Convoy

Plot synopsis:
In the Arizona desert, truck driver Martin "Rubber Duck" Penwald is passed by a woman in a Jaguar E-Type, which leads to an encounter with a sheriff's deputy. Proceeding on his way, Rubber Duck runs into fellow truck drivers Pig Pen/Love Machine and Spider Mike, when another "trucker" informs them over the C.B. that they are okay to increase their speed. The "trucker" turns out to be Sheriff "Dirty Lyle" Wallace, a long-time nemesis of the Duck, who extorts them for $50 each.
The truckers head on to Rafael's Glide-In where the Duck's sometime girlfriend, Violet, works as a waitress. Melissa, the driver of the Jaguar, is also there; the car broke down and she had to sell it and some of her belongings in an effort to leave Arizona, as she's due in Dallas for a job. The Duck offers Melissa a ride; Violet is unimpressed and ushers him away to give him a special birthday present. While away, Wallace shows up at the Glide-In checking plates. Pig Pen and Spider Mike start making fun of Wallace over the diner's base-station CB radio, leading to Wallace attempting to arrest Spider Mike for "vagrancy".
The Duck, having been warned by Widow Woman, enters and tries to smooth things over. But Lyle is determined, insulting Mike who is desperate to get home to his pregnant wife. Mike punches Wallace, leading to a brawl in the diner when some deputies arrive to assist Wallace. The assorted truckers prevail, and the Duck handcuffs Wallace to a bar stool. After pulling the spark plug wires and distributor caps out of the police cars, they all decide to head for the state line to avoid prosecution.
The truckers drive across Arizona and New Mexico, with Wallace in belated pursuit. The initial police pursuit is foiled when Duck leads the truckers off the main highway and down a rough dusty desert trail, causing several of the police cars to crash. Wallace commandeers the vehicle of one of the state troopers, but is also thwarted when Pig Pen and Spider Mike crush his vehicle between their rigs while in motion. Additional independent truckers join them to form a mile-long convoy in support of the Rubber Duck's vendetta against the abusive Wallace. The truckers communicate with each other via CB radio, and much CB jargon is sprinkled throughout the film. As the rebellious truckers evade and confront the police, Rubber Duck becomes a reluctant folk hero.
It becomes apparent the truckers have a great deal of political support and the Governor of New Mexico, Jerry Haskins, meets Rubber Duck. At about the same time, Wallace and a brutal Alvarez, Texas, sheriff, arrest Spider Mike, who left the convoy to be with his wife after giving birth to their son. Wallace's plan is to use Mike as "bait" to trap Rubber Duck. A janitor at the jail, aware of the plan, messages by CB radio that Spider Mike has been arrested and beaten. Various truckers relay the message to New Mexico.
Rubber Duck ends the meeting with Haskins and leaves to rescue Spider Mike. Several other truckers join him and head east to Texas. The truckers eventually destroy half of the town and the jail and rescue Spider Mike. Knowing they will now be hunted by the authorities, the truckers head for the border of Mexico. On the way, Rubber Duck gets separated from the rest of the convoy when the others get stopped by a traffic accident. The film culminates with a showdown near the United States-Mexico border where Rubber Duck is forced to face Wallace and a National Guard unit stationed on a bridge. Firing a machine gun, Wallace and the Guardsmen cause the truck's tanker trailer to explode, while Rubber Duck deliberately steers the tractor unit over the side of the bridge, plummeting into the churning river below, sending Duck presumably to his death.
A public funeral is held for Rubber Duck, in which Haskins promises to work for the truckers by taking their case to Washington, D.C. Disgusted with the politics of the situation, Pig Pen abruptly leaves the funeral. A distraught Melissa is led to a school bus with several "long-haired friends of Jesus" inside. There she finds Rubber Duck in disguise sitting in the back. He asks, "You ever seen a duck that couldn't swim?" The convoy takes to the road with the coffin in tow, abruptly ending the politicians' speeches. As the bus passes Wallace, he spies the Duck and bursts into laughter.

Tags: cult

Review:
Not to mention, Kris Kristofferson was at this point very much a sex symbol from his movie " A Star Is Born" having just been released.Director Sam Peckinpah was in town and was picking out extras to sit in the Old Town Plaza near the gazebo in downtown Las Vegas.
