Duel (Collector's Edition) (1971)

This is an extremely lean but effective psychological thriller with Dennis Weaver (of "Gunsmoke" fame) effectively portraying the first of Spielberg's favorite characters, the Everyman--in this case, an average auto motorist driving to a business appointment on a lonely California highway. He tries to pass a road-hogging diesel truck; but when he does, the truck goes after him for the rest of the way. Neither Weaver nor the viewer ever sees the truck driver, with the exception of a beefy hand and a pair of cowboy boots; but it's perfectly obvious that this man is a total psychopath.

Though suffering from some slight technical flaws, DUEL is brilliantly directed by Spielberg. The film's screenplay is by the always-excellent sci-fi/horror writer Richard Matheson, who based it on a short story he had published in the April '71 edition of Playboy magazine. Matheson, known for such novels as "I Am Legend" and scripts for "The Twilight Zone", is a master at this kind of mind-bending terror, and the combination of his and Spielberg's talents results in one of the most gut-wrenching and emotionally draining suspense films of all times. One can see its influence on later films like the underrated 1997 thriller BREAKDOWN, and as a chilling precursor to today's violent, real-life incidents of road rage. A must-see!

Duel works because of the talents of a young Steven Spielberg and the likeable everyman performance of Dennis Weaver. Indeed, Weaver's contribution has often been overshadowed by the hype surrounding Spielberg's involvement and that's a shame because he gives a truly perfect performance, a worthy model for actors (especially those currently sleepwalking through today's crop of horror films) everywhere. Weaver is one of those talented actors who, because he was never a showy performer and for the most part limited himself to television work, has never really gotten his due. In Duel, he is totally believable as an ordinay man caught up in an extradorinary situation. From the minute he first appears on screen, viewers can easily accept him as their surrogate and it is this indentifiability that makes what happens to him so enthralling and disturbing. As for Spielberg, this film proves that, had he not gotten into his head to be a great filmmaker, Speilberg could have had a very lucrative and rewarding career as a modern day Roger Corman. Using the techniques he would later hone to perfection in Jaws, Spielberg crafts an unpretentious, massively entertaining horror film that never loses sight of reality. Working with essentially one actor and one set, Spielberg manages to capture the viewer from the first minute and keeps the narrative flying for the next 90 minutes, never allowing things to slack off and never giving viewers a reason to look away from the screen. Especially compared with some of Spielberg's later, more "respectable" entertainments, Duel represents the ideal Spielberg -- all of his skill without the later need to prove he was capable of more than just being a "mere" entertainer. Duel, despite being this young director's first film, is a perfect example of everything that Steven Spielberg does right and when compared with his later films, it becomes just as perfect an example of everything Spielberg's done wrong since then.

But don't watch the film because it was directed by Steven Spielberg or because Dennis Weaver was always underrated as an actor. Watch it because it does everything you could possibly want a thriller to do.