Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by rico (A) on November 17, 2004 at 07:42:48

These are a forecast of what was to come from Stephen Spielberg, the first a taut and extremely well done thriller and the second a truly over the top awful movie. His career has been like that, with a masterpiece followed by a total flop.

For "Duel", I remember being spellbound as I read Mathison's original short story in "Playboy" in 1971 and then being equally spellbound when I caught the TV movie later that year on broadcast television. Because of its success, Speilberg extended the film for theatrical release. The only trouble was that they had destroyed the truck and had to find a duplicate, which proved impossible. So they dressed up another truck but failed to hide all the differences so in some sequences the difference is clear. The way the director never shows the driver makes the truck itself the villain and is much like the largely unseen shark for the major part of "Jaws".

"Duel" was just released on DVD as was the next film, "Sugarland". I tried to watch the latter last nbight and got about 20 minutes into it and shut it off. Just horrible and silly.