Roadgames
Directed by	Richard Franklin
Written by	Everett De Roche Richard Franklin
Produced by	Richard Franklin
Starring	Stacy Keach Jamie Lee Curtis
Cinematography	Vincent Monton
Edited by	Edward McQueen-Mason
Music by	Brian May
Distributed by	Embassy Pictures
Release date	26 June 1981 (1981-06-26)
Running time	101 minutes
Country	Australia
Language	English
Budget	AU$1.8 million
Box office	A$1,800,000 (estimated)

Roadgames is a 1981 Australian film directed by Richard Franklin. The film stars Stacy Keach as a truck driver, and Jamie Lee Curtis as a hitchhiker.

Patrick Quid (Stacy Keach) is a truck driver, assigned with delivering a shipment of meat across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth. He begins to notice the suspicious behavior of a green van, which he spots at various places along his journey. When he learns of a serial killer at large in the area, he begins to suspect the driver of the van.

Quid picks up a hitchhiker, Pamela Rushworth (Jamie Lee Curtis), and the two discuss their theories on the killer. When they spot the van parked near the restrooms of a service station, Quid investigates. Spotting a pair of feet beneath the cubicle door, he assumes the killer is inside. Meanwhile, Pamela investigates the van, only to discover the killer inside, who kidnaps her. The man in the restroom turns out to be an innocent traveller.

Quid takes pursuit of the van, and notices that the driver and Pamela seem to have struck up a conversation. This leads Quid to believe the van driver was innocent all along, and that his speculations were false. His pursuit is soon stalled when he gets stuck behind a slow moving car.

Later that night, Quid notices the van parked off the side of the road and pulls over to investigate. He hears people giggling in the bushes nearby and assumes that Pamela and the van driver are engaging in intercourse. When he breaks into the van to investigate an esky which he presumes contains body parts, and finds it actually contains food, he rests his suspicions.

Quid arrives at the outskirts of Perth, and whilst reporting to the weigh station, spots the van watching his movements, whilst several police cars linger in the area. He follows the van through the streets of Perth, trailed by the police. Eventually the van reaches a dead end, and Quid's truck becomes stuck in the narrow alleys.

The van driver approaches Quid's truck and smashes the headlights with a shovel, but the truck suddenly frees itself and collides with the van. The driver tries strangling Quid with a garotte but Quid manages to disarm him. The police swoop in when he begins to strangle the van driver with the same implement. Initially Quid is presumed to be the killer, but when Pamela is retrieved from the van, bound and gagged, she informs the police that the van driver is actually the killer (whom the police capture as he tries to disappear into the crowd).

Later on, after the meat has been removed from Quid's trailer (including what is assumed to be a murder victim's torso), a cleaning woman is seen to be busy scrubbing the floor when a head of a woman suddenly drops from the ceiling. The killer had stored body parts in Quid's trailer, hence his keen interest in observing Quid's movements.

Richard Franklin wanted to cast Sean Connery in the lead role but was unable to afford his salary so Stacey Keach was chosen instead. Australian actress Lisa Peers was cast to play opposite him but the US distributors insisted on an American co-star so Franklin went with Jamie Leigh Curtis. At the time the film was the most expensive Australian film ever made.^[1]

The movie was shot on location in the Nullabor Plain and in Melbourne. Franklin later admitted he wished he had increased the size of Curtis' part to take more advantage of her.^[2]

Roadgames was nominated in 1981 in four categories for AFI Awards.^[3]

• Cinema of Australia

• Roadgames at IMDb
• Roadgames at the National Film and Sound Archive
• Roadgames - 1M1 Records: Track Listing