A nameless truck, an everyday salesman, and 90 minutes of pure escalation: this episode is all about Steven Spielberg’s debut feature, Duel (1971).
We talk through how a simple setup – Dennis Weaver’s mild-mannered David Mann driving to a routine meeting – turns into a relentless nightmare when he’s targeted by a grimy tanker truck that seems less like a vehicle and more like a stalking predator. From suburban driveways to dusty California highways, we track every swerve, near–miss, and increasingly desperate decision as a casual overtake turns into a life-or-death duel on the road.
Along the way we get into:
- Road rage and paranoia – why Mann feels like a “cuck vs truck” case study, and how the film weaponises every tiny driving irritation into something sinister.
- The truck as a character – the battered Peterbilt, its collection of license plates, its “face” in the grill and headlights, and the choice never to fully show the driver.
- Minimal cast, maximum tension – how Spielberg keeps it gripping with basically one man, one truck, a diner, a school bus and a handful of side characters.
- Set-pieces that still work – the diner sequence and “which guy is it?”, the stalled school bus, the railway crossing shove, the Snake-O-Rama phone box attack, and that final hillside showdown.
- Spielberg’s emerging style – low-mounted cameras to fake speed, clever blocking, the way he maps the whole journey out on paper, and the stunts he only had one chance to get right.
- Production trivia – its origins as a TV movie, the brutal shooting schedule, why the truck doesn’t explode, and how its death roar later turns up in other Spielberg classics.
If you like tight, stripped-back thrillers, if you’ve ever shouted at another driver, or if you’re curious to hear three dads pick apart early Spielberg craft as much as they laugh about it, this is a good place to jump into the podcast.
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Bad Dads
