With his cult classic 1981 thrillerRoadgames, director Richard Franklin transplanted the plot of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 mystery masterpieceRear Windowonto a moving vehicle.Rear Windowstars James Stewart as a photographer, confined to his apartment by a broken leg, who spies on his neighbors out of boredom and begins to suspect that one of them is a murderer.Roadgamesstars Stacy Keach as a trucker who believes that he’s witnessed a fellow motorist killing and burying women on the open road. It’s just as taut and tense and terrifying asRear Window, but with the grit and gruffness of a road movie.
In the years since it emerged as one ofHitchcock’s most iconic films,Rear Windowhas been homaged and reimagined every which way.Disturbiatells the same story with Shia LaBeouf under house arrest. Brian De Palma’sBody Doubleplants the voyeuristic neighbor ofRear Windowin the deceptive narrative ofVertigo. InThe Simpsonsepisode “Bart of Darkness,” Bart Simpson takes the James Stewart role as he fears Ned Flanders has murdered his wife. All of these homages and parodies feature the familiar setup of a character stuck in an enclosed space; Franklin is the only one to take that story out on the open road, where his hero doesn’t have the comfort of his own living room or the safety of being surrounded by other people.
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Transporting the story into a moving vehicle isn’t the only way thatRoadgamesratchets up the tension oftheRear Windowformula. The main conflict inRear Windowis Jeff’s struggle to get people to believe him, because he has no hard evidence that a murder has even taken place. But inRoadgames, the stakes are a little higher because there’s plenty of evidence of a serial killer on the loose, and if Pat Quid can’t figure out who it is, he’s the top suspect. The murder investigation inRoadgamesis much more incentivized than that ofRear Window. Quid is caught between a rock and a hard place as the cops’ prime suspect and the killer’s next target.
According to David Stratton’s bookThe Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry, Franklin developed the story with screenwriter Everett De Roche while he was working onThe Blue Lagoonin Fiji. De Roche got to work on a screenplay that ended up being just as suspenseful and well-characterized as John Michael Hayes’Rear Windowscript – and unlike Hayes, De Roche had no source material to work from. TheRoadgamesscript establishes all the characters as soon as they appear on-screen. De Roche plays them off each other in interesting ways. After the killer harms Quid’s trusty pet dingo, the desire for revenge isas passionate as John Wick’s. An abandoned spouse that Quid picks up from the side of the road begins to suspect that he is the mass murderer she heard about on the news. When he thinks he’s got the killer cornered in a bathroom stall, Quid ends up frightening an innocent biker. Thanks to De Roche’s sharp screenwriting, it’s always clear what’s going through the characters’ minds inRoadgames.
Keach ably carries the film as the suspicious truck driver determined to bring down a serial killer – a great example of an ordinary protagonist up against extraordinary odds – but Jamie Lee Curtis steals the show as “Hitch,” the feisty hitchhiker he picks up along the way. At that point, roles inHalloween,Prom Night,The Fog, andTerror Trainhad solidifiedCurtis’ place in the “scream queen” pantheon. Curtis could’ve done with more screen time inRoadgames– especially at such a crucial juncture in her career – but she steals every scene she’s in. Hitch is a free-spirited runaway who intrigues Quid and catches the killer’s eye. She has a unique place in the standoff between these two men, hitching rides from both of them as they each try to outwit each other. Keach is the leading man, but Curtis is the shining star of the film.
In the documentaryNot Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!,Quentin Tarantino namedRoadgamesas one of his favorite films. As a suspense thriller, it’s masterfully constructed. Cinematographer Vincent Monton’s framing of figures in the Australian wilderness brings a slightly surreal quality to the eerie emptiness of the open road. Edward McQueen-Mason’s airtight editing charts Quid’s perspective perfectly as he keeps an eye on the other drivers on the road and spots strange happenings off in the distance. Brian May – the Australian film composer, not the Queen guitarist – gives the music the same level of intensity he gavehis earlyMad Maxscores, which amplifies the shock of each twist and turn.
According to the making-of docKangaroo Hitchcock: The Making of Roadgames, the film was a box office bomb when it was first released in Australia. Franklin blamed the movie’s commercial failure on its marketing. The posters and trailers soldRoadgamesas a slasher, which horror fans were being inundated with at the time, as opposed to the Hitchcockian cat-and-mouse thriller it really is. The marketing madeRoadgameslook like every other schlocky exploitation movie that was coming out in the early 1980s, when it was anything but. In the decades since,Roadgameshas deservingly taken its place as a beloved cult hit. It’s an unmissable gem forfans of Hitchcock, road movies, and Australian cinema – or fans of escapist entertainment in general.
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