Road Games

Friday, August 11 - Saturday, August 12, 2017

35mm print!

“Alfred Hitchcock had many appreciators and imitators, but few directors could legitimately claim to being a true ‘student’ or ‘scholar’ of the master of suspense. Australian filmmaker Richard Franklin was a rare exception… Franklin’s magnum opus, and his most distinctively Hitchcockian film, was 1981’s ROAD GAMES.

“The story follows sleep-deprived truck driver Pat (Stacey Keach) as he travels from Melbourne to Perth transporting a load of pigs. We are told little about him but enough to know he’s not your average truckie. ‘Just because I drive a truck, doesn’t mean I’m a truck driver,’ says the erudite American, who feeds the hitchhikers he picks up – among them Pamela (Jamie Lee Curtis) – with anecdotes and running commentary. Pat watches people on the road and invents stories about them. But the most sinister narrative comes to him: Pat notices a man driving a green van who checks into a motel with a good-looking young woman and takes the last available room.

“In a heavily stylised scene, beautiful yet perverse, like a moment from a Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci film, the woman is murdered with a guitar string. Pat wakes up and sees his pet dingo sniffing at the garbage and the man from the van, obscured by curtains, watching as the rubbish is collected.

“…Pitched to Jamie Lee Curtis as “the Alfred Hitchcock of Australia”, Franklin (who spent his later years as a lecturer in Melbourne and passed away in 2007) was one of Australian cinema’s greats. ROAD GAMES ends close to the structure of Rear Window … but there are plenty of splashes of ingenuity on the way.” –The Guardian

Screening as part of Waverly Midnights, To Hell and Outback: Australian Horror

• Country Australia
• Year 1981
• Director Richard Franklin

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.