Forgotten Ozploitation: Road Games (1981)

I picked this film up on the basis of director Richard Franklin's other work. I really enjoyed both his sequels to Psycho and FX. Psycho II in particular is a film I've always had a great deal of fondness for. I love that film's playful sense of black humour and the way it builds on the original film rather than rehashing it. Road Games was made in 1981 and was at the time the most expensive film ever made in Australia (though you won't notice looking at it). Franklin was a graduate from University of Southern California and was good friends with John Carpenter. He initially hoped to get Sean Connery for the lead but the budget couldn't stretch. However Carpenter did recommend Jamie Lee Cutis to him, while they were working on The Fog, and she took a small but key role in the film.

Road Games sees Stacy Keach play a truck driver called Pat Quid who is hauling a lorry full of frozen meat through the Australian outback. To pass the time he likes playing little games with himself, like imagining the lives of other drivers. When he hears on the radio that a serial killer is on the loose he begins to grow suspicious of the driver of a green van who always seems to be in front of him. The longer he travels the more sure he becomes that the driver of the green van IS the killer. He enlists the help of Pamela (Jamie Lee Curtis), a young hitchhiker who he picks up, and together they try and gather some concrete evidence. However, when Pamela mysteriously disappears Quid is forced to prove his own innocence to the authorities. Will he save Pamela in time? Is he right about the man in the green van?

The film is very much a Hitchcock homage and the plot plays out like a variation on Rear Window. Quid is a curious voyeur just like Jimmy Stewart's character in Rear Window only he's not as powerless. Rather than being confined to a room with a broken leg, he's only confined to a truck cabin and a single stretch of highway. However he's also on his own for much of the film with only his pet dingo to keep his sanity alive!

One thing I will say is that the poster for the film completely missells what it is. Don't get me wrong it's a great poster but it leads you to think that you're going to see a slasher with loads of gory murders and you don't. Everything is very restrained and beyond some slightly lurid conversations between Curtis and Keach it's all pretty tame. I actually enjoyed this approach in an old fashioned sort of way because it leaves it completely up to the viewer to imagine what's going on (including whether Quid is right about the green van man being the killer).

The only real weak point of the film is that the end gets a little messy. Essentially, all the drivers that Quid has met on his journey turn up at the end and testify to the police how much of a dangerous lunatic he is. Apparently Franklin ran out of money and couldn't film all the bits he wanted that would have tied them back into the story. As such, they sort of appear out of nowhere which is a bit of shame.

Keach really holds the film together and he and Curtis have great chemistry. Much like Lauren Hutton in John Carpenter's Someone's Watching Me Keach spends a lot of the film on his own talking to himself which should be annoying but it's not. Keach makes Quid a thoroughly likeable and quirky character and you're always rooting for him however desperate he gets. I love the fact that he constantly feels the need to correct people about his profession - "Listen lady, just because I drive it truck, it does not make me a truck driver." I will warn any potential viewers that despite being second billed Curtis doesn't appear for a great deal of the film. However she makes the most of her small scenes. Her character of Pamela (or 'Hitch' as Quid nicknames her) makes a great counter foil to Quid and I liked the lack of any sexual tension between the two.


All in all Road Games is a decent little thriller. Sure it's more witty than scary but it's a fun film all the same. Any fans of Hitchcock's thrillers will feel right at home with this. If you want a little blood stick with The Hitcher but if you want some mystery and old fashioned storytelling try this one out.

GRADE: B

John Carpenter's TV work: Body Bags (1993)

After the commercial and critical flop of Memoirs of An Invisible Man in 1992 (see The Flops of Chevy Chase) John Carpenter signed a deal with US TV network Showtime to produce a horror anthology series. It was quite a cynical idea on the part of Showtime and they were clearly hoping to replicate (and maybe even overtake) the success that, rival network, HBO were having with their show "Tales from the Crypt". So Carpenter set out and directed the first two episodes and roped in Tobe Hooper (Texas Chain Saw Massacre) to direct the third. However during shooting Showtime got cold feet about committing to a full series and put the show into turn around before any episodes had aired. The decision was made to salvage the footage by editing them into one 90 TV movie called Body Bags.

So the first installment is called 'The Gas Station' which tells the story of Anne (Alex Datcher), a college student who takes a job as a night shift cashier at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Locked in her glass booth she thinks she's safe but as the night drags on things get creepy and customer start turning up dead. The second episode is called 'Hair' which sees Stacy Keach play a businessman who is obsessively worried about his receding hair line. He goes to see a doctor (played by David Warner) who offers him a new and experimental treatment which at first seems like a success but soon becomes deadly! And the final segment is called 'Eye' which sees Mark Hamill play a baseball player who is injured in a car accident and has to have an eye transplant. Not long after he starts getting murderous urges and is forced to look into who the eye originally belonged to. Each segment is bookended by an appearance by John Carpenter who plays a ghoulish morgue attendant who enjoys cutting up dead bodies.

Any anthology movie is tough to review because you're always going to get varying quality between all the segments. Even the best examples of the genre like Creepshow have weak parts. It certainly doesn't help that Body Bags also falls in between being a TV show and a movie. As a TV show it's slightly above average but as a movie it's pretty cheap looking and not very satisfying. I'd probably say that the first installment - 'The Gas Station' - is the best of the bunch. I think what makes it work is that it's a simple story all told in one location and Carpenter throws in a ton of red herrings and misdirection to keep your interest held throughout. You know from the moment that a radio newscaster mentions an escaped mental patient is on the loose that one of the gas patrons is going to turn out to be him but you never know if it's going to be the obvious hobo-looking guy or the unassuming businessman.

 'Hair' isn't too bad but it suffers from the fact that it's played mostly for laughs. The only real horror comes in the last two minutes of the episode when Keach realises what exactly the hair treatment entails and even then it's pretty silly. Keach gives a really good performance though as the balding businessman. You really feel his frustration and impotence. 'Eye' is probably the least of the three. The problem is the story is really weak. It's obvious from the outset that Hamill's replacement eye is (spoiler) going to turn out to have been donated by a convicted murderer. So it's kinda of dull waiting 30 minutes for the lead character to come to this conclusion too. That said Hamill does do a good job when his character turns psycho. People forget he's actually a very versatile actor.

The real reason you should watch this is for Carpenter's segments inbetween each episode where he plays the morgue attendant. These are a really fun and playful. Carpenter's performance reminded me a lot of Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice. It's got that same live-wire atmosphere. The attendant is a really twisted guy and there's good 'reveal' about him at the very end of the film that I didn't see coming. Also, it's quite fun to catch all the famous cameos and in-jokes dotted around the episodes - Sam Raimi, Wes Craven, Twiggy, Debbie Harry, Tom Arnold all pop up in tiny roles. Another strong point is the gore used in the films. It's not frequent but when people do die it goes way over-the-top. In one bit a guy gets crushed by a car and rivers of blood come pouring out. It's insane!

Overall, Body Bags isn't a great TV movie but it's a fun way of wasting an hour and half. The major problem is that it's too focused on setting up a last minute twist to all its stories that it forgets to actually be scary. I'm glad Carpenter got back to doing theatrical films after this because TV (especially a 30 minute TV show) really doesn't suit his style. If you're going to track it down make sure you avoid the region 1 DVD from Artisan. They cut a lot of the gore which makes the film far less enjoyable. The VHS in the UK is completely uncut.

GRADE: B-