Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Kodie Bird True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

jadavix "Road Games" is a classic Australian thriller, though its two key roles are played by American actors.Stacy Keach is a fantastic actor. How he has never been nominated for an Academy Award eludes me. He keeps the movie buoyant with his performance as the poetry quoting, eccentric truck driver Patrick Quid, who believes he may have seen the killer police are looking for, but then becomes a suspect himself.Jamie Lee Curtis is also great as usual, though her role is feels too small. She doesn't make her entrance until midway, and before then we meet another hitchhiker who adds little to the story. The plot could have been simplified.The beginning act, indeed, goes on a little too long for the thrills to really connect. It feels more like a road movie about Keach's character, which would have been fine. It is still a good thriller on top of everything else, and I was on the edge of my seat right at the end, but that was the first time in the movie I felt that way.Over all, "Road Games" is a classic Australian movie, but not quite as good a thriller.

froberts73 For me, this quirky little item came out of left field - and hit a home run. As has been oft pointed out, this is junior Hitchcock, and I think the master would have been impressed.The story, a mix of the familiar plus some very good new ideas, holds your attention. The Aussie outback scenery is most enjoyable and, of course, the acting is four-star.Jamie Lee looks so much better than she does on the tube hawking that yogurt, and Stacy Keach is always impressive. To digress: I spent the day with him and his brother, James, when they were in North Carolina's Outer Banks filming the Wright Brothers initial flight, exactly where it happened. It was for PBS and I'm not sure it was ever shown. A shame, too. The brothers were friendly - delightful company.Meanwhile, back in Australia and "Road Games." It is recommended for fans of suspense.The truck vs. van sequences were exciting. I always wonder, in scenes like those why there is no other traffic on the road. And, I wonder about the Aussies. The people in the store were nasty, the cops were nasty, Mel Gibson, in real life, is nasty.As for the Keach-Curtis flick, it is quite good and, by the way, the chemistry between the two was impressive. I picture them playing Monopoly between takes.

sol ***SPOILERS*** Alfred Hitchcock admirer director Richard Franklin's homage to "The Master" has him copy two of Hitchcock's best films "Rear Window" and "Psycho" putting them into his trucker horror flick "Road Games" with limited success. The movie comes across more like the Stephen Spilberg 1971 road thriller "Dule" but this time it's the hero of the film sleep deprived cross country tuck driver Pat Quid, Stacy Keach, who's doing the stalking of this unseen psycho not like in "Dule" where the roles are reversed.For his part Quid does have a partner to keep him awake and conversing with his pet dingo Boswell or "Boz" as Quid calls him who like dingo's who don't bark keeps quit almost throughout the entire film. That's until the finial few minutes of the movie when Boz starts bow-wowing not just saving his master Quid from a wild lynch mob, who think that he's the highway killer, but getting him to think if in fact "Boz" is a dingo at all or, what seems more likely, a cross breed or hybrid.On his way to Perth with a truckload of ham hocks ribs chops and slabs of bacon Quid stops at this motel to get some sleep but someone else, with a teenage girl hitch-hiker, got there before him. It's later when the same person driving the green van who beat Quid to the motel is seen looking out his motel window by a barley awake Quid that he starts getting ideas about him. That's as a garbage truck was picking up the garbage bags outside the motel! It's then that Quid gets the strange notion that the garbage bags are loaded with human body parts that he, after murdering his victim, put there!The movie flounders for almost 40 minutes with Quid tracking this mysterious green van that he feels the killer is driving until he picks up hitchhiker Palala "Hitch" Rushworth,Jamie Lee Curtis, who turns out to be a teenage runaway. The very kind of person that this highway psycho specializes in both murdering and chopping up! It's then that both Quid and Hitch get it all together by chasing the mysterious green van all the way to Perth only to have Hitch kidnapped by the highway psycho! That's when without Quid knowing about it, he was busy trying to trap the psycho in a highway rest stop rest room, Hitch tries to make,for reasons known only to herself, conversation with him in his van!***SPOILERS*** The movie ends in a low speed car chase, about 15 to 20 mph, ending in Perth Australia that has Quid confronted by this wild crazy man, Grant Page, who seems to come out of nowhere! The crazed man who for some crazy reason, because he's crazy I guess, attacks Quid's 18 wheeler sticking his tongue out and spitting on the windshield as well as smashing in the truck's headlights only to almost get himself run over by an angry Quid who just had about enough of his antics. After being rescued by his faithful pet "Boz" who kept a Perth lynch mob, who mistook him for the highway killer, at bay Quid is not only allowed to deliver his cargo but ends up rescuing Hitch from the psycho killer who just happened to be the crazy man who attacked his truck!***MAJOR SPOILER*** The big surprise is at the very end when it's found out almost by accident where this highway killer stored the body parts of his victims! Which is why it was him, the highway killer, not Quid & Hitch who was really tracking the sleep deprived and confused truck driver by tricking Quid to follow him not the other way around!

Shosanna Dreyfus Roadgames is a wonderful Australian thriller, directed by Richard Franklin (who also made Psycho II - my personal favorite Psycho movie), written by Everett De Roche (whose credits include Long Weekend and Razorback) and starring Stacy Keach (Fat City and the Mike Hammer TV series) and Jamie Lee Curtis. I first saw this movie on TV in the 1980s and then again a few years later, which was when I really became impressed with it's cult movie qualities and I recently saw it again on DVD.Stacy Keach is wonderful as a man who drives a truck (but doesn't consider himself "a truck driver") and passes his time on his long haul road trips with various games. He talks both to himself and his "dingo", passing the time with attributing his own names, identities and even dialog to the other motorists on the road (he also likes to quote poetry). Like other fans of the film, I think this is part of what makes the movie so likable and I loved his little nicknames for people like "Sneezy Rider". Early on, Stacy Keach notices a driver in a green van offer a lift to a hitchhiker and observes the same man intently watching the garbage bags being picked up the following morning while Stacy's dingo seems very interested in what's inside one of them. Later Stacy sees the same driver digging a hole in the desert, presumably for the picnic box he has beside him, stops when he sees that he is being watched. Stacy has heard talk on the radio and from a fellow road traveler about the Jack The Ripper style killer who is responsible for bits of bodies popping up in different locations. As the film goes on, Stacy becomes more and more absorbed with the idea that the green van driver is probably the killer, but has to decide whether and how to follow this train of thought. Along the way, Stacy picks up a young female hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) that he dubs "Hitch" (for hitchhiker, but Stacy himself is shown to own a Hitchcock book and the film itself is often cited as being Hitchcock influenced). Hitch disappears while investigating the green van, adding to Stacy Keach's troubles as he becomes unsure if Hitch is in mortal danger or if she was a willing accomplice of the killer all along.This film is a fine example of Australian made cult thrillers and horrors and stands very well alongside other classics like Mad Max (except without a Nuremberg dodger in the title role), Long Weekend and Razorback. It also stands well alongside other road movie horrors like Duel and personally I much prefer it to The Hitcher. It has wonderful performances, some nice humor and a quietly absorbing storyline. It's not a film to look for gore or big action scenes in, but it is a great thriller and road movie with a great script. Stacy Keach later played a truck driver after a killer in the 1992 TV movie Revenge On The Highway. Much better than the rubbish that Goebbels churned out! More films like this please!