In the latest installment of Vincent Albarano’s Stacy Keach series, the actor brings tomorrow’s bacon in this Hitchcock-inspired thriller set in the Australian Outback
Despite his later appearances in projects like Class of 1999 (1990) and Body Bags (1993), Stacy Keach is not recognized for his contributions to genre films. He was once in the running to star in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist as Father Karras, a role that went to Jason Miller, who Keach would later appear with in William Peter Blatty’s The Ninth Configuration.1 Also of note is the 1974 Southern Gothic television film All the Kind Strangers, where Keach and Samantha Eggar find themselves stranded in the swamps by a group of intimidating orphans. His other major genre credit during his first decade of acting was Sergio Martino’s Italian cannibal shocker Mountain of the Cannibal God, a role Keach has admitted was taken out of necessity to keep working and one that he does not remember fondly today.
Thus, Richard Franklin’s Roadgames stands as Keach’s first proper appearance in a theatrically released horror film, though it leans far more into the thriller genre. Roadgames is often discussed in the context of Australian exploitation cinema, with Franklin’s Hitchcock aspirations coming to the forefront of the conversation. Its true strong point, however, is Keach’s performance, arriving after his early-’70s career peak and in a fallow period where reputable roles were harder to come by (exemplified by Martino’s film as well as a stint in the UK for copsploitation efforts The Squeeze and Street People). Still, Keach was quietly building what would soon prove to be a formidable cult film repertoire, having just come off filming The Ninth Configuration and Walter Hill’s The Long Riders, and was soon to work on Matt Cimber’s Butterfly. In many ways, his work at the dawn of the 1980s proves just as vital as his early roles in the preceding decade, revealing his range and careful considerations as a performer, as well as his willingness to step into a variety of character types for the pure love of acting.
American expat trucker Pat Quid (Keach) traverses the Australian highways hauling pork products in the company of his pet dingo, Boswell. En route to the isolated metropolis of Perth, Quid begins to have suspicions about a mysterious green van he has seen picking up hitchhikers along the roadside — none of whom leave with the driver when he departs seedy motels the next morning. Much like the cast of tourists and travelers along Quid’s route, the van driver (nicknamed Smith/Jones by Quid, played by stunt coordinator Grant Page) seems to haunt the dusty Outback roads. News reports of dismembered body parts being found across the continent recur on the radio, as do appearances by young white-clad hitchhiker Hitch (Jamie Lee Curtis). Quid becomes obsessed with the story, speculating upon the identity of the killer and determining to stay on the case. He finally picks up Hitch and finds her a perfect counterpart in his quest as she’s more than willing to match his obsession and contribute her own not-so far-fetched theories. Retiring on the roadside one night, Hitch reveals that she’s fled an uncaring father in the Foreign Service but is tight with fuller details of her life. The next day, she’s kidnapped by Smith/Jones at a truck stop and Quid continues on his way, shaken by a news report that reveals Hitch is a wealthy heiress and he is now the primary suspect in her disappearance. Driven to the edge, Quid spies the green van abandoned along the roadside one night. He finds nothing in the car but fails to notice that his cargo has been tampered with while he investigates. Quid finally reaches Perth in time for his delivery and hot on the tail of the van, but his suspicious behavior at a weigh station draws police attention. He corners Smith/Jones in a narrow alley with the police on the scene to take him down as he prepares to throttle the killer. Only Hitch’s last-minute appearance, gagged in a sleeping bag in the van, manages to save Quid. The pair head off together, now free of a truck and hitchhiking as a duo, but there are still unanswered questions about the additional weight found in Quid’s truck and the true provenance of select cuts of pork in Perth.
