3º – Night Terror (E.W. Swackhamer, 1977)
After a family emergency arises, a common housewife decides to cross several kilometers alone by car at night to reach her family. However, after witnessing the murder of a policeman on a road, the woman will be chased by a psychopath. Completely unknown, this pearl of the 1970s is the perfect film for those who like road movies in suspense. Originally conceived for television, the film makes use of a small budget, but extremely well used, knowing how to condense terror into small simple samples, such as the iconic scene in which the protagonist looks for gasoline and a phone in a frightening abandoned post. ‘Night Terror’, you can be sure, will creep you out much more than the vast majority of typical suspense and terror films.
2º – Black Cadillac (John Murlowski, 2003)
Three young men, with no apparent explanations, begin to be chased by a strange black cadillac during a winter’s night. We will follow this creepy and frightening chase, always with surprises appearing on screen. A unique suspense, ‘Black Cadillac’ explains the best of road movies, driving a plot that happens almost exclusively in motion, inside the car where the three of them meet, always cherishing an atmosphere of mystery about why that is happening.
1º – Joy Ride (John Dahl, 2001)
Fragmented in two moments, the plot shows, in its first aspect, the trip of two brothers in search of the girlfriend of one of them, and, in the final aspect, the three together – the two brothers and the young woman – in another trip by car. All the substance of the film is found inside these two journeys by car, when they are chased by a crazy truck driver after an unfortunate joke. ‘Joy Ride’ is the greatest road movie of suspense ever made. Here, everything works by elevating an atmosphere of suspense that completely attracts the spectator’s attention. Even the clichés of the genre are here and are well used, like the weak moral protagonists who almost always make the wrong decisions, the terror that comes back when it finally seems to be over and the villain with a banal motive for his bloody journey. The work also has a surprisingly good cast for films of the genre, with the presence of Paul Walker, Steve Zahn and Leelee Sobieski (regular actress, but who had several spotlights on her at the time). That typical movie to be watched on a cold day under the covers.
