HORROR-THON 2026 • NO EXIT
10/10
DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg
STARRING: Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone
RELEASED: 1981
RUNTIME: 1 hr, 30 minutes
WATCH ON: Criterion Channel, Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home
SCARE LEVEL: Medium, mostly stress
PASSING ON A TWO-LANE HIGHWAY: Uh, no.
A man in a red car passes a rusty old tanker truck on a two-lane desert highway. That’s it. That’s the whole mistake. The truck spends the rest of the movie trying to kill him. I couldn’t look away.
David Mann is a mile salesman driving across the California desert to a business meeting. He passes a slow tanker truck. The truck passes him back. Then it waves him around into oncoming traffic, follows him into a gas station, and parks outside a diner where he stops for lunch.
He never sees the driver’s face, only an arm and a pair of boots. And no matter how fast David drives or where he pulls over, the truck keeps finding him.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
Finding out this was Steven Spielberg’s first movie at 24 and it was made for tv was mind-blowing. First off, what an absolutely crazy debut to make. You can see the coming of Jaws from here. Second, what the hell was going on with television in the 1970s? Sure, you only had the option of 3 channels, but just imagining a family circled the television to watch this utter nightmare all together, is crazy.
Dennis Weaver spends most of his time alone in a car, sweating, and talking to himself. It’s maddening except for when he gets around any other human in civilization, and not a single person believes what he’s saying. But who would? He’s screaming that a truck is trying to kill him.
The truck itself, rusted, greasy, and covered in license plates from other states, is the best villain design of the year. I don’t know what to know how those random plates got there; however, the lore is that they were meant to represent all the other states where the truck has mowed down other drivers. A serial killer tanker trucker? Sure, why not?
My favorite part was, honestly, the ominous shots of the tank truck lurking in the background like Michael Myers hiding in a dark backyard waiting to strike. They sent me over the edge with laughter every time, but I wouldn’t change anything. Absolutely no notes.
A FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY:
It appears the truck is driving recklessly at unsafe speeds for the entire movie, but the tanker truck never goes over 30 mph. To get the feeling of the increased speed, Spielberg deployed a few tricks. He borrowed the specially made camera from Steve McQueen’s Bullitt, which lowered the camera 6 inches off the ground. He also filmed the vehicles against the cliffs and used upward angled perspectives shot from the wheels to create the illusion of speed.