Convoy

Basing a movie on a top 40 hit song is probably not a great idea. Basing it on a bad top 40 hit song is an even worse one and Convoy, based on the song of the same name by C.W. McCall must have been a pay cheque movie for Peckinpah.  

Rushed into production to capitalize on the CB radio fad that had worked so well for Smoky And The Bandit (1977) and the sex symbol status of Kris Kristofferson who had had a hit with Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born (1976) and who spends a good deal of the movie stripped to the waste, no amount of Peckinpah’s trade mark slo-mo and big explosions or the infusion of populist politics can hide the fact that, frankly, the movie is rubbish, the sort of thing that would have shown at the drive-in to much honking and bonking in its day.

Playing the romantic interest, Ali McGraw looks decidedly ropy so unless you’ve got a thing for Kristofferson or big trucks Convoy is a complete waste of time.

FYI: The song had been written in 1974 by Bill Fries (aka C.W. McCall) for a series of bread commercials, and the result was a popular trend with CB radios and trucker lingo. Fries rewrote the song’s lyrics to better match the film plot but by the time the movie went into production in 1977, the trend had already faded. The duck on the hood of Rubber Duck's Mack truck was later used in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (2007) as the hood ornament on Stuntman Mike's hot-rod.

Available from: Umbrella Entertainment

 

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