, and the film has virtually no gore. However, although the film starts very well and pulls one along, and is very well photographed by Vincent Monton, it doesn't quite make it as a really excellent thriller. The pic starts to go downhill when Jamie Lee Curtis [Terror Train] , whose acting is highly insufficient, shows up as the hitchhiker, and she and Quid almost immediately start talking about the potential serial killer with hardly any prelude. It makes the film seem as if a chunk wound up on the cutting room floor. Curtis' character is undeveloped and irritating, but at least she isn't on camera too long. Keach gives a solid performance as the smarter-than-average truck driver with issues, but for the most part the score by Brian May is just all wrong for the movie.

The film does boast an exciting, suspenseful and very well-executed climax involving a tight alleyway, Quid's over-sized truck, the van and the man inside it, and two cops, one of whom is crawling under the big truck in an attempt to get to the front of it and the fight that's ensuing there. Everett De Roche's script is unpredictable, and it does have touches that could be considered "Hitchcockian," although the movie is never on the level of the best of Hitchcock. This did, however, help Franklin land the plum assignment of directing Psycho II. 

Verdict: Too many loose ends, implausible moments, and a pretty weak Jamie Lee. **1/2.