20 Movie Villains Who Were Unbelievably Petty
5. The Truck Driver - Duel
There are a million ways a villain could be effectively brought to life, but it takes something special to do so without ever truly showing the character on screen. This is exactly what Steven Spielberg did in his directing debut.
Way back in 1971, Duel created a quite ridiculous amount of fear and tension between two characters, one of which audiences never actually see. It was almost the idea of the threat he posed, and what could happen, that resulted in such suspense.
The villain in question was a truck driver, seemingly just a normal person driving for a living, who got overtaken on the road by David Mann (Dennis Weaver) and decided to get revenge. No one likes being put in danger or being cut up by another driver, but the chase that this particular man gave went far beyond the lengths that any reasonable person would go to.
The driver got inside the mind of Mann, the offender in this case, and tried to kill him on numerous occasions, either by driving into him or easing his car in front of a train. Was this really all because he didn't like that he had been overtaken?