Ozploitation!

Directed by "Australia's Alfred Hitchcock", Richard Franklin (friend of the legend as well as director of the underrated Psycho 2), Road Games can be boiled down to "Rear Window in a truck" but that does a great disservice to what is a highly entertaining, expertly directed, wonderfully written and exciting suspense thriller which manages to capture many of the best tricks Franklin's mentor used in his films.

Stacy Keach plays Patrick Quid, an American truck driver (to which he would say "Just because I drive a truck does not make me a truck driver") on a long haul across the backroads of Australia to deliver a shipment of meat. On a stop-off at a motel he is beaten to the last room by the driver of a green van and a pretty young hitchhiker. Unknown to Quid the driver is a psychopathic killer, roaming the highways and picking off young women with a length of piano wire. The next day Quid spots the driver watching the garbage pick ups intently. Quid passes his time talking to a dingo he has taken on as his pet, and playing games with any passengers he takes on board. This strange driver passes Quid on the road, who notices a red cooler box on the passenger seat. He dismisses it, as one often does. Later, as Quid drives a woman who was left behind by her husband to the nearest roadhouse, he notices that same driver pulled over in the middle of nowhere and digging a hole. Now Quid, along with pretty young American hitchhiker (nicknamed Hitch) played by Jamie Lee Curtis, play a new game trying to unravel this mystery, whilst a psychopath plays a game with them.

The film plays like a contemporary Hitchcock production in ways Disturbia outright failed. Snappy dialogue, an expertly maintained slow burn of building suspense, red herrings, some fantastically realized frights and it even manages to squeeze in an imporbable but thrilling action sequence (ex: North By Northwest's cropduster scene makes little sense in the structure of the story but nobody cares because it's such a perfect scene) featuring a car-drawn boat which resembles a gladitorial chariot race.

Keach is a magnificent lead, charismatic and witty and just the right amount of intensity to propel the action forward without losing a good sense of humour. Curtis is as charming, spunky and crushable as she ever was in her prime.

Top quality suspense. The only way you could get better a Hitchcockian thriller is if it was made by the man himself.