Duel (1971)

Director Steven Spielberg's first professionally produced full length feature is based on a short story by Sci-Fi 'man for all seasons' Richard Matheson, and shot as a TV movie vehicle for Dennis Weaver, star of the then popular series McCloud. The film was so well received after its broadcast debut that additional scenes were filmed and it was released theatrically abroad. The plot concerns a middle aged businessman (Weaver) who is mercilessly pursued by the unseen driver of a dirty tanker truck after he cuts him off on an isolated California desert highway. This may be the first movie about road rage, and the persistent menace of the unseen driver well foreshadows the (at first) visually obscured presence of the relentless shark in Spielberg's Jaws, the film that would cement him as far above the TV movie pay grade. Weaver does a good job of anchoring the piece, better then I'd expected actually, he plays the whole situation rather realistically which just makes things all the more tense. For its a director a work of genius in utero. ***1/2