Duel's funnier little brother - Joy Ride (2001)

Road trip Horror? Sold! To the very attractive young lady at the back!

The film begins with a guy buying a car to impress a girl, who seems to be a bit of a pain in the arse if you ask me but there's no accounting for taste. The road trip is planned!

On his way to pick her up Lewis has to bail out his loser brother, Fuller, from jail. While on their way they hear a trucker, Rusty Nail (I kid you not), on the CB radio and decide to wind him up by pretending to be a sexy woman, Candy Cane, talking dirty to him. They get bored and stop off at a motel and bump in to a guest who was being a bit of a racist towards the motel owner. At that moment they hear Rusty Nail on the CB again. They tell him to meet him/her at the hotel and give him the room number of the racist man. He turns up later that night ready for romance. The brothers hear arguing and then it goes quiet. The next morning the police are knocking on their door to tell them that the man next door is half dead with half his face ripped off.

Serious practical joke gone wrong! The acting I like. The brothers have a natural mischief about them. Reminds me of when I was a (little) younger and over the road a builder had taken 2 days to build this tiny wall so me and my sister went to the upstairs window and shouted for him to hurry up while hiding. We laughed until we couldn't breath. And, er, we recorded it too. You had to be there I guess... No one died though, geez...

Back to the film and the cops tell them to leave town. On the road they hear Rusty Nail again looking for Candy Cane. They tell him they had just been winding him up. He then reveals he is behind them in his truck. Later it gets a little darker. They have picked up the girl from the beginning of the film and Rusty Nail calls to let them know he is still watching them. And he has kidnapped a girl. He tells of what doctors do when they can't identify a body, of how they keep the jaw and fingers in a jar. Mmm, sexy talk. Not quite sure how accurate that is but lets go with it shall we!
What is it about these trucks that just ooze death these days? I'm thinking Duel, Jeepers Creepers, Maximum Overdrive. Is it the shear size of them? Their huge grills, deafening horns or the maniacal drivers themselves? I think the thing about these films is the killer remains anonymous. Because you only know who you're hiding from when you see the truck you are kind of protected. It's when you get out of the car and step in to say, a petrol station, is when you need to take a closer look at who else is in the cue behind you.