Each month in Horror Queers, Joe and Trace tackle a horror film with LGBTQ+ themes, a high camp quotient or both. For lifelong queer horror fans like us, there’s as much value in serious discussions about representation as there is in reading a ridiculously silly/fun horror film with a YAS KWEEN mentality. Just know that at no point will we be getting Babashook.
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***SPOILERS for Road Games follow.***
Synopsis: Quid (Stacy Keach), a truck driver, and a mysterious hitchhiker (Jamie Lee-Curtis) play a cat-and-mouse game with a mysterious serial killer on a desolate Australian highway.
Queer Aspect: Everyone has a kind of secret identity that they hide from the world; Quid is obsessed with another man.
Where to Stream: Road Games is available to stream for $3.99 on YouTube and Google Play. Scream Factory also released a Blu-Ray earlier this year.
Joe
You know Trace, back when we were writing two of these columns a month, we would alternate between a “queer” column and a “camp” (or fun) column. The latter was designed to explore films that didn’t necessarily have a ton of queer content, but still merited being examined or celebrated (see: Anaconda and Urban Legend). That’s what I thought we were signing up for with Road Games, which has a reputation as a classic of the genre that we were both excited to check out.
This won’t come as a shock to anyone who has actually seen the film, but as a first time viewer, it was surprising that Road Games isn’t campy or sensational at all. This is actually a very mature thriller, with tons of witty dialogue, a fantastic lead performance by character actor Stacy Keach and more than a few dynamite action sequences (as well as a few that stretch credibility and add to the slightly padded runtime).
In that regard, Road Games is arguably the least queer film that we’ve ever covered for this series, but I’m not mad about it. Not only is this a film that I can cross off my Horror Bucket List project, it offers some great insight into the complicated politics that accompany “blockbuster” filmmaking in other national contexts.
As folks may or may not know, the concept of a national cinema in non-US countries is very different (Sidebar: as Commonwealth countries, the realities and challenges of Australian and Canadian productions are quite comparable). Back in 1981, Aussie director Richard Franklin was riding high on the financial success of his not-so-subtle Hitchcock pastiche Patrick, and opted to make another Hitch-inspired film by partnering Rear Window with a moving vehicle. By this point, Franklin was no stranger to a) the influence of Hollywood productions (he studied film at USC and was very enamored with American films) and b) controversy (his first big feature, The True Story of Eskimo Nell, was publicly decried in Australia because it had exploitation elements in a publicly funded film, not unlike Cronenberg’s early films).
Road Games’ production is notorious for its American casting – an issue that occupies a not insignificant part of the special features on the new Scream! Factory Blu that came out last year, including a 1981 lecture/analysis on the way the film was marketed and sold. At the time, the $1.85 M budget for the film was the highest ever for an Australian film and Franklin’s decision to acquiesce to distributors’ demands to cast two American leads (Keach and Curtis) to increase the film’s international gross potential raised the ire of the Actors Equity in Sydney, who objected that local Aussie actors weren’t hired. As someone who has extensively studied national cinema in the shadow of the US monolith, the push/pull tension to make a non-US film as commercially enticing to international (read: US) audiences is very common, despite the fact that Road Games is very obviously not an American thriller.
Production history, aside, there is a fascinating discussion to be had about how the film handles its most objectively Hitchcockian elements, which is this idea that no one and nothing in Road Games is quite what it seems. While I started out this editorial stating that the film doesn’t have any queer components, this is a film that features no shortage of people hiding or camouflaging their true selves – an angle that resonates for me as a queer viewer. Quid is resistant to being labeled a truck driver, just as Pamela (the JLC character) works to obscure the truth about her privileged upbringing for fear that it will affect the way Quid sees her. Hell, even Boswell the dingo is secretly a real dog!
Trace, what was your initial impression of Road Games? Do you understand why the film became a classic? And do you agree with Franklin, who after winning the Actors Equity battle wished that he had given Curtis more to do? The quintessential American Final Girl really doesn’t get too much to do here, does she?
Trace
I will be the first to admit that Road Games is not at all what I expected. I didn’t necessarily expect it to be queer, but I did think there would be a bit more action – something along the lines of, say, Joy Ride.
It’s important to note that this is not the film Richard Franklin set out to make. It’s an interesting Frankenstein’s monster of a film (and I mean that in the best possible way) in that it blends a casual road trip movie with a nail-biting thriller. Could it have cut 5-10 minutes out of the middle section? Sure, but overall this is a superbly directed little thriller and the final product makes it easy to see why Franklin earned a high profile directing gig on Psycho II immediately after Road Games’ release. Did he intend to make a trilogy of Hitchcock homages? Maybe, maybe not. But Road Games is certainly worth a watch (as is the oft-forgotten Psycho II, in case you were wondering).
