Road Games

1981's ROAD GAMES decides from its opening moments that its tone will be more in the lighthearted vein than anything sinister or forboding.  The movie is so laid back and unthreatening that it barely qualifies as a thriller, much less a horror movie, despite its categorization and marketing.  This is good news for viewers who crave a more witty, cerebral exercise in their shiver fare than your usual early '80s splatterfest.  ROAD GAMES, made in Australia, has been lumped in with other "Ozploitation", but is in fact free of any serious violence and has no nudity or explicit sex, aside from some mild innuendoes.  All good, but the movie is also distressingly mild and even goofy at times.

Those first scenes establish the amiable personality of trucker Patrick Quid (Stacy Keach), a chatterbox of a guy who shares his cab with a pet dingo ("he doesn't bark").  I've always liked the actor, but here he creates one of his most ingratiating blokes, a lonely intellectual who quotes poetry and likes to play "What's My Line " with folks he picks up.  People like a middle aged nag whose husband abandoned her roadside and a young woman named Pam (scream queen of the day Jamie Lee Curtis) who seems to be all over the desert before Quid relents and finally gives her a lift.  It is with her that he shares an easy, possibly flirtatious rapport, and a common interest in tracking a suspicious green van, the one Quid has followed since its driver beat him to a hotel's last vacant room at the beginning of this movie.

The driver is a serial murderer.  We see his work on an unfortunate hitchhiker in that hotel.  Quid knew there was something off about the guy.  His dingo obsessively sniffed a garbage bag while someone was peeking from the hotel window.   Now that van shares the open road with Quid and a variety of other strange motorists, including one with so many balls in the backseat they obscure the windows, and another who very cautiously hauls a boat.  Will the killer strike again? Is Pam to be the next victim? Is it really illegal for Quid to have that dingo?

Director Richard Franklin achieves a nice off kilter vibe with ROAD GAMES.  Predictable, it is not.  Playing detective along with Quid is mostly fun, if a bit tedious and wearying.  I was expecting a far more tense and scary motion picture, but the few suspenseful moments we get aren't frightening in the slightest.  Franklin is an avowed student of Alfred Hitchcock, and pays homage throughout the movie (some have dubbed this REAR WINDSHIELD), and that alone will entertain fans of the great director, but, uh, your mileage ultimately may vary.

NOTE - Optimum enjoyment will be achieved if you do not take the film's events literally, especially the eventful climax.