“I’d like to report a truck driver who’s been endangering my life!” Our Steven Spielberg Series continues with a detour back to where it all started – 1971’s TV movie-turned-theatrical debut DUEL.
Mild mannered travelling salesman David Mann (Dennis Weaver) finds himself the unexplained target of escalating threats from a mysterious, smoke-belching truck’s largely unseen driver, as they cross the barren California desert highways locked in a cat-and-mouse chase towards an inevitably deadly conclusion.
Under contract as the wunderkind development project of then-Universal president Sid Sheinberg, the 24-year-old Spielberg lobbied to follow up his seminal Columbo episode with this Richard Matheson-penned thriller as a forum to flex his aptitude for visceral action and tension. After pulling in a very respectable audience share and earning a run in European cinemas, Spielberg was ready to take his explorations of overmatched man versus an unstoppable force onto the water…
Join Gali, Devlin and Matt at the Snakearama for a sinister Swiss cheese on rye sandwich of suspense!
Get this episode’s cover art in a poster print from Teemill!
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