I’m still not convinced that Road Games has reached “classic” status (what is the metric for that, anyway?), though it has been brought up in more and more conversations over the past few months. This is most likely because of the aforementioned Scream! Factory Blu-Ray, but I must confess that I’m a bit perplexed as to why Franklin didn’t have a more illustrious career after this. His post-Psycho II career includes 1984’s Cloak & Dagger and 1986’s Link (a film that I am mighty curious about as its premise centers around an evil chimpanzee terrorizing Elizabeth Shue). Unfortunately, his experience making F/X 2 in 1991 turned him off of Hollywood and he later returned to Australia to make made-for-television films for the remainder of the ‘90s.
This is a real shame, as there’s an incredible talent on display in most of his films. One need only look at Road Games’ opening death scene to see the artistry on display in Franklin’s films. He and cinematographer Vincent Monton craft a simultaneously beautiful and chilling tableau of killer and victim before he wraps a guitar string around her throat. It’s simply stunning. That he gets away with this death scene in a PG-rated film is even more impressive!
Let’s talk about Keach, though. While it’s understandable that Franklin wanted Sean Connery to play Quid (he was too expensive and was also busy filming Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits at the time), it’s hard to see anyone but Keach in this quirky role.
Quid is an incredibly endearing protagonist. He alternates between ornery, charming and borderline insane, and sometimes employs all three of those characteristics simultaneously (say it with me: ACTING!). It’s quite an impressive performance that could have leaned into camp, but Keach and Franklin play it all with a straight face. It’s this performance that sells the scariness of the film, and that it’s from a middle-aged man instead of a typical Final Girl is fascinating.
Speaking of Final Girls, anyone walking into Road Games hoping to see oodles of Jamie Lee Curtis is going to be sorely disappointed. She appears 37 minutes into this 101-minute film is fine, only to get kidnapped 20 minutes later before popping back up in the film’s final minutes. It’s Curtis’ role where I feel the film really drops the ball. Obviously, Pamela is not the main character, but that she is sidelined so quickly after her arrival is regrettable. As I mentioned above, the film could afford to cut about 5-10 minutes from its draggy middle section (post-Pamela kidnapping), and it’s mostly because Pamela is such a spitfire that the boost of energy she brings to the film disappears right along with her (her delivery of “What do you mean, get raped?” when she’s speaking to her Diplomat father is *chef’s kiss*). It’s truly a damn shame that we don’t get to see more of her.
There really isn’t much of a queer reading to be made, but you know we’re going to “reach” anyway and give it one. C’mon, Joe: you know there’s a secret love affair going on between Quid and the nameless killer, right? Think of it as a 1981 version of what we call “anon sex” today. I mean, there’s a whole scene where Quid corners a person that he thinks is the killer in a restroom stall. If that doesn’t scream glory hole to you, well…maybe I’m just a pervert. To take it even further, there is a voyeuristic quality to both the killer (watching his nude victim play the guitar in the opening scene) and Quid (spying on the green van every chance he gets) that is no doubt taken from Rear Window, but dig a little deeper and you can see a sexual component to the game of cat-and-mouse
Joe, you’ve already said that this is the least queer film we’ve covered, but did you pick up on any unintentional queerness in the film? Did the abrupt changes in tone work for you? And how about that adorable little dingo (er, dog in disguise, I guess)?
Joe
Oh, that dingo/dog is freaking adorable! I love a good pet sidekick in a film and Boswell is a very good boy.
I certainly also picked up on the not-so-subtle bathroom “cruising” sequence, though I have to wonder if this is a distinction that queer audiences bring to our viewing experiences that fly right over the heads of straight viewers. This is part of the reason that I continue to think it’s important that we do this series (podcast and editorial). Sure, sometimes we’re just riffing, but sometimes we’re picking up subtle visual and narrative cues that other folks might be missing that can completely change the meaning of a film.
In Road Games, it would truly be a stretch to infer that Quid is a queer man. BUT, it’s pretty obviously coded in the text that Quid is obsessed with the idea of following and apprehending this male serial killer as some kind of “dick swinging contest.” There are entire passages of dialogue wherein Quid speculates about why the killer is murdering, and when paired with the pointed dialogue from both Pamela and Frita Frugal, the first hitchhiker Quid picks up and nearly frightens to death, it’s clear that Quid is jealous of the killer’s ability to attract good looking young women where Quid cannot. At the very least Quid is enticed by the quote/unquote virility of the killer, which is how the film opens: Quid would have picked up the hitchhiker (and potentially slept with her) had the killer not grabbed her first.
Throw in that highly uncomfortable scene where Quid is literally cornered in a small roadhouse cafe filled with unsavory-looking men who couldn’t care less about whether he can speak on the phone and there’s something inherently sexual about the film that I didn’t expect.
