Déviation Mortelle

It's amazing how many pleasant treats you'll find on TV Friday nights at one o'clock in the morning. Take "Roadgames" (or "Road Games") for example: The Hitchcockian story of a trucker delivering meat across Australia who becomes entangled in a possible mystery involving an unapprehensible serial killer who may or may not have murdered a helpless hitchhiker traveling the roads he's driving on.

Often referred to as "Rear Window" on the road, self-proclaimed Hitchcock enthusiast Richard Franklin has directed a quaint, low-budget thriller with a likable (although quite unusual) lead actor in the role of Frustrated Hero.

Pat Quid (Stacy Keach--who is indeed a man) is driving across Australia in a meat truck when he thinks he's noticed a strange happening--a man in a van seems to be burying a bag in the middle of a desert in Australia, and when he is noticed he climbs back into his blue van and speeds away into the distance.

Pat puts this event into the back of his mind when he decides against regulations to pick up a wandering hitchhiker named Pam Rushworth (Jamie Lee Curtis), who has run away from home in an effort to escape her famous father's life. The two bond together on the road and have some fun playing various games--until she is kidnapped by the same strange man in a van. At first, Pat thinks he's just being paranoid--he even starts to think that Pam left him for the man.

But then he realizes that Pam has indeed been kidnapped, and he suspects that the strange man in the van might be a notorious serial killer who has been killing young women and scattering their body parts miles apart from each other.

After the police offer no help, Pat takes matters into his own hands and sets off on a quest to bring back Pam to safety and apprehend the killer before he can strike again. Some twists and turns ensue, although nothing very surprising.

If this were a mainstream horror film with an overblown budget and big-name actors, I'd probably give "Roadgames" a bad rating. But this is the type of pleasant, likable low-budget thriller that is easy to watch and knows it's nothing more than a shadow of greater film noir mysteries/thrillers like "Rear Window" or "The Third Man"--the type of film that thrusts its hero on a one-man venture into the heart of darkness in order to find out the truth.

Stacy Keach is strikingly likable as the lonely trucker who talks to his own pet dingo as he drives along, contemplating all types of conspiracy theories about serial killers and mysteries. What could definitely become tiring--listening to a man talk to his dingo for the majority of a movie, that is--actually becomes quite fun. Keach is funny, nice, and just...likable! Too bad his career was put on hold years later after he got arrested for smuggling cocaine...

The director, Richard Franklin, is a huge Hitchcock fan--and it shows. This film is like a sort of remake of "Rear Window" and other such mystery-thrillers. It's loads of fun and an easy watch. (Trivia note: Franklin directed "Psycho II," the sequel to Hitchcock's 1960 classic original.)

I can definitely say that this film is most like "Breakdown," the Jonathan Mostow movie starring Kurt Russell as a man who loses his wife to a trucker and tries to get her back, even though there seems to be no evidence of her disappearance. But unlike the great "Breakdown," this film doesn't wither away in the second half and turn into a disappointing movie--it remains strong throughout, and yes, it has plenty of nods towards Hitchcock. (Check out the magazines Curtis starts sorting through--there he is!)

3.5/5 stars.

• John Ulmer

Nice, quiet thriller with hitchcockian tones, with Stacy Keach as a truck driver would be Sherlock Holmes in the Australian wilderness, following a possible hitchiker murderer. With a young and pretty Jamie Lee Curtis and several curious cameos. Not to be missed if you like a strange, fascinating road movie.

Roadgames is a pretty good thriller about truck driver Quid (Stacey Keach) follows what he suspects to be a serial killer along the Southern Australia interstates. Having only the circumstantial clues and never actually witnessing any of the murders, Quid isn't sure whether this guy really is the serial killer that police reports on the radio indicate, or whether it is Quid's psychological games about guessing what people on the road could be like when he passes a noisy family in a station wagon and guesses the occupation of the driver. Quid is pushed nearly to the brink of insanity as he tries to distinguish between fact and fiction as he and the green van play cat and mouse all over the outback.

It's a really good thriller and better than say, The Hitcher, another movie involving a serial killer along deserted highways that torments a driver. But the difference is that Quid has limited interaction with his suspect, because the whole time you're left guessing whether the guy in the green van is really a killer at all, or whether it was just another one of Quid's games meant to entertain himself, but gone totally out of control. The movie has very Hitchcock-esque traits such as building Quid up from a normal man to one that starts to develop something almost like a split personality as he drives himself crazy trying to figure out the deal his adversary. Or the way that everyone in town seems to turn against Quid even though he is supposed to be the innocent person here. It's also good with some of that good Stacey Keach sarcasm and delivery. I think he fit the part of Quid quite nicely. Despite the fact that the story starts to lose momentum towards the end (but not the conclusion), it is nonetheless, a pretty good thriller.

Stacy Keach plays a truck driver, he and his best friend, a dingo, are taking meat to Perth, along the way he wonders about other drivers and their life, a way to keep himself distracted. A suspicious green van catches his attention, later on when he finds out that murders have been taking place, he immediately associates them with the van. After watching the van's driver bury a couple of bags in the middle of the desert he has no more doubts about the relation of it to the murders. Braking "truckers" rules he picks up a hitchhiker, Pam (Jamie Lee Curtis), they'll complement each other perfectly, sharing murder theories among other things. The police ends up suspecting Pat (Stacy Keach) so Pam believes that the only way for him to prove is innocence is to find the real killer but he finds them first and kidnaps her, or is it that she went by her own free will?

Nice thriller, the acting as you can expect is pretty good. Keach and Curtis create a believable bond, a mutual crush develops but the age difference is a problem. The script is fairly intelligent and certainly effective. Keach's character is full of theories and anecdotes, which keeps the movie interesting at moments where all you see is the Australian outback. Well worth watching.

Truck driver Pat Quid (Stacy Keach), transporting meat across Australia, believes a suspicious van driver he continually sees on his trip may be responsible for a series of hitchhiker murders. Along the way Quid picks up a hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) and tells her his suspicions. The two try to track the van driver while Quid becomes the police's number one suspect for the murders.

I think Richard Franklin is one of the more under-appreciated directors from the '80s. He made several interesting films before fading into mediocrity in the '90s, a fate that befell many '80s directors. There's a strong Hitchcock influence throughout Franklin's work, including this film, which should come as no surprise for the man who would go on to direct Psycho II. For his part, Stacy Keach carries the movie with ease. He reminds me of some of the protagonists from great Hitchcock thrillers who were normal, easy-going guys that were thrust into dangerous plots. This is easily the best performance I've seen from Keach. Jamie Lee Curtis is likable in her small part as the hitchhiker, a role similar to the one she played in The Fog the year before.

I've always enjoyed this movie. It's a fun, suspenseful thriller with a good cast and some dark humor. One of the better "killer on the road" movies I've seen.