Cinescape article bashes Duel.... (1 Viewer)

[Dave Kalloch]

In a Cinescape review of Richard Matheson's short story collection titled: "Duel: Terror Stories", associate editor Chris Wyatt writes:

But it’s a shame that the author (or his editors) selected that title. Except for Spielberg completionists, few people hold much regard for the telefilm, and while the story is good, there are several better, more imaginative ones in the volume.

Ouch! Few people outside of Spielberg completionists hold much regard for the movie Duel? Guess Mr. Wyatt doesn't read this forum.:rolleyes

 

[MikeRS]

Everything great about the Beard is in DUEL.

 

[Vickie_M]

Duel aired back in the days before cable TV, before satellite TV, before VCRs, before video games, before home computers. Duel aired back in the days when made-for-TV movies were an EVENT that was shared by a large portion of the country. Everybody watched them, and everybody talked about them the next day. That's how Roots became a cultural touchstone.

Duel was HUGE. Everybody at my school was talking about it the next day. People were talking about it all over the country and for years afterwards. When Jaws came out, even if someone didn't know Spielberg's name, they knew if you said it was directed by "that guy who directed Duel." (Actually, when Duel aired, people would have known if you'd said that it was directed by "the guy who directed that Twilight Zone with Joan Crawford as the bitchy blind woman.")

I don't know who this guy is or how old he is. If he's old enough to have been aware at the time that Duel aired, then he has a bad memory.

I think few people have ever held the movie up to be much more than what it was, an effective thriller, but it did tap into a lot of people's fears, of the unknown, of battling a foe alone, of big trucks. I can speak to the last because, a decade later, I became a truck driver, and the two things I heard most often, all around the country, was "what's it like being a female truck driver?" and endless variations of "stay away from me, I remember Duel! ha ha."

I'm not interested in researching the impact Duel had on critics, viewers and studio executives, but I know in my own mind that it DID have a huge impact, and this guy should have done some sort of research (beyond his circle of friends) before writing that.

(end worthless 2 cents)

 

[george kaplan]

Well I strongly suspect that the 'few' people who like Duel enough to buy the dvd when it comes out will be a lot higher number than the 'many' people who subscribe to Cinescape.