Roadgames

Road Games
Theatrical film poster
Directed by	Richard Franklin
Produced by	Richard Franklin
Screenplay by	Everett De Roche
Story by	Everett De Roche Richard Franklin
Starring	Stacy Keach Jamie Lee Curtis
Music by	Brian May
Cinematography	Vincent Monton
Edited by	Edward McQueen-Mason
Distributed by	Embassy Pictures
Release dates	26 June 1981 (1981-06-26)
Running time	101 minutes
Country	Australia
Language	English
Budget	A$1.75 million[1]
Box office	A$100,800,000 (estimated)

Road Games (also known as Roadgames) is a 1981 Australian thriller film directed by Richard Franklin. The film stars Stacy Keach as a truck driver, and Jamie Lee Curtis as a hitchhiker.

Synopsis

The film opens on truck driver Patrick Quid (Stacy Keach) as he pulls into a motel for the night. Quid notices a man in a green van checking in with a female hitchhiker he had passed earlier because the trucking company policy forbids it. Nevertheless, Quid is upset at the man for taking the last room in the motel and picking up the attractive hitcher. In the motel, the hitcher strums a guitar naked on the bed, while the unidentified man unpacks a new guitar string. He winds the string around his gloved hands and uses it to strangle the woman.

Quid wakes the next morning in his truck. His pet dingo sniffs relentlessly at the garbage outside the motel, and Quid notices the van driver watching the dingo from the window of the motel room. Quid picks up a load of pigs from Universal Meats. He sets off for Perth with his load and passes various characters on the road: a nagging wife and her family, a cautious man hauling a sailboat, and a station wagon crammed full of toy balls. He repeatedly passes by another female hitchhiker.

The nagging wife creates a roadblock by streaming pink paper across the highway. When Quid stops at the sight of it, she climbs into his cab and orders Quid to catch up with her husband who left her at the side of the road. They play What's My Line? to pass the time. The woman informs Quid about the grisly murder of a woman, and his nonchalant answers start to disturb her. She suspects that he might be the serial killer from the news. Quid stops the truck when he sees the green van parked along the road. Its driver has several trash bags and an esky. He appears to be burying the bags. When the van driver notices Quid watching him through binoculars, he abandons his work and drives away.

At a roadhouse, the van driver assaults Quid's dingo while he is inside. Quid gives chase, but he encounters the slow driving boat owner who refuses to let Quid pass. Eventually, Quid destroys the boat, but the green van is too far off to catch.

Quid picks up the female hitchhiker, Pamela Rushworth (Jamie Lee Curtis), that he has passed before. She gradually reveals that she is the daughter of a powerful American diplomat. Quid urges Pamela to let her father know that she is alright. The duo eagerly discuss the serial killer. At a service station, they notice the green van parked near the restroom. Quid sees a pair of feet in the toilet stall, and he thinks he has the killer cornered. Pamela investigates the green van while Quid tries to get the man to exit the stall. As Pamela reaches for the esky inside the van, she realizes that the driver is sleeping on the floor. In the restroom, a biker emerges from the stall and rushes outside. Quid rushes outside to see that the green van is gone.

When he catches up to the van, it appears that Pamela is happily in the passenger seat. Later that night, Quid notices the van parked off the side of the road, and pulls over to investigate. He hears people giggling in the bushes nearby and assumes that Pamela and the van driver are engaged in sexual intercourse. When he breaks into the van to investigate, he finds that the esky only contains food so he rests his suspicions.

Quid arrives at the outskirts of Perth, and while reporting to the weigh station, sees the green van. The proximity of several police cars revives his suspicions, and he follows the van through the streets of Perth, trailed by the police. Eventually the van reaches a dead end, and Quid's truck becomes stuck in the narrow alleys.

The van driver approaches Quid's truck and attempts to strangle Quid with a garrotte, but Quid manages to disarm him. When Quid starts to strangle the van driver with the same weapon, the police arrive and falsely assume that Quid is the killer. Upon freeing a gagged and bound Pamela from the van, the police learn that Quid is innocent, and pursue Pamela's actual captor through the crowd.

When Quid finally delivers the meat shipment, a torso and human head, presumably belonging to a murder victim, are found in his trailer.

Cast

• Stacy Keach as Quid
• Jamie Lee Curtis as Hitch / Pamela
• Marion Edward as Frita
• Grant Page as the killer

Production

While making the film Patrick Richard Franklin gave Everett De Roche a copy of Rear Window as an example of how he wanted the script typed. De Roche loved the content of the script and expressed his desire to write a film with a similar plot but set on a moving vehicle.^[2] He developed the idea with Franklin in Fiji, where the latter was co-producing The Blue Lagoon (1980).^[1] De Roche wrote the first draft of Road Games over a period of 8 days in a hotel, with Franklin visiting periodically during breaks in the production of Blue Lagoon.^[3]

Shot on location in the Nullarbor Plain and in Melbourne, the budget of $1.75 million was the highest ever for an Australian film at that time. Avco Embassy paid $500,000 for all rights outside Australia, and the balance came from the Greater Union, the Australian Film Commission, the Victorian Film Corporation, and the Western Australian Film Council.^[1]

Franklin wanted to cast Sean Connery in the lead, but was unable to afford his salary, and the role went to Stacy Keach instead.

Australian actress Lisa Peers was cast to play opposite him, but the US distributors insisted on an American co-star, so Franklin cast Jamie Lee Curtis.^[4] The film ran into trouble with Actors Equity when the Melbourne branch of the union approved the importation of Curtis, but the Sydney branch opposed it. "We found ourselves as the ping-pong ball in a game of politics between Melbourne and Sydney, and it nearly resulted in the film closing down," said Franklin.^[3] Franklin later acknowledged wishing he had increased the size of Curtis' part to take more advantage of her.^[5]

Reception

Road Games did not perform as well in the United States as originally expected, which Franklin blames on its marketing as a slasher film. However, it did lead to Franklin landing the job of directing Psycho II in 1983.^[5]

Quentin Tarantino called Road Games his favorite Australian film.

Awards

See also

• Cinema of Australia
• IMDb awards

References

External links

• Road Games at the Internet Movie Database
• Road Games at Oz Movies
• Road Games at the National Film and Sound Archive
• Road Games OST track listing on 1M1 Records' website