All this to say that when a movie shows a pair of men in a bathroom, queer audiences are going to be looking a little more closely. And if a film is drawing on the legacy of Rear Window, which has its own well-documented queer reading (Jimmy Stewart’s Jeff would rather spy on his neighbour than sleep with his super hot fiancé, Grace Kelly? Umm…he’s a mo).
As for the way the film is constructed, tonal shifts and all, I’ll confess that it took me a little while to adjust. At times Road Games feels like a series of unusual encounters as Quid meets a variety of strange and unusual Australians. My favourite weird sequence is probably the repetition of the oddball characters Quid nicknames on the road, in particular the man in the station wagon with the boat that is constantly taking up space on the highway. The entire sequence where the man refuses to allow Quid to pass before his boat is ultimately destroyed is so slapstick that it felt right out of a National Lampoon film. And yet it all kind of works!
It’s here that the casting of two American leads helps to sell the “fish out of water” elements of the plot, which subtly reinforce that neither Quid, nor Pamela, truly understand the minutiae of the country they’re living in (similar to our discussion from The Grudge back in January). The moment that really stood out for me was the graffiti on the wall of the rest stop, which reads: “Don’t root abos mate” with abos crossed out and options such as “whites,” “goats,” and “girls” provided as alternatives. US audiences may glance over it and simply see graffiti, but there’s a great deal of historical racism and sexism encoded in the phrase (root is Australian for “fuck” and abos is an abbreviation of Indigenous people).
Which, you know, makes sense for a film that regularly equates people with meat. Trace, do you think there’s more to the film than a simple road chase thriller? Was there anything particularly Australian to you as an American? What sequences did you like best? And are you at all interested in the similarly themed, but apparently no formal remake, British/French 2015 co-production of the same name?
Trace
I’m never one to say that “there’s nothing deeper to it,” no matter the text. As we have said time and time again: everyone takes away from a film what they bring in to it. The intentions of the creators don’t matter. A reading is a reading and there is no such thing as a “wrong” one. So while one person may not think there’s much else to Road Games, someone else may take some deeper meaning from it that others are simply unable to comprehend. In the meantime, I’m going to keep viewing Road Games as a queer cruising thriller that centers around the “dick swinging” contest you mentioned. Would that we had seen a literal version of that contest brought to life on screen! Thanks for nothing, Franklin.
That being said, the bathroom sequence intercut with Pamela sneaking into the killer’s van and getting kidnapped is one of my favorite sequences in the film (that and the aforementioned opening kill). I’m also partial to Quid and Pamela’s first scene together, which sees them discussing the killer and trading barbs back and forth. It’s one of the film’s quieter moments, but it’s so entertaining to watch Keach and Curtis play off of each other that the scene is over before you know it. I wish I could say that I loved the climax, but the third act of Road Games is so drawn out that I found my mind wandering elsewhere through most of it (though I did enjoy the cop almost getting crushed by Quid’s truck).
Joe, you are correct that queer viewers will be looking at a scene featuring two men in a bathroom more closely (how many gay porn scenes use this scenario as a jumping-off point?), though I do worry about the implications of that statement. If you’ve ever been openly queer while participating in sports, you might find yourself the butt of many a joke made in the locker room. If not bullied, you might feel more scrutinized while in the locker room, worried that your teammates might think you are checking them out while they’re changing. I say this as someone who nearly had a panic attack every time I had to go to the locker room during P.E. in middle school and high school. I was so worried that my classmates would find me out while we were changing that I could scarcely make it through class. So while I agree with you that queer viewers will look at such bathroom scenes with a more discerning eye, I worry that our non-queer readers will take that the wrong way (please don’t, everyone!).
I have completely ignored your question about things in the film being overtly Australian as opposed to American. Honestly, with the exception of the presence of dingos and the steering wheel on a different side than I’m used to, not much about this screamed Australia to me. You’re obviously much more qualified than I am to point out such qualities. You did live there for a year and a half, after all. I hope you were able to experience some nostalgia for your time abroad while watching Road Games!
Overall, the episodic nature of the film’s first half does take some getting used to, though I admit that I found it quite enjoyable. If you go into this film expecting a taut thriller from beginning to end, then you’re bound to be disappointed. If you simply go along for the ride (heh heh) then you’ll find yourself sucked into this strange little world. I mean, the sequence with the boat being destroyed is silly, but it’s staged and shot so well that you’d be hard-pressed to hold it against the film. A film that plays things as fast and loose with structure and tone as Road Games shouldn’t work, yet here we are.
Oh, and I’m always down for a pseudo-remake (even the informal kind), especially if Barbara Crampton is in it. So bring that 2015 film on!
Next time on Horror Queers: At the request of The Perfection co-writer Eric Charmelo, we’re sticking around 1981 and diving into the ridiculous work of Michael Crichton’s sci-fi satire of the modelling world, Looker!
Don’t forget to catch up on our previous Horror Queers articles here or check out our podcast page here.