Roadgames [Road Games] *** (1981, Stacy Keach, Jamie Lee Curtis) – Classic Movie Review 11,743

Director Richard Franklin’s Australian tense and suspenseful 1981 horror thriller Roadgames [Road Games] stars Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Roadgames [Road Games] drives out of the rut as a much better than just commonplace thriller about a truck driver called Pat Quid (Keach) in Melbourne who travels across Australia and gives lift to young hitchhiker named Pamela (Curtis). Pat suspects that the driver (Smith or Jones) of a green van who has been acting strange may be the serial killer mentioned on the radio who attacks women and dumps their dismembered bodies in plastic bags on desolate highways.

Several exciting chases keep the action moving and the tension bubbling while Keach and Curtis try hard to bring the required sexual and psychological depths to their roles.

It flopped at the box office but led to Franklin directing Psycho II in 1983. The budget of A$1.75 million was the highest for an Australian film at that time, but the box office was only A$100,000. Avco Embassy paid $500,000 for international rights and the rest of the finance came from the Greater Union Organisation Pty, the Australian Film Commission, the Victorian Film Corporation, and the Western Australian Film Council.

It was shot on location in the Nullarbor Plain and in Melbourne.

Franklin gave writer Everett De Roche the screenplay of Hitchcock’s Rear Window to show how he wanted the script. De Roche said he wanted to write a film with a similar plot but set on a moving vehicle, so it is a Hitchcock-style road movie. He developed the idea in Fiji with Franklin, who was co-producing The Blue Lagoon (1980). De Roche wrote the first draft in eight days in a hotel, with Franklin visiting during his production breaks.

Franklin could not afford first choice Sean Connery. Australian actress Lisa Peers was cast to play opposite Stacy Keach but US  Avco Embassy distributors insisted on an American co-star, so Franklin cast Jamie Lee Curtis. Franklin said he wished he had increased the size of Curtis’s role to take better advantage of her work.

The cast are Stacy Keach as Pat Quid, Jamie Lee Curtis as Pamela ‘Hitch’, Marion Edward as Frita, Grant Page as The Killer ‘Smith or Jones’, Bill Stacey, Thaddeus Smith, Stephen Millichamp, Alan Hopgood, John Murphy, Robert Thompson and Ed Turley.

Roadgames [Road Games] is directed by Richard Franklin, runs 101 minutes, is made by Barber International, Essaness Pictures and Quest Films, is released by GUO Film Distributors (Australia) and Avco Embassy (international), is written by Everett De Roche, is shot by Vincent Manton, is produced by Richard Franklin and is scored by Brian May.

See also Patrick (1978), Long Weekend (1978), Next of Kin (1982), and Terror Train (1980).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,743

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