DUEL at The Old Town Music Hall

If you happen to find yourself anywhere near El Segundo's The Old Town Music Hall on the night of June 7th, you should go out of your way to catch the 7:00 PM screening of Steven Spielberg's DUEL (1971), which is best experienced on the big screen despite the fact that it was made for television. I consider DUEL to be one of Spielberg's crowning achievements, right alongside the first regular episode of COLUMBO ("Murder By the Book," produced in the same year as DUEL).

DUEL is also one of Richard Matheson's finest screenplays, which is saying something when you're talking about the same man who wrote THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957), THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1960), THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961), TALES OF TERROR (1962), BURN, WITCH, BURN (1962), THE RAVEN (1963), THE COMEDY OF TERRORS (1963), THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (1968), THE NIGHT STALKER (1972), THE NIGHT STRANGLER (1973), THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (1973), TRILOGY OF TERROR (1975), SOMEWHERE IN TIME (1980), and so many other important contributions to the cinema of the fantastique. 

Now here's a fun cryptoscatological fact for you: DUEL is the only Richard Matheson film--and by extension the only Steven Spielberg film--directly inspired by the JFK assassination. Strange but true! I wrote about that odd connection in an article entitled "We All Live in Happyland: Jack Kirby and the JFK Assassination," which was first published in THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION #270 (Feb. 2011) and then reprinted in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #57 (Summer 2011). 

Meanwhile, here are some photos of my wife and I wandering around the haunted corridors of The Old Town Music Hall last week...

TRAILERS FROM HELL: Josh Olson on DUEL