Horror Movies Featuring Trucks –Perfect for Halloween
For Halloween, we present two horror films that are perfect for viewers who are familiar with logistics and road transport, as the starring roles are played by trucks. Get ready for a chilling movie session. Warning: there may be minor spoilers.
Duel (1971), dir. Steven Spielberg
Before Steven Spielberg became the maestro of blockbuster cinema, with hits like Jaws, E.T., and Jurassic Park, he worked as a television director, learning the craft of filmmaking. He directed several episodes of the series Columbo, and then the executives at Universal Television — impressed with the young director’s work — entrusted him with the task of making a TV movie to be aired on ABC. The screenplay was written by Richard Matheson, a science fiction author who adapted his own short story, published a few years earlier in Playboy. The lead role went to Dennis Weaver (best known for this film and the crime series McCloud). Duel, as it is called, premiered on November 13, 1971, and immediately became a hit. It was such a big success that Universal decided to release the movie in theaters. However, Spielberg first had to return to the set and film additional scenes to extend the TV runtime of 74 minutes to a theatrical 90 minutes. The cinema version was released in Europe and Australia, where it also made a great impression on audiences and critics.
The story in Duel is simple, which is perhaps why it works so well even today. The main character, David Mann, is a salesman driving through the Mojave Desert to visit a client. Soon, his red 1970 Plymouth Valiant is targeted by the driver of a massive Peterbilt 281 tanker truck. The giant, rusty truck repeatedly tries to push Mann’s car off the road or under a passing train — essentially trying to kill the innocent salesman. Why? The viewers never find out, just like the film’s protagonist. The face of the Peterbilt driver is never shown (the camera captures only his arm and boots). This gives Duel a more horror-like atmosphere. The pursuer’s motives are unknown, his face is hidden, and the truck chasing the car (like a biblical Goliath chasing David) is like a terrifying beast: huge, rusty, dripping with grease, and belching dark smoke from its exhaust pipes.
Even after all these decades since its release, Duel still holds up. It’s also worth watching to see the early directorial skills of Spielberg, which he later honed in high-budget productions (the budget for Duel was only $450,000).
Maximum Overdrive (1986), dir. Stephen King
Carrie, The Shining, Salem’s Lot, It — these are just a few classic horror novels from Stephen King, the undisputed king of horror literature. Hollywood was quick to show interest in King’s works. Carrie was adapted by Brian De Palma, The Shining by Stanley Kubrick (today an absolute classic, though the deviations from the original book angered King), and Christine by horror master John Carpenter. In the mid-80s, legendary Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis approached King and signed a contract for three films based on his novels and short stories. The first of these was to be written and directed by King himself. It was a risky endeavor, as this was King’s directorial debut, and he was also struggling with a drug addiction at the time. Both factors significantly affected the quality of the finished production. It’s enough to say that Maximum Overdrive is considered one of the worst films in cinema history, and King, who saw this project as a lesson in a new craft, later disowned the film, calling it “a movie for morons”and never directed anything else again. Is it really that bad? Well, yes. But at the same time, watching Maximum Overdrive is a lot of fun because it’s one of those “so bad, it’s good”movies.
King adapted his short story Trucks (from the collection Night Shift) but changed its tone. The original literary version is grim and serious, while the film is drenched in campy humor, with plenty of violence and explosions. Add to that a score by AC/DC (featuring the hit “Who Made Who”;the soundtrack is one of the few undeniably good elements of the film) and Emilio Estevez in the lead role, and you have the essence of 1980s B-movie cinema.
The plot? The Earth passes through the tail of the comet Rhea-M. As the planet moves through the comet’s path, strange things begin to happen: machines come to life! Drawbridges open on their own, causing road accidents, ATMs insult customers, lawnmowers kill their owners, and arcade machines electrocute people. A group of survivors takes refuge at a gas station, which is surrounded by trucks that — you guessed it! — want to kill the survivors. Leading the pack of murderous 18-wheelers is a 1976 White Western Star 4800 truck transporting toys for the Happy Toyz company. Instead of a chrome grille, it features the stylized head of a menacing goblin, which has become a symbol of the movie.
Maximum Overdrive flopped at the box office, and critics trashed the film (it earned two Golden Raspberry nominations), but today it enjoys cult status. Eleven years later, Trucks was adapted again, this time as a TV movie. A few years ago, Joe Hill, the son of Stephen and Tabitha King, also a writer, announced that he would like to remake Maximum Overdrive, updating it for modern times. Could killer iPhones and Roombas join the deadly trucks?