Iowa 80 is a sort-of paradise that has something for everyone — including Little Big Screen. Inside the Super Truck Showroom at “The World’s Largest Truck Stop,” between the bottles of candy-colored antifreeze and many, many chrome doodads, there are a few shelves of DVDs. (That’s more than Best Buy carries nowadays.) But this month’s streaming picks haven’t been pulled willy-nilly from those shelves. These are the movies elevated to end-cap status and officially canonized as “Timeless Trucker Classics.”
Duel (1971)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
David Foster Wallace lives on, in large part, through quasi-inspirational pull quotes from “This Is Water,” the too-famous commencement speech he gave in 2005. Snippets are nice-sounding enough to get shares on social media, especially around the New Year, and the past couple weeks I kept seeing the bit about having compassion and empathy for the spoiled, stupid, selfish and disgusting-seeming strangers all around us at rush hour. Wallace isn’t wrong about this, but he’s also not as right as Will Sennott was in this character-limited missive about Americans behind the wheel.
I think Steven Spielberg, or at least 24-year-old Steven Spielberg, would agree. In his first feature, a made-for-TV movie appropriately titled Duel, Spielberg pits a dad (Dennis Weaver) who’s used to living life at 65 mph against Da King of Da California Highway. This beast, a rusted-out and possibly possessed semi-truck, proceeds to stalk and terrorize the dad. Spielberg gets in on the bullying, too, turning up the heat on the highway until the pavement reaches a boiling point, and the dad’s speedometer has no choice but to climb into the triple digits. For a movie that’s a lot like land-shark Jaws, it’s still a shock to see Spielberg so lean, and most of all, so mean.
Rent it on Apple TV and Prime Video.
Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
Directed by Hal Needham
This hootin’ and hollerin’ rendition of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner may as well be a CB radio blast from another dimension, one where good old boys dream of bootlegging, not bootlicking. The sides are drawn in facial hair: Burt Reynolds’ Bandit gets to rock the most rideable mustache in recorded history, while the middle-initialed villain, Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), is given the second-most-evil-looking mustache you’ll ever see. I can only assume Smokey and the Bandit was such a big hit in 1977 — only getting beat at the worldwide box office by one movie: Star Wars — because the human heart wants what it wants: Sally Field and some Silver Bullets.
Rent it on Apple TV and Prime Video.
Black Dog (1998)
Directed by Kevin Hooks
Black Dog might not match the meth high of Road House, but this country-music action movie at least hits like an unregulated over-the-counter caffeine pill. Patrick Swayze plays against type as a mullet-less truck driver named, of all things, Jack Crews. Crews has gotta run $3 million in guns from Atlanta to New Jersey and get back in time for the tip-off of his daughter’s basketball game. The chases and crashes along the way are very real stunts, and yeah, you already know all roads lead to explosives.
Rent it on Apple TV and Prime Video.
Trucks (1997)
Directed by Chris Tomson
I feel for anyone fooled by the kickass, Goosebumps-ass cover of this Stephen King adaptation — not a single skeleton drives a single semi! Since Trucks is based on the same short story as Maximum Overdrive, but without the cocaine lore of King’s own directorial debut, I have to wonder if there was a mix-up between the two? Or maybe the mix-up was with Breakdown? The Kurt Russell trucker-thrill ride that also came out in 1997?
Stream it on Tubi or YouTube. Do not pay money to rent it.
On the Big, Big Screen
Night of the Living Dead, directed by George A. Romero
Wednesday, Jan. 15, FilmScene in Iowa City
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, directed by Edgar Wright
Friday, Jan. 17, Fleur Cinema in Des Moines
Misery, directed by Rob Reiner
Tuesday, Jan. 21, Last Picture House in Davenport
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, directed by Jacques Demy
Tuesday, Jan. 21, The Varsity Cinema in Des Moines
Wild at Heart, directed by David Lynch
Saturday, Jan. 25, FilmScene in Iowa City
