Roadgames
| Road Games | |
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Theatrical film poster
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| 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 |
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Release date
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Running time
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101 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | A$1.75 million |
| Box office | A$100,000 |
Roadgames (also known as Road Games) is a 1981 Australian thriller film directed by Richard Franklin and starring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis. The film follows a truck driver traveling across Australia who, along with the help of a hitchhiker, seeks to track down a serial killer who is butchering women and dumping their dismembered bodies along desolate highways.
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.
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Wikipedia