Cheap Duel (Collector's Edition) (DVD) (Dennis Weaver) (Steven Spielberg) Price

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Customer Reviews of Duel (Collector's Edition)

With all due respect to Steven Spielberg in his auspicious film directorial debut, I think Dennis Weaver's excellent performance as the hapless salesman inexplicably pursued by a smoke-belching, grunting monster of a tanker gives the film its class--and its classic status. His co-star, the truck itself, also deserves to be placed on one of the all-time movie villains lists. The best big-budget camerawork, lighting and editing available to Spielberg then couldn't have enhanced their unique contributions to "Duel's" continuing popularity and success.

Whether you're a Spielberg fan or just looking for a great horror/chase film for your permanent collection, get this one. You won't be disappointed. And you won't forget to be friendly to truckers on your next road trip.

Don't get on the interstate...
Just as many people find themselves viewing the shower with trepidation after viewing Psycho, I've found myself wary to get on interstate highways after viewing Duel. A 1971 tv-movie (that was, yes, the first film to be directed by Steven Spielberg), Duel is an effectively, simple little film that sticks with you long after the end credits have run. Dennis Weaver plays a businessman travelling alone across a desolate strip of America. For reasons that neither he nor the viewer can quite understand (and, for once, this makes the film's terror all the more effective), a truck driver targets Weaver and for the next hour and a half, we watch as Weaver struggles to survive against a faceless, seemingly more powerful opponent. It's a simple premise but it is also a premise that taps into our deepest fears of the unknown. Weaver's struggle is made all the more terrifying because it seems to just happen at random. Weaver is targeted for no specific reason and, as unfair as that might seem to both him and the viewer, he now has no choice but to try to survive.

Duel works because of the talents of a young Steven Spielberg and the likeable everyman performance of Dennis Weaver. Indeed, Weaver's contribution has often been overshadowed by the hype surrounding Spielberg's involvement and that's a shame because he gives a truly perfect performance, a worthy model for actors (especially those currently sleepwalking through today's crop of horror films) everywhere. Weaver is one of those talented actors who, because he was never a showy performer and for the most part limited himself to television work, has never really gotten his due. In Duel, he is totally believable as an ordinay man caught up in an extradorinary situation. From the minute he first appears on screen, viewers can easily accept him as their surrogate and it is this indentifiability that makes what happens to him so enthralling and disturbing. As for Spielberg, this film proves that, had he not gotten into his head to be a great filmmaker, Speilberg could have had a very lucrative and rewarding career as a modern day Roger Corman. Using the techniques he would later hone to perfection in Jaws, Spielberg crafts an unpretentious, massively entertaining horror film that never loses sight of reality. Working with essentially one actor and one set, Spielberg manages to capture the viewer from the first minute and keeps the narrative flying for the next 90 minutes, never allowing things to slack off and never giving viewers a reason to look away from the screen. Especially compared with some of Spielberg's later, more "respectable" entertainments, Duel represents the ideal Spielberg -- all of his skill without the later need to prove he was capable of more than just being a "mere" entertainer. Duel, despite being this young director's first film, is a perfect example of everything that Steven Spielberg does right and when compared with his later films, it becomes just as perfect an example of everything Spielberg's done wrong since then.

But don't watch the film because it was directed by Steven Spielberg or because Dennis Weaver was always underrated as an actor. Watch it because it does everything you could possibly want a thriller to do.

"Duel" Of The Fates
"Come on you miserable fat-head! Get that fat-*ss truck outta my way!" - David Mann gets his road-rage face on & starts "Duel"

Before the term "road-rage" was coined there was Steven Spielberg's first film. "Duel" still holds its punch 33 years after its movie of the week debut.

David Mann is a simple business man, late for a convention thats taking him cross country to get there. It seems that he's making good time, that is, until, an old tanker truck gets in his path, and won't let Mann pass at any cost, except, with the cost of his own life. But, when Mann sees an opening and slips past the truck, an annoying situation escalates into a dangerous game of cat & mouse as the truck and its unknown driver hunts down, teases, & taunts Mann, & his crappy Dodge Dart, all over the Arizona highway.

The film is still great. Its like a feature length episode of "The Twilight Zone". Dennis Weaver is at his best as David Mann, who seems confindent, one of the guys that seems to have an infinite amount of patience, at the films beginning, but, at films end he's a nerve-shattered shell of his formerself & you wonder if he would ever drive a vehicle again, let alone sit in one!

Spielberg shows his first flair for suspense in "Duel" with the school bus sequence and the gas station attack (if you weren't at least on the edge of your seat when Mann was trying to help the kids & the school bus out while the truck ominously watched in the wings, you better check your pulse!).

"Duel" is one of those films that makes you think twice about showing off your road-rage & flipping someone off after they cut you off on the highway. A must for the DVD collection. Not to be watched on long road trips.