The screenplay by Richard Matheson adapts his own short story of the same name, published in the April 1971 issue of Playboy,[3] and based on an encounter on November 22, 1963, when a trucker dangerously cut him off on a California freeway.
It later received an international theatrical release by Universal Pictures in an extended version featuring scenes shot after the film's original TV broadcast.
Matheson got the inspiration for the story when he was tailgated by a trucker while on his way home from a golfing match, on the then two-lane Highway 126 in Fillmore, California, with friend Jerry Sohl on November 22, 1963, the same day as the John F. Kennedy assassination.
Spielberg insisted on shooting outside, contrary to the request of unit production manager, Wallace Worsley, who felt that the film could not be shot efficiently on the budget and time provided.
It had PLYMOUTH spelled out across the hood (though the brand name was covered with aluminum foil for the movie), as well as a trunk lid treatment characteristic of the 1970 model.
[20] The last car was a 1972 model that also had a 225 Slant Six that was used to shoot the additional scenes for theatrical release in April 1972 and was later seen in "Never Give a Trucker an Even Break", the seventh episode of the Universal television series The Incredible Hulk.
Spielberg did not care what kind of car was used in the film, as long as it was red, which would allow the vehicle to stand out from the landscape in the wide shots of the desert highway.
The long hood of the older Peterbilt, its split windshield, and its round headlights give it more of a "face", adding to its menacing personality.
[9] For each shot, several people were tasked to make the truck progressively uglier, adding oil, grease, fake dead insects and other blemishes.
It had a 260 HP (194 kW) CAT 1673B turbocharged engine with a single shift RTO-913 13-speed fuller road ranger transmission, making it capable of hauling loads over 30 tons (27 t) and reaching top speeds of 61–67 mph (98–110 km/h) although the truck was made to appear that it was going faster than it actually was on the big screen.
The film was shot on a tight schedule, based on a short story, and needed to fit within the 75 minutes allotted by ABC; therefore, Spielberg focused on the visuals and menacing audio.
As an example, towards the end of the film, Mann is awakened from sleep by noise similar to that of the truck, creating in the audience the expectation of a major turning point in the movie.
Spielberg and Duel producer George Eckstein told Goldenberg that because of the short production schedule, he would have to write the music during filming.
Goldenberg composed the score in about a week, for strings, harp, keyboards and heavy use of percussion instruments, with Moog synthesizer effects, but eschewing brass and woodwinds.
[23][24] In 2015 Intrada Records released a limited edition album featuring the complete score, plus four radio source music tracks composed by Goldenberg.
Additional scenes shot to lengthen the movie included Mann's telephone conversation with his wife in the laundromat, the encounter with the broken-down school bus, and the confrontation at the railroad crossing.
The site's consensus is that "Duel makes brilliant use of its simple premise, serving up rock-solid genre thrills while heralding the arrival of a generational talent behind the lens".
[30] In TV (The Book), co-written by television critics Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall, Seitz named Duel as the greatest American television movie of all time, writing, "Almost fifty years after its initial broadcast, this stripped-down, subtly mythic action thriller retains a good deal of its power".
[32] Reviewing the movie's theatrical release in 1983, Janet Maslin wrote that Spielberg "made his mark with a film about a diabolical truck, a subject that would seem to have only limited possibilities.
In fact, Mr. Spielberg's 1971 television film Duel took advantage of the very narrowness of its premise, building excitement from the most minimal ingredients and the simplest of situations.
The theatrical version of Duel at the Manhattan Twin theater may contain a few extra close-ups of its leading man's nose, but otherwise it works as well on the wide screen as it did on the small one.
The vehicles are the real stars of Duel, and whenever the chase is interrupted by the relatively primitive people on hand (at a truck stop and, in one particularly odd sequence, at a gas station run by a woman who keeps pet snakes, spiders and lizards), the film loses its momentum and becomes somewhat clumsy.
[34] David Thomson writes: "The ordinariness of the Dennis Weaver character and the monstrous malignance of the truck confront one another with a narrative assurance that never needs to remind us of the element of fable.
[37] William Thomas writes: "Tapping into the hidden terrors on the open road, this originally made for TV opus is consummate storytelling in pictures.
Despite a clever use of sound effects - the truck's primal groaning contrasting with Mann's whiny engine - Duel achieves the frantic energy and striking simplicity of silent film: ironically, considering its small screen origins, it is pure cinema.
"[38] Scott Tobias sees the film as a precursor of things to come: "It takes less than a minute of watching Duel, Steven Spielberg’s feature-length debut, to realize you’re in the hands of a master director."
Specifically, he sees it as a precursor to Jaws: "Now 50 years and countless awards, accolades and box-office dollars later, Duel feels like the proto-Jaws, an early statement of principles on how to build suspense and terror through patience, simplified action and delayed gratification.
As an exercise – and it is scarcely (if elegantly) more than that – Duel is proof positive that a truck menacing a car on the California highway is all the story necessary for a film to exist.
Some critics follow Spielberg's own interpretation of the story as an indictment of the mechanization of life, both by literal machines and by social regimentation.
[42][43] Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival Emmy Golden Globe Emmy Saturn Award In 2005, 34 years after the original film, Duel was followed by a spinoff sequel, Throttle, featuring a scene with Tom Gillen as David Mann (previously portrayed by Dennis Weaver), driving a red Plymouth Valiant that was fixed from the wreckage.