Which line i.e. division/location of SP is shown in this movie?
Here is a list of the filming locations …
Beautiful desert scenes in that film. People often don’t appreciate how rich and complex of an ecosystem the desert is… much more than hills of sand and the odd cactus.
And what a film that is, particularly as it was a fairly early “made for TV” film, a genre not normally known back then for taking such chances. I watched it with my folks when it was new and it has managed to invade my dreams for decades.
Dave Nelson
Same here… I’ve seen it many times over the years, first time when I was 8 years old… and most recently a couple of weekends ago with my kids. My daughter mentioned that the old Pete would give the folks at CARB in California a fit today the way it smoked.
‘Chester’ walked bending both knees.
You can see the parallels to “Jaws” in that film. Yeah, Chester kept limping no matter how many letters of complaint that I wrote.
I remember “Duel,” an “ABC Movie Of The Week,” and a great one it was! It’s odd to think the only reason I watched it was because “…there was nuthin’ else on.”
I was NOT disappointed! No disrespect to any truckers out there, but it was just brilliant the way Steven Spielberg tapped into the average motorist’s dread of the “big rigs.”
Anyone remember another great one from around that time, “The Night Stalker” starring Darren McGavin?
The truck as a dramatic device reminds me of ‘Maximum Overdrive’.
Little tidbit about the movie: The railroad scene was filmed after it’s release on television, to stretch the movie out from TV movie to feature film…
The backup truck for the movie still survives, I believe it is now with a collector in North Carolina…
A reference to the improper audio of the train horns …
(My first car was a 1968 dark blue version of that Plymouth Valiant. The red car had to have had a 318 V-8 in it because the 225 slant six, good as it was, had nowhere near what that red car had in terms of giddyap in the film. Shades of Neil Young’s “Long May You Run”)…Spielberg apparently admitted to multiple small oops in that film, made in 12 days.
Appears they were filming all over rural southern CA on the SP to make that film.
so you’re telling me that a 318 in a Valiant, floored, can barely make it past 95mph?
318’s were strangled with a 2 barrel carb and had the aerodynamics of a garage door.
(there was all kinds of room under that hood, but you never saw a 340/360/383/440 in there)
[(-D] My first car was a 67 Dodge Dart- essentially the same car. That big ol’ 225 slant 6 had so much power that I think I had turn the radio off to boost power going up hills. Pulling out into traffic involved a lot of anxiety and prayers. As I was driving back to college in the fall of 1980, the ol’ slant 6 made itself into a slant 5 along an interstate highway several hundred miles from home.[xx(]
My sister and her first husband had several Valiants and Darts with the mighty “leaning tower of power.” One had a 3 speed manual with overdrive and got 30 mpg, not bad in 1975. All ran great but they rusted to the point that they weren’t safe to drive. They sure use a lot of road salt in SW Massachusetts.