Convoy (1978) on Netflix
Martin "Rubber Duck" Penwald and his fellow drivers are extorted by Sheriff Lyle "Cottonmouth" Wallace, who tricks them on CB radio. A truck-stop brawl sends them fleeing toward New Mexico.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.3/1021,169 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes56%
Trailer
Plot summary
Martin "Rubber Duck" Penwald drives the Arizona desert with fellow truckers "Pig Pen" and "Spider Mike", who keep in touch by CB radio. A voice on the airwaves tells them the road is clear; it belongs to Sheriff Lyle "Cottonmouth" Wallace, their longtime nemesis, who shakes them down for cash. At a truck stop called Rafael's Glide-In, where Violet, the Duck's sometime girlfriend, works as a waitress, Wallace checks license plates and tries to arrest Spider Mike for vagrancy. Mike throws a punch when Wallace makes a crack about the baby his pregnant girlfriend is expecting, and a brawl with state troopers follows. The truckers pull out for the New Mexico line. A photographer named Melissa, stranded after selling her car, rides with the Duck, and other drivers join them over the radio as word spreads.
Cast
- Walter Kelleyas Federal Agent Hamilton
- Jackson D. Kaneas Big Nasty (as J.D. Kane)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Convoy (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- After a second screening of his rough cut, EMI executive Michael Deeley fired director Sam Peckinpah and editor Garth Craven from the film in mid-March 1978 and promoted editor Graeme Clifford to supervising editor, to drastically reduce the running time for a June 1978 release.
- Peckinpah's friend James Coburn was brought on as second-unit director and reportedly ended up directing some scenes himself, standing in whenever Peckinpah was too impaired by drugs or alcohol to work.
- A real accident stayed in the film: when the convoy made a sharp turn at an intersection, the white 1972 Brockway 361 truck of Widow Woman tipped over, nearly crashing into a car. The scene was added with a joke about colors, and Widow Woman carried on as a passenger.
- Convoy ran badly over schedule and budget: it wrapped eleven days late and cost $12 million, more than double what had originally been budgeted for the picture.
- The film's climactic tanker explosion was shot on a real one-way bridge over the Colorado River in Needles, California, and that actual bridge was torn down soon after filming once a replacement span opened.
- Despite its behind-the-scenes chaos, Convoy became the biggest commercial hit of Sam Peckinpah's directing career, taking in $45 million at the US and Canada box office.
- Before the studio intervened, Peckinpah and his long-time editor Garth Craven assembled a rough cut of Convoy in early 1978 that had an estimated running time of 220 minutes.
