I Gave You the Road

Duel (1971) Dir. Stephen Spielberg

David Mann, a middle-aged salesman on a business trip, is stalked by a mysterious truck that seems intent on killing him.

“I gave you the road, why don't you take it? Why don't you go?” - David

My brother and I have a real soft spot for shark films. I don’t mean the ironic, intentional so-bad-it’s-good cynicism of the Sharknado series. I mean the earnest, actually-trying-to-make-a-good-film attempts. For some reason, I find a one or two star bad/average shark film oddly comforting. Maybe it’s because it can be instructional? Watching a film that doesn’t entirely work (but is trying to) can be a useful lesson in storytelling. Trying to work out what has gone wrong and why is sometimes more useful than watching a masterpiece. Or maybe it’s just a bit of smooth-brained fun. It’s probably both.

Whatever the reason, my brother and I - living in different cities - started remotely watching shark films together during the height of the pandemic. Eventually that grew into a weekly horror film, and we’ve kept that routine going today. 

It’s worth saying at this point that a shark film doesn’t have to have a shark. It doesn’t even have to have a crocodile, alligator, or water-based antagonist.

What do I mean by a shark film? I’ve been struggling to come up with a taxonomy that works for me, but ultimately I think it’s this: there’s a stalking/hunting antagonist that is better suited to the environment than the protagonist/s. Tremors is a shark film. Backcountry is a shark film. Alien is a shark film (and haunted house). The survival-against-all-odds is against both the antagonist and the environment itself.

Jaws is a shark film of course. And I think my love of that film is a reason I love watching shark films. A part of it is chasing that high. Hoping to find another film that works the same magic on me.

Which brings me, finally, to Duel. Spielberg’s first film. Technically it’s a made-for-tv film (the first of four that Spielberg made before his first official feature: The Sugarland Express) but it was eventually released in cinemas with additional scenes. 

Duel is based on a short story by Richard Matheson (one of the finest genre short story writers of all time, and responsible for some of the strongest Twilight Zone episodes). It’s a tricky adaptation. What worked on paper could seem silly and lose all tension in live action. But you can really see how strong a director and visual storyteller Spielberg is here - even on a tv budget. It’s a silent film really, and one told with such a confident hand.

Essentially, it’s Jaws on the road. With a massive truck as the shark. It shouldn’t work, but it does. It’s tense, gripping, and unrelenting. The stripped down nature of the story is a feature not a bug. The road is the dangerous environment here and it’s terrifying, isolating, and oddly claustrophobic despite the open American landscape either side of it.

In some sense, I think you could argue that Duel represents the fear middle-class America has of the working class. With the white collar David being hounded by the blue-collar truck driver. Is it a Class War movie? Spielberg doesn’t think so, but y’know… Death of the author innit. There are absolutely hints in the film about masculinity in the 1970s and how men were struggling to come to terms with a changing world in response to the women’s liberation movement. 

It’s a brilliant film and deserving of its cult status. If you’re sometimes put off by the latter parts of Spielberg’s career or find him too mawkish (I don’t, but I know many people do), I urge you to go back to his earlier work. 

Excellent shark film about a truck.

Where can I watch it in the UK?

You can rent it for £3.09 or buy it for £5.99 from YouTube/Google/Amazon.

Pairs well with

I already mentioned it above, but another great land shark film is Tremors (1990, dir. Ron Underwood, available to rent for £3.09 on Amazon). It was even going to be called Land Sharks originally.

Two handymen and a seismologist discover that there are creatures living underground and hunting the small town of Perfection, Nevada. It’s a fun, smart B movie with great performances and some incredibly memorable set pieces. Worth a watch if you haven’t seen it.

Honourable mention to Crawl (2019, dir. Alexandre Aja, available to rent for £3.49 from YouTube/Google/Apple/Amazon). Solid shark film with alligators. With a hurricane introducing more elemental problems than usual and allowing the film to nod toward the theme of climate catastrophe.

Further Reading

• Richard Matheson’s original short story read by Stephen Lang (the bad army man in Avatar).
• Or you can listen to it read by Nathan Osgood.
• Matheson on where Duel came from.
• I liked this piece about Duel: Man vs Machine, Women and Himself.
• Edgar Wright interviews Spielberg about the making of Duel.
• Duel - A Conversation with Steven Spielberg (three part series on YouTube).

Other Recommendations

• Fancy a bit of horror board gaming? Zatu Games have a halloween sale on at the moment.
• Slightly related to Duel: there’s a great limited podcast series called Inside Jaws that dramatises the making of Jaws - taking us from Spielberg’s early years, through to Duel, and then the neverending series of catastrophes that happened with Jaws. A fun listen.