Richard Matheson’s tale was just what Steven Spielberg wanted for his first movie. Spielberg’s low-budget ABC-TV Movie of the Week, is regarded as one of the best TV movies ever aired.

By Randal C. Hill
Guest Columnist

It was early 1971, and 24-year-old Universal Studios employee Steven Spielberg found himself champing at the bit. So far, he had directed a few TV episodes, but he was eager to make his mark in the movies and felt that all he needed to launch his career was the right vehicle for him.

“Vehicle” becomes the operative word here.

That April, Steven’s secretary showed him a Playboy short story called “Duel.” The riveting tale had been written by sci-fi author Richard Matheson, whom Spielberg admired for his scripts for Rod Serling’s now-classic “The Twilight Zone.”

Matheson based “Duel” on an actual incident from 1963, when an aggressive truck driver had tailgated him for miles on a freeway and left him terrified and exhausted. (Matheson would later write the screenplay that helped to rocket Spielberg into the Big Time.)

Steven saw “Duel” as being just what he wanted. “I thought it was a complete exercise in a cat-and-mouse game of classic suspense,” he said of Richard’s tale of milquetoast salesman David Mann in a vulnerable little sedan being chased — inexplicably — along desolate California desert roads by a psychotic tanker-truck driver, his machine belching smoke and his full-throttle diesel engine growling like an enraged animal.

The story, assigned to Spielberg as a low-budget ABC-TV “Movie of the Week” project, reminded him of a suspenseful Alfred Hitchcock work, sort of a “The Birds” on wheels.

For the crucial lead role, he chose Dennis Weaver, best known as Chester from the TV series “Gunsmoke.” Steven used dialogue sparingly, as he did with the screechy, “Psycho”-like soundtrack.

The young director “auditioned” several tanker trucks before settling on a 1957 Peterbilt, which he chose because of its seeming “face” — the split windshield became the eyes; the huge, protruding snout seemed menacing, the grille and bumper a sneering mouth. Grease covered the windows, and the truck’s body was streaked with oil and dirt.

The truck was driven by Cory Loftin, Hollywood’s finest-ever stunt driver. It was imperative to Steven that the driver’s face never be shown. (“The unseen is always more frightening,” he reminds us.)

At all times, the viewer is drawn into the grip of the looming threat of danger — or death — from Loftin’s steel monster in full road rage, a rolling time bomb ready to explode at any moment, an aggressor in high pursuit and often close to bringing down its frightened, hapless prey.

Universal gave Spielberg a mere 10 days for the shoot (he went three days over) and had wanted filming to be done at their Hollywood sound stage; Speilberg, though, was adamant that everything be shot on desert roads in order to effectively capture the growing suspense and urgency necessary for the story to become a true nail-biter.

Today, “Duel” is regarded as one of the best — if not the best — TV movies ever aired. All of Spielberg’s greatest strengths are on display here, years before the many classic blockbuster films that made him the most successful movie director in Tinseltown history.