While completing work on his previous Ozploitation hit, Patrick (1978), director Franklin tapped screenwriter Everett De Roche to conceive of a Rear Window-inspired project set in a semi-truck. After initially seeking the cost-prohibitive Sean Connery for the role, Franklin and De Roche quickly determined Keach was the perfect man for their protagonist, and the actor jumped at the chance to visit Australia and work on a script he found so compelling. Keach delivers a largely one-man show, many of his scenes shared only with Boswell, or at brief stops in towns along his route. The most dramatic and horrific sequences largely occur within the cab of the truck as Quid’s mind runs amok and his long hours on the road begin to impair his thinking. Despite its thriller cachet, the film also serves as an excellent outlet for Keach’s comedic skills, as he narrates his travels to Boswell, quotes Robert Frost, and creates fake stories and personalities for the other drivers on the road. Keach plays both the literate, confident expat living below his means as well as the mentally unstable paranoiac. He kills the deadening hours on the road with simple games and jokes, slowly losing more of his mind with each hour that passes.
For his part, Keach had two days to learn to drive the central eighteen-wheeler, as the film was shot along the Australian highway as a mobile production. His jet lag from an international flight provided the authentic exhaustion that comes to define Quid’s character, just as the long production days took a toll on all involved. Keach also drew natural comparisons to Western films for his portrayal of the independent man on the road, wisely imbuing his own unique sensibility rather than aping Jimmy Stewart’s turn in Rear Window. The only change he made to the character as scripted was shooting down Quid’s habit of smoking tobacco, instead choosing to have him eat raw celery and other vegetables in the cab, adding another bizarre quirk that fully fleshes the role out to three dimensionality.
The film’s undisputed greatest asset is the chemistry between Keach and Curtis, a natural and easygoing rapport the pair exchange which makes their all-too-brief time on screen together (and lack of later collaborations) incredibly regrettable. This was unfortunately a matter of necessity, Curtis having been hired late in pre-production — thanks to a call Franklin placed to former classmate John Carpenter — with the script already locked in before Franklin had a chance to capitalize on her talents.2 The pair’s discussions of the crimes and attempts to deduce the killer’s motives and behavior pattern progress the mystery narrative while expertly revealing their compatibility. There’s a bubbling tension between the two that’s only vaguely sexual, as she quizzes him on why he speaks only in poems and starts to show genuine attraction that puts Quid at odds, something that returns when Quid follows her in the killer’s van and mentally spirals assuming she’s run off with another guy. That brief but assertive moment of masculine doubt and insecurity, while quickly dismissed, again proves Keach’s lapses into vulnerability to be one of his greatest onscreen talents and expressions.
Despite the missed opportunities between the film’s leads, Keach turns in standout exchanges with other cast members. Of particular note is the forced hitchhike pickup of Madeline Day (nicknamed Frita Frugal by Quid, played by Marion Edward), a talkative woman abandoned by her husband along the highway, who soon begins discussing the slayings. Quid becomes obsessive, asks too many questions for her comfort and takes an unexpected shortcut to avoid a roadblock, which strands them near Smith/Jones as he digs a hole along the roadside. This seemingly overstuffed exchange serves as a perfect demonstration of Franklin’s balance of humor and tension, and especially Keach’s talents in reversing his tone on a dime to suit the material. Quid’s jarring digression into the sexual component of the murders and the guilt associated with the crimes makes Madeline’s unease our own as he truly seems a man unhinged by circumstance, driving her out of the truck. This is the first of many signs that there are darker elements to his personality, culminating in a cliffside confrontation where Keach is filmed from an ominous high angle close-up that implicates him in something even he isn’t fully aware of.
Quid’s focus on the minutiae of the crimes — details of dismemberment and bodily disposal — proves that he has untold insights into psychopathy. For her part, Hitch counters many of his questions with investigations into broader misogyny and bristles gently against Quid’s occasional chauvinism and lone wolf machismo. As his reading material (issues of pornographic magazines mixed in with poetry and The New Yorker) and philosophical demeanor suggest, Quid remains a puzzle even to us, and all that we truly learn about him is a mention of his Naval service prior to emigrating. He’s the rare trucker clean of any illicit substances on the job, and multiple characters along the way make jokes of his square nature, including Hitch herself. Keach’s catatonia recurs in a haunting shot against the sunset as he drives and listens to his own profile given out as Hitch’s kidnapper and the main murder suspect. From here, the film’s paranoia really spirals into itself as Quid begins to question his own suspicions and just what is at stake as he tries to find this woman he barely knows. This leads to the final act’s nighttime terrors, including a jump scare via kangaroo and increasingly disturbed ramblings from Quid alone in his cab. Especially evocative is Quid’s investigation of his freezer unit, finding two more carcasses than his inventory accounts for among hanging slabs of pork and flickering overhead lights.
