Duel (1971)

In 24 year-old director Steven Spielberg's feature-length film debut - this low-budget suspenseful picture was shot in less than two weeks (it was an ABC-TV "Movie of the Week" offering originally) - adapted from Richard Matheson's short story published in Playboy Magazine. It told about David Mann (Dennis Weaver), a businessman pursued by an unseen, tailgating truck driver in the deserted California desert.

• mild-mannered, distressed traveling salesman David Mann (Dennis Weaver), an LA electronics vendor, was driving in his red 1970 Plymouth Valiant
• he found himself relentlessly pursued on a rural California highway road by a demonic, killer diesel-engine truck (a 1955 Peterbilt 281 towing a tanker trailer)
• the greasy, grungy truck (with a FLAMMABLE warning) was driven by a hidden, faceless psychopathic driver (wearing cowboy boots) (stuntman and character actor Carey Loftin), although the truck itself personified a person (front window eyes, headlight pupils, front grill nose, front fender mouth, etc.).
• the driver exhibited stalking and many kinds of 'road rage' behaviors:
  • loud-honking
  • pursuit
  • blocking maneuvers during attempts to pass
  • tailgating and chasing at high speeds
  • car-bumping, in one instance to force the Plymouth into a moving freight train at a railroad crossing
  • attempted collisions

• during Mann's last-stand confrontation with the monstrous homicidal truck, he gunned his overheated engine and proceeded to ram the truck - diving out at the last second; the explosive crash sent the truck (in slow-motion) over a cliff into rocks below; Mann stared at the burnt wreckage, as the credits rolled