It also features one of the very best Ernest Borgnine performances that I can remember - not bad for a man who won an Oscar for Marty!The story traces the fortunes of some truckers, led by "Rubber Duck" (Kris Kristofferson), as they drive through the states of New Mexico, Texas and Arizona.
This movie,which is not short on American archetypes, from Ernest  Bornine's vile redneck sheriff "Dirty Lyle," to Kris Kristofferson's  independence-loving "Rubber Duck," to Ali MacGraw's free-spirited  "Melissa," is really an old-fashioned Western, but with trucks.
Like Clint Eastwood's "man with no name" gunslinger, Kristofferson (who  steals every scene with his smile and blue eyes) is a man whose sense  of honour and justice compels him to act on behalf of the down-trodden;  symbolized in this case by a black truck driver named "Spider Mike"  (played by actor Franklyn Ajaye).
And like those great Westerns, only then can  Rubber Duck find solace for his spirit; which he does without  compromising either his own values or his personal integrity  This is the essence of honour itself and what really makes this movie  work.
A movie based on a CB radio song that morphed into a poetic homage to machinery; where trucks are turned into mythological monsters and filmed cruising through the heat-radiating desert to a score of classical music.Why Sam Peckinpah elected to take on this project has really never been explained, although that decision certainly supports those tales of substance abuse, and the final cut is bizarre enough to also fit that explanation.
It has the disjointed feel of multiple directors or of a Director of Photography filling in many times when Sam was not motivated to make an appearance on the set.Kris Kristofferson is fine as trucker "Rubber Duck" although Earnest Borgnine pretty much steals the whole thing.But "Convoy's real claim to fame is as the film where Ali MacGraw's career spectacularly crashed and burned.
Truckers (Burt Young , Magde Sinclair as Widow woman, among others) on a tri-state protest over police brutality ,form a mile long "convoy" in support of Duck's vengeance with the abusive sheriff .
Based on the country song , a real hit , of same title by C.W. McCall.An enjoyable film , ¨ Peckinpah's Convoy ¨results to be an elegiac perspective at the world of the truckers .
It doesn't feel as nasty today as it maybe did in the late 1970´s.Kris Kristofferson is cool in his role but it doesn't hold the film together enough."Convoy" is made in typical Peckinpah style but it doesn't seem to match that good in this case.
After the Rubber Duck and two of his trucker pals Love Machine & Spider Mike,Burt Young & Franklyn Ajaye, were entrapped by the nasty and vindictive local Sheriff Lyle Wallace, Earnest Borgnine,for illegally using the trucker CB-handle name Cottonmouth.
the Rubber Duck Love Machine & Spider Mike get the full support from some very expected and unexpected persons that during the remainder of the film has them on the front pages of the news as well as getting the ear of the local governors senators and even the President of the United States himself.
This by drawing attention to the plight of him and his fellow truckers and how their short-changed and ill-treated by everyone down the line, police politicians and big oil, as they try to do their.The giant convoy of truckers following the Rubber Duck open the eyes of the nation and puts corrupt low-lives like Sheriff Wallace on the front pages.
Kris Kristofferson as lead trucker Rubber Duck seems sheepish about the overall point, while Ali MacGraw as his love interest looks uncomfortable in a bad haircut."Convoy" isn't Shakespeare, but for the first 35 minutes it establishes an amiable tone and a colorful cast of supporting players.
One cop introduces himself: "My name is Bob Bookman, sir, and I hate truckers." The Duck goes on some existential tangent about his growing band of followers, telling his pal Pig Pen (Burt Young) "Who the hell else they got?"Much of the film focuses on Sheriff "Dirty" Lyle, overplayed by an uncommonly intense Ernest Borgnine, who chases the Duck because, well, he's the law and doesn't like backtalk from people he hits up for bribes.
He leans on stunts in place of story; after the fifteenth flipped cop car I started getting old "A-Team" flashbacks.A lot of familiar faces from other Peckinpah films appear here, in both lead and supporting roles.
The truck drivers Martin "Rubber Duck" Penwald (Kris Kristofferson), Bobby "Love Machine" "Pig Pen" (Burt Young) and Spider Mike (Franklyn Ajaye) are crossing the Arizona desert and they are lured by the corrupt Sheriff Lyle "Cottonmouth" Wallace (Ernest Borgnine) that takes money from them.
This is the first film by the late, great Sam Peckinpah I've seen, and I must say, despite this apparently being him at his worst, I'm intrigued enough to watch more of his works.
