[THE ARCHIVE] Kangaroo Slash
Life is a highway, but death is a tailgater.
“Roadgames” (1981) is Australian director Richard Franklin’s reason why our parents said never to take a ride from a stranger; a Hitchcock-esque chase across a rural Australian highway that will make you spit out a ham sandwich.
Patrick Quid is an American truck driver that takes his long night hauls with his pet dingo, Boswell. His assignment to deliver pork during a meat strike in Australia drags him into a drifter’s murder spree. Now his curiosity may have his neck in the killer’s grip if the outback doesn’t.
This is a movie that weaves audiences from a murder mystery to a road trip across the land down under. The murderer’s stranglings are given room to breathe with scenes of Quid confronting the land and its locals. It’ll go from a game of animal, vegetable, mineral between Quid and an abandoned wife, to seeing the strangler digging a hole to bury bags of trash. It got me comfortable before reminding me that there’s a killer still out there.
However, the strangler’s plot line takes a back seat for the benefit of world building, and the body count is low. This makes it hard to call it a horror or slasher movie over more of a thriller similar to Psycho (1960) or Rear Window (1954).
Discussions of this film always come back to it being inspired by the great Alfred Hitchcock (It’s even nicknamed, “The Australian Hitchcock,” or “Rear Window on Wheels”). Richard Franklin actually gave writer Everett De Roche a copy of Rear Window (1954) as an example of how he wanted the script typed.
I can see the parallels: an isolated man obsessing over a nearby killer. I was more so reminded of North by North West (1959), with the main character insisting on putting themselves at the center of the carnage. The scene where Quid is thinking about the meat counts felt like a homage to Marion Crane’s driving away scene in Psycho (1960). After the film, Franklin went on to direct Psycho II (1983).
I enjoyed the backdrop of the film; the long stretch of roads that were filled with characters who were indifferent to Quid’s curiosity.
Madeline Day - the wife of the accountant that left her on the side of the road - was the most complex. She’s bubbly and quick to speak up, and I liked how vulnerable she makes herself when she reveals why she doesn’t want to know about the killer. Her family is being harassed due to her husband’s role in the meat strike, causing threats on their children’s lives and the death of their dog. Her presence made it feel like a real world with unfortunate consequences.
The film’s problem arises from its well-developed world; developed so well that there felt to be a missed opportunity for conflict.
Hitch (Jamie Lee Curtis) is the runaway daughter of an American diplomat. Madeline Day, the account’s wife, talked about the danger her family is in, but nothing was shown. These both felt ripe enough to offer thematic tension. If either of these elements were significantly present, they could have been a catalyst for some crazy chase scenes. The ending with all the characters Quid had wronged questioning his innocence could have been bolstered by their presence. The ending was almost disappointing until the true ending emerged (I’ll only say that the blood in the meat trailer wasn’t from the pigs).
This movie blew me away. It was entertaining, well acted, and gave me a new fear of guitar strings. Stacey Keach is magnanimous as Quid with his “stylish rhetoric and witty innuendo.” If you love cat and mouse stories where the mouse drives a truck on top of a cat, then Roadgames can be found on Tubi.
I give the film 7 dingos out of 10.
Review By: Andrew Brito
