ReRoad:
Introduction:
"Road Games," styled as "Roadgames," is a 1981 Australian thriller film directed by Richard Franklin and featuring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis in the lead roles. The movie centers on a truck driver traversing Australia, who, with the assistance of a hitchhiker, embarks on a quest to locate a serial killer responsible for brutally murdering women and dumping their dismembered remains along desolate highways.
In rural Australia, truck driver Patrick Quid stops at a motel for the night and notices a man in a green van checking in with a female hitchhiker. Quid had earlier passed by the hitchhiker due to company policy prohibiting him from picking her up. In their motel room, the hitchhiker plays a guitar while the man unpacks a new guitar string. The man uses the string to strangle the woman.
The next morning, Quid awakens in his truck, and his pet dingo is fixated on garbage outside the motel. Quid notices the van driver observing the dingo from the motel room window. Quid loads a shipment of pigs from Universal Meats and begins his journey to Perth, encountering various characters on the road, including a nagging wife and her family, a cautious man towing a sailboat, and a station wagon overflowing with toy balls. He repeatedly passes by another female hitchhiker.
Development:
The wife creates a roadblock using pink paper strewn across the highway, prompting Quid to stop. She enters his cab and insists that Quid catch up with her husband, who left her by the roadside. They engage in a game of 20 Questions to pass the time. The wife informs Quid about a gruesome murder of a woman, and Quid's nonchalant responses begin to unsettle her. She suspects that he might be the serial killer mentioned in the news.
Quid halts his truck when he spots the green van parked alongside the road. The van driver appears to be burying trash bags and an esky (cooler). When the driver notices Quid observing him through binoculars, he abandons his work and drives away. Later, at a roadhouse, the van driver attacks Quid's dingo. Quid gives chase but encounters the slow-driving boat owner, who refuses to let him pass. Eventually, Quid destroys the boat, but the van is too distant to catch.
Quid picks up the second female hitchhiker, Pamela Rushworth, whom he had passed earlier. She gradually reveals that she is the daughter of a powerful American diplomat. Quid encourages Pamela to inform her father that she is safe. The two discuss the serial killer. At a service station, they notice the van parked near the restroom. Quid spots a pair of feet in the toilet stall and believes he has cornered the killer. Pamela investigates the van while Quid attempts to get the man to exit the stall. However, Pamela discovers that the driver is sleeping on the van's floor. Meanwhile, a biker emerges from the restroom stall, and Quid rushes outside to find the van gone.
Release:
When Quid catches up to the van, it seems that Pamela is willingly in the passenger seat. Later that night, Quid sees the van parked at the side of the road and investigates. He hears laughter in the nearby bushes and assumes that Pamela and the van driver are engaged in a sexual encounter. However, when he breaks into the van, he finds only food in the esky.
Upon reaching the outskirts of Perth and reporting to the weigh station, Quid spots the van. He follows it through the city streets, pursued by the police. Eventually, the van reaches a dead end, and Quid's truck becomes stuck in narrow alleys. The van driver approaches Quid's truck and attempts to strangle him with a garrotte, but Quid manages to disarm him. Just as Quid begins to strangle the van driver with the same weapon, the police arrive and mistake Quid for the killer. After rescuing Pamela, who was bound and gagged in the van, the police realize Quid's innocence, and Pamela's actual captor is apprehended while trying to escape through the crowd.
Upon delivering the meat shipment, Quid reveals to Pamela that he had suspected the van driver of killing her and disposing of her body in his trailer after finding his trailer door open and the load weight slightly over. Back at the meat facility, a woman cleaning the trailer is startled when she pulls a guitar string hanging from the ceiling, causing a human head to fall into her soap bucket.
While working on the film, Patrick Richard Franklin gave Everett De Roche a copy of "Rear Window" as an example of how he wanted the script formatted. De Roche was inspired by the script's content and expressed a desire to create a film with a similar premise but set on a moving vehicle. The concept was developed by De Roche and Franklin in Fiji, where Franklin was co-producing "The Blue Lagoon" (1980). De Roche wrote the initial draft of "Road Games" during an eight-day period in a hotel, with Franklin visiting periodically during breaks in the production of "Blue Lagoon."
Production:
De Roche had previously written an episode titled "Road Games" for the TV series "Truckies" (1978), in which truck drivers become concerned about a suspicious man following two young children on a bus. This episode aired on September 4, 1978, and was directed by Michael Ludbrook.
Australian actress Lisa Peers was originally cast opposite Stacy Keach, but the U.S. distributors insisted on an American co-star, leading to the casting of Jamie Lee Curtis. The film faced challenges with Actors Equity, as the Melbourne branch approved Curtis's importation while the Sydney branch opposed it, creating a political struggle during production. Franklin later regretted not expanding Curtis's role to make better use of her talents.
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