Duel (1971) on Netflix
On a business trip across the Mojave Desert, salesman David Mann overtakes a dilapidated tanker truck. The truck roars past him and then refuses to let him by again.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.6/1086,965 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
David Mann works as a salesman, and a business appointment takes him along a two-lane highway through the Mojave Desert. The evening before, he and his wife argued. He overtakes a dilapidated tanker truck. The truck roars past him, and when Mann passes it once more, a horn blasts. He stops for gas, and the tanker pulls in and parks beside him. The attendant suggests replacing the radiator hose, and Mann declines. Back on the highway, the truck blocks him whenever he tries to get past.
Cast
- Dick Whittingtonas Radio Interviewer (voice)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Duel (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Richard Matheson got the idea for the story when he was tailgated by a trucker on the then two-lane Highway 126 in Fillmore, California, driving home from a golfing match with his friend Jerry Sohl on November 22, 1963, the day of the John F. Kennedy assassination.
- Spielberg said the multiple license plates on the front bumper of the Peterbilt subtly suggest that the truck driver is a serial killer, having "run down other drivers in other states."
- In his book The Last Kings Of Hollywood, Paul Fischer describes George Lucas wandering upstairs at a party given by Francis Ford Coppola, switching on a bedroom TV and, at the first commercial break, running down the stairs to tell Coppola that this guy was really good.
SPOILER
A single truck was used for the original filming, so the shots of it falling off the cliff and being destroyed had to be completed in one take.- Spielberg did not care what kind of car was used, as long as it was red, which would allow the vehicle to stand out from the landscape in the wide shots of the desert highway.
- In 2023 the filmmaker Denis Villeneuve named it one of his favorite films of all time, saying "this movie felt like home to me and as the credits rolled I knew that was the way I wanted to live my life."
