608. The Apprenticeship of Steven Spielberg: Duel

Spielberg's first feature film to have a theatrical release initially  aired as a highly successful ABC Movie of the Week before Spielberg expanded it for cinemas in 1971. Starring Dennis Weaver as traveling salesman David Mann, it chronicles Mann's harrowing and inexplicable — encounter in rural California with a mysterious antagonist played by three different Peterbilt trucks whose driver we never see but who seems to have a ruthless grudge against Mann. Based on a screenplay by Richard Matheson, Duel moved Stephen King to call it "an almost painfully suspenseful rocket ride of a movie." A turbo-charged discussion will follow the screening.