At the same time members of the Goose Lord Gang were trying to crucify the Revenging Manta, the ninja vigilant of downtown Orlando, to a wall in the exhibit for Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond, a punk in ski mask was taking a closer look at the corpse I had on display in the exhibit. He stuck his index finger in one of the empty eye sockets before moving over to the corpse’s mouth. 

“Hey, his face feels like rubber,” the ski-masked said while laughing, laughing that turned to howling as the jaws of the corpse clamped down on his fingers and wouldn’t let go.

— To be continued. 

Tonight’s movie is 1981’s Road Games from director Richard Franklin. If you’re looking for a movie where Stacy Keach plays a trucker in the Australian countryside then this is the movie for you. The movie also features a serial killer burying body parts across the Australian countryside. And we have a young Jamie Lee Curtis hitchhiking across the Australian countryside. And a dingo! Alas, no kangaroos.

Stacy Keach plays Patrick Quid, an American who drives a truck in Australia. Do not call him a truck driver. Just because he drives a truck doesn’t mean he’s a truck driver. He talks to his pet dingo about various subjects like how he should have picked up some young attractive hitchhiker who was now going into a hotel with some creeper in a green van who picked her up. And the creeper took the last room in the place leaving Quid and his dingo no choice, but to sleep in his truck.

He wakes up the next morning to the sounds of garbage men picking up the trash. His dingo is particularly interested in what’s in a particular bag and won’t leave it alone. The creeper in the hotel room is also peeking at the situation through his hotel window and Quid wonders why the creeper is so interested in the garbage lying by the curb. He and his Dingo get back on the road.

There’s a meat shortage in some parts of Australia due to a labor dispute so Quid is hired to transport a whole bunch of pig carcasses so Australians can have their bacon. But he keeps running across that creeper from the hotel room. He drives a green van and he’s burying things on the side of the road which Quid finds suspicious. And when Quid hears on the radio that a young woman was brutally murdered, he immediately calls the police at a roadside diner, but it’s no use. They won’t listen and the local hillbillies don’t like his dingo. When he finds this dingo harmed and a guy in a green van is seen driving away, it’s on!

He chases after the guy in the green van, but is pulled over by the police and questioned about the hotel he checked into with a young woman a couple of nights ago. He tells the cops that he didn’t check into the hotel and that the creeper in the green van took Quid’s name from the side of his truck. The police let him go on his way, but are not completely convinced. It’s around this time that I’m wondering where the heck is Jamie Lee Curtis.

Finally, Quid picks up a young hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) who he affectionately calls Hitch. The two of them have great chemistry and I’m even sensing a spark of romance, but Quid says he’s too old for her. Hitch wants to help Quid prove that the creeper in the van is the killer so try to ensnare the creeper, but all does not go according to plan. This is the point in the movie where the suspense ratchets up and I wonder if Quid is going to get the ending he deserves. I wasn’t disappointed. That’s all I’ll say. 

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, and episode 599) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.