2) Duel
While every filmgoer in the world knows Steven Spielberg, how many of you have seen his full-length film debut, Duel? Based on a Richard Matheson short story of the same name (author of I Am Legend, The Thing, Hell House and many more), Duel pits an everyday car salesman (David Mann) against a rather unusual foe: a mountainous tanker on an empty Californian highway.
Mann’s minding his own business on his cross-country trip and that includes overt-taking a sl0w-moving truck in the middle of the desert. But he’s in for a shock when the tanker races up behind him and retakes its position in front, before slowing again. Mann over-takes it again, setting a cat-and-mouse race in motion that could end disastrously.
Who is the driver of the antagonizing tanker? That’s one of the central questions at the heart of Duel and it’s the fear of unknown that drives this flick forward. Even in his early days, Spielberg had a masterful understanding of cinematic tension; of layering the story with peaks and troughs; lulls before the impending storm.
If you haven’t seen it, Duel has aged surprisingly well, and is an example of what a top-rate director can do on even a shoestring budget.