The Movie:

C. W. McCall will probably always be remembered for his hokey country and western music. Sam Packinpah will probably always be remembered for The Wild Bunch. It took an odd twist of fate for their worlds to collide, but it happened. Towards the later end of his career, his body and brain riddled with drugs and alcohol, Peckinpah made some unusual choices. 1978's Convoy was one of them, and probably the strangest choice of all the later entries in the director's filmography.

The story is rather simple. It revolves around a trucker named Martin ‘Rubber Duck' Penwald (Kris Kristofferson) who is on the run across a good portion of the United States from a corrupt police officer known as Dirty Lyle (Ernest Borgnine) Wallace. Rubber Duck, who owns his own business and is trying to bring in the haul across the southwest from Arizona down on into Texas, ends up getting involved with a disenfranchised young lady named Melissa (Ali McGraw). Not surprising, Melissa ends up climbing aboard the big rig and riding with Duck.

Along the way, Rubber Duck uses his CB radio skills to enlist the aid of his trucker buddies. These guys do their best to keep Lyle from catching up with Duck. This typically involves some sort of mischievous but well natured and humorous tactic to keep him off of Duck's tail (ha!). Eventually, the truckers all join together to form a massive convoy that stretches for over a mile in length. This brings in all sorts of media attention and ultimately brings to light Lyle's abusive and corrupt ways. And if Melissa and Rubber Duck should fall in love along the way? So be it.

Convoy may sound rather silly, and in many ways it definitely is, but it's not without its good points. It's a very upbeat and fun film despite its shortcomings. Depending on your own personal nostalgia factor, you might enjoy it more than others but on a personal note, when I saw it as a kid I definitely found myself rooting for the truckers. And as an adult? Yeah, I still do, every time I see it and as such, there may be a little bias as it was a childhood favorite. However, the movie definitely has its following and guilty pleasure or not, this goofy romp of a movie remains a pretty entertaining watch.

It's probably no coincidence that this film followed hot on the heels of Smokey And The Bandit and Every Which Way But Loose but Kristofferson holds his own against Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood. He's definitely playing the stereotypical Southern anti-hero role pretty much exactly as you'd expect him to but he's fu to watch in the part. It's to his credit that most of the humor works and his on-screen relationship with McGraw doesn't lack for chemistry. The interactions between Kristofferson and Borgnine in particular are also a lot of fun to watch and more often than not genuinely funny. Much of the film's comedic elements stem from how things play out between these two foils.

If this isn't a textbook case of ‘Bloody Sam' behind the camera, there are some very obvious Peckinpah touches scattered throughout the film. These elements make the movie worth checking out not only for camp-hounds and drive-in movie fans, but also for the cineaste types as well. The concept of a classic outlaw hero (in this case an all American trucker) is chased cross-country by an equally anti-heroic character (a crooked cop, representing Sam's anti-establishment leanings) trying to right his wrongs is reminiscent of The Wild Bunch. As most will recall, Peckinpah had previously worked with Borgnine, who is, coincidentally, phenomenal in that film even if he is a bit of a ham here. Of course, Peckinpah also did some earlier work with Ali McGraw with The Getaway in which she was cast as the female lead opposite the late, great Steve McQueen. While Convoy never achieves the sheer intensity of those two earlier works, or comes close to the brooding nihilism of Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia or the oft overlooked and highly underrated Cross Of Iron, the chase scenes are tense and the shots involving the trucks are nicely planned out. Much of the sweeping landscape shots also bring back memories of his earlier and better regarded western films.

How much of it was actually photographed by Sam himself remains debatable. James Colburn stepped in to help and was assigned second unit photography chores when it became evident that Peckinpah's drug addiction was so far gone by this point in his career that he was in obvious need of help. The picture was already over budget at this point.

Video:

Convoy debuts on Blu-ray from Kino in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed properly in a 2.35.1 widescreen aspect ratio. Detail is quite strong here as is color reproduction. There aren't any problems with heavy print damage to note, just some minor white specks that show up from time to time, while black levels stay nice and solid here too. There's a nice amount of natural looking film grain evident throughout and no evidence of noise reduction or edge enhancement. If you really look for it you might spot some very minor compression artifacts in a couple of scenes but other than that this is a nicely authored disc of some impressive looking material.