A woman is badly shaken when she is run off the freeway and nearly killed by a crazy van-driver. Her story is not taken too seriously by TV or the police - until another woman is killed in similar circumstances, also by a dark van.
You really have to suspend your disbelief. Its like a world where California Highway Patrol doesn't exist and no one can read a license plate.
If you remember the 1971 thriller "Duel", this movie is right up the alley. However, it like a cross between "Duel" and "Psycho", only mobile.
After rewatching the exceptional TV-movie, Duel, recently, I started searching for other, similar flicks in the "horror on the highway" genre, and stumbled onto this quite odd, obscure (and quite bleached- out) flick about a van driver and targeting single women on the LA motorways. The print that I saw was quite bleached out, making some scenes almost unwatchable.
Who better than Hal Needham, notorious stunt driver and director of many good ol' boy car chase movies like "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Cannonball Run", could direct this modest but worthwhile TV-thriller with numerous crashes and exploding vehicles? The resemblance with Steven Spielberg's phenomenal "Duel" is unmistakable, but that doesn't necessarily makes this film a blatant rip-off.
When it comes to the biggest TV movies of all time, you have to include Steven Spielberg's Duel on the list. A battle between Dennis Weaver and an 18 wheeler for a taunt 74 minutes that stayed in viewer's minds for way longer.
DEATH CAR ON THE FREEWAY is one of those atmospheric US TV movies that were made throughout the 1970s and seemed to fizzle out around 1985 or so, when all TV films became safe, sanitised and terminally dull. Still, that's not the case with this film, which is a great little exercise in suspense as it tells the story of a crazed van driver who enjoys killing women drivers in car accidents.
Or so the killer in Death Car On The Freeway Was Called.I have a soft spot for good car chase movies and this one was as good as it gets.
Don't get me wrong, I like the film 'Duel' but after a while it's hard to keep watching the road pass by. 'Death Car on the Freeway' gives the viewer a break from being on the road the entire film.
