Top ten trucking movies
Trucking hell: The Wages of Fear
When I think of trucking it’s either the I Like Trucking song from Not the Nine O’Clock News, The Grateful Dead’s classic Truckin’ or a string of quite bad but fun 1970s films about trucking, such as White Line Fever, Smokey and the Bandit, Every Which Way but Loose and Convoy.
In films the truck has two opposing symbols – it either represents the open road and a sense of freedom, delivering vigilante justice with a strong sense of community, aided by CB radio (apparently still alive and well), or it’s a menacing, evil killing machine driven by a psychopath.
1. Duel (Spielberg, 1971)
Spielberg’s first film, a made for TV-movie starring Dennis Weaver as a businessman being chased by a truck.
2. Joy Ride (Dahl, 2001)
Nail biting thriller in which two brothers on a road trip play a prank on a truck driver who turns out to be a psycho.
3. Big Trouble in Little China (Carpenter, 1986)
I still love this. Kurt Russell plays trucker Jack Burton in a perfect mix of adventure, comedy and the supernatural.
4. The Wages of Fear (Clouzot, 1953) / The Sorcerer (Friedkin, 1977)
Clouzot’s classic and Friedkin’s remake are both unbearably tense as four men transport nitroglycerin on trucks through the South American jungle.
5. Smokey and the Bandit (Needham, 1977)
The classic trucker flick which spawned sequels and a TV series, featuring Burt Reynolds trucking illegal beer cross-country.
6. Out of the Blue (Hopper, 1980)
Powerful, underrated film which starts with Hopper accidentally killing a school bus full of children whilst drunk and stoned in his truck… and goes downhill from there. Linda Manz plays his troubled daughter, Cebe, who spends her time talking to men on the CB radio in her dad’s crashed truck.
7. Breakdown (Mostow, 1997)
Another Kurt Russell vehicle, if you pardon the pun, this one has him as a husband looking for his missing wife in the desert in this taut thriller. JT Walsh plays the trucker.
8. Citizen’s Band (Demme, 1977)
I have a lot of affection for Demme’s early so-called ‘casually humanist’ films of which this is one. Paul Le Mat plays CB radio repairman Spider in a gentle comedy set in a small town in Nebraska.
9. Tampopo (Itami, 1985)
Okay, some might call this a Japanese food film but it begins like an American western with the hero (Tsutomu Yamazaki), wearing a cowboy hat, riding into town in his truck (it’s raining, as it is when Kurt Russell’s driving his truck in Big Trouble in Little China). Also like Russell, Yamazaki unexpectedly leaves the girl behind at the end, driving off in his truck to his next adventure.
10. Convoy (Peckinpah, 1978)
Based on a song, this Peckinpah film was his biggest grossing picture. Starring Kris Kristofferson as free spirited trucker Rubber Duck.