You can have days in life where literally everything goes wrong! Poor, neurotic housewife Carol Turner is experiencing such a day to the extreme, to say the least. She was scheduled to enjoy a second honeymoon, but then her hubby is stuck at work. Carol finds herself all alone in a motel room when she receives a phone call to inform her that her 9-year-old son is in the hospital due to an accident. She needs to go urgently from Phoenix to Denver, but there aren't any flights due to the bad weather. Carol hates driving on the Interstate, but now she must start a 16-hour drive with a gas tank as good as empty.
And yet, the worst is still to come for Carol. As night falls, she witnesses the brutal murder of a police officer by an unseen killer in a yellow Mustang. She rushes off and a deadly cat-and-mouse game ensues.
"Night Drive" is clearly inspired by the greatest television thriller of all times; - namely Steven Spielberg's "Duel". Of course, this one contains more dramatic background and a whole lot less suspense, but it has a handful of strong moments. Several sequences carry on for too long, like Carol's intrusion of an abandoned gas station, and actually reduce the tension level rather than building it up. The killer (Richard Romanus) is very menacing. He's mysterious, silent (when he does speak he uses a larynx box), and his mean personality is perfectly illustrated in an early scene at a roadside diner. He is creepy, but still not as creepy as a psycho that remains invisible the entire time, like in "Duel".