That winding sense of tension finally snaps during the climactic set piece in a narrow alley. Culminating with Quid’s truck wedged between buildings and on top of Smith/Jones’ van, it’s a fairly ingenious bit of low-speed action and tension building, the suggested entrapment of Quid’s trucking lifestyle literalized onscreen as he physically cannot exit his cab while the killer assaults his rig. Even in this claustrophobic sequence, Franklin manages a deft touch and gives his leads ample space to craft their performances. Smith/Jones nearly escapes as the police corner Quid against the alley wall, a dazed but unharmed Hitch bickering with him over the nature of her kidnapping and his slow rescue. There are even two genuinely funny gags integrated — an elderly shopkeeper’s dropped glasses are nearly run over twice before the police car crushes them, and Boswell’s revelation that he is, in fact, a dog — that don’t manage to defuse the inherent tension of the scenario.
Throughout the film, Franklin favors long takes with impressive camera movements that give Keach and Curtis a stage to enact their performances unbroken by intrusive editing — something more necessary in the static sequences in the truck. The director likewise enhances the paranoia of the final third by laying Keach’s narration over Quid’s dialogue, superimposing criss-crossing road lines and traffic lights over his face to indicate the toll his lifestyle is taking as much as this investigation. Here the natural contrast of the sunny Outback spaces and the final act’s nighttime confusion are most apparent. The film’s isolationist approach to its settings adds to the underlying paranoia of the story, serving as a perfect stage for both the grisly interstate killings as well as Quid’s own mental deterioration. The recurrence of the other drivers — a man with a boat, the Frugals, and a red-leather-clad motorcyclist — invests the desolate settings with personality. This adds both local flavor and continuity as they appear at the climax to register their complaints with Quid just as the police have him prepped for arrest.
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Beyond the expertly controlled direction and performances, the film succeeds on the strength of the contextual details integrated into its fabric. There’s a constant tension that arises as a result of Quid’s expat status in the cloistered Outback towns, his presence and brash manner of speaking about the crimes drawing suspicion from locals.3 Of course, his suspect nature is also enhanced by his insistence on traveling with a dingo, something the natives predictably bristle against at every turn. There’s also a sense of resentment surrounding Quid’s mission to drive his cargo across the country during a butcher’s strike that’s led to meat shortages, seemingly a commentary on the film’s contentious production with American leads rather than local talent.
Perhaps predictably, Roadgames fared poorly at the box office due to distributors AVCO Embassy promoting the film as a straightforward and simplistic slasher rather than the taut thriller it is. Most indicative of this is the tacked-on ending, which Franklin deeply regrets today, that forces an answer for the mysterious added weight in Quid’s trailer. As a cleaning woman tends to the now-empty cargo space, she notices a strange liquid dripping from the ceiling, which culminates in a grotesque (and incredibly fake looking) severed head falling into her scrubbing bucket. This bit of unintended shock footage is the closest the film comes to genuine horror filmmaking, and became one of its most cited images, but remains an aberration in its runtime. Roadgames’ truest legacy is in its carefully crafted set pieces, expert balance of humor and tension, and the admirable quality of seeing two incredible actors work with a talented and generous director.
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Find the complete October Horror 2024 series here:
Read part one of Albarano’s Stacy Keach series on Fat City, The New Centurions, and The Killer Inside Me:
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- As incredible and iconic as Miller is as Karras, I can’t help but lament how things would have turned out had Keach gotten the role. ↩︎
- The director admitted he was thrilled to work with the daughter of Psycho’s Janet Leigh.
↩︎ - One early scene is notably backdropped by a graphic mural depicting colonial slaughter of Aboriginal populations. ↩︎
