Early effort from director Steven Spielberg, here working with writer Richard Matheson on this television thriller about an innocent motorist on the southern California mountain highways locked in a cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship with the unseen driver of a gasoline truck. Film is so deftly assured visually--and so brilliantly assembled technically--that Universal rather belatedly gave the movie a much-deserved theatrical run. It is clearly superior to other TV-movies from this era, albeit one which is thinly-derived from its source (Matheson's own short story). Dennis Weaver's Everyman is meant to mirror us in the audience: the not-guilty who sometimes get in over our heads despite our best efforts to do the right thing. Weaver fits the bill, though his twangy voice and paranoid tics (not to mention his nervous hands on the nervous steering wheel) are apt to drive most viewers up the wall even before the character gets fed up. All technical aspects of the film are top-notch, yet it does seem elongated, even at its original 74 minute running time.
Review of Duel