Even the Sheriff, after thinking he had done-in 'The Duck' had a latent taste of his own humanity and laughed, and laughed in release of his anger at Pennwald, the lead trucker, most likely burying the hatchet in his mind.This was 70's no disco, at a time when many different programs and movies seemed to be centered around the 'Disco' era, this was not even close.
This film embodies all of some of the most genuine characteristics that are particular to the rural US: freedom, the struggle between the law of man and the law of the land, and the plight everyday folks who work hard day in and day out to bring a huge nation of millions and miles together.Kris Kristofferson, Ernest Borgnine, Burt Young and Franklyn Ajaye all give exceptional performances.
What starts out as a few trucks turns into a giant convoy and soon the chase becomes a media event and a political tool for votes.Based on the country song of same title by C.W. McCall, and directed by Sam Peckinpah, Convoy became, surprisingly to most in the industry, a hugely popular film.
Kris Kristofferson plays Rubber Duck and it's a great bit of casting, Ernest Borgnine suitably steps into Sheriff Wallace's big trousers and Burt Young is dead on entertaining as Pig Pen. Sadly this is yet another film that proves Ali MacGraw just couldn't act, tho in her defence here the character Melissa, is poor and totally pointless.Convoy is the sort of film that i personally understand if folk hate it and think it has no merits whatsoever, but much like Smokey And The Bandit from the previous year, vehicles going fast and creating mayhem makes for a whole lot of fun to be taken with a pinch of cheek.
Most perplexing of all, this is directed by Sam Peckinpah, the man who gave us The Wild Bunch, Cross of Iron, Straw Dogs and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. His movies usually have solid plots, good themes and are quite gritty and violent.
I cannot think of any other film in history that did so well at the box office (even with such universally bad reviews) but which had such a bad reputation during its making that its director, the admittedly cantankerous Sam Peckinpah, was basically exiled one more time from an industry that he had so shaken up just a few short years before.
And unfortunately, it was a cocaine problem Peckinpah had that was so extreme during its making that when word got around, he could find absolutely no work again in Hollywood until 1982, when he got a shot at a comeback by doing THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND.Scripted by B.W.L. Norton (of CISCO PIKE fame) and based very loosely on the 1975-76 C.W. McCall C&W/pop crossover hit of the same name, CONVOY, though originally intended as a congenial truck-driving comedy along the lines of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, somehow evolved into what might be called a modern-day version of THE WILD BUNCH, only on wheels, and with a lot less violence.
Kris Kristofferson, who did a great turn as Billy The Kid in the director's 1973 Western masterpiece PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID, stars as Rubber Duck, an interstate truck driver who is trying to make a living off of his profession but feels he is being hemmed in by the 55 MPH speed limit.
And when he gets a lot of his fellow truck drivers, and a curious journalist (Ali MacGraw), involved, it is really quite reluctantly, until he runs afoul of a very nasty New Mexico sheriff (Ernest Borgnine) who's not only got a thing against truck drivers of Kristofferson's ilk, but even a latent streak of racism as well, when he and some fellow lawman tangle with a black trucker, Spider Mike (Franklin Ajaye).
By the time he got back to work on THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND, he was a very depleted man; and though he made a concerted effort to quit his bad habits, it turned out to be too little, too late.To CONVOY itself, now: For a very long time, hearing the stories about Peckinpah's "white powder" madness during its making, I was very hard on this film, considering it his worst.
And he did get some good performances from the three principals, along with a cast that included Madge Sinclair (from the epic TV miniseries "Roots"), Cassie Yates, Burt Young (who had been in ROCKY, and Peckinpah's 1975 action film THE KILLER ELITE), Seymour Cassel (as the New Mexico governor), and Jorge Russek (as the racist Tex-Mex sheriff Tiny Alvarez).Grievously flawed as this film was, and as "coked out" as Peckinpah was during its production, there are still things about CONVOY that make it a film well worth seeing.
Grown up as a child end seventies early eighties I never forgot this flick up to it's new unrated and remastered release on Blu ray, time to pick it up and watch it allover again.The story is rather simple, when a trucker , Rubber Duck (Kris Kristofferson) comes across Sheriff Lyle 'Cottonmouth' Wallace (Ernest Borgnine) trouble starts between the two of them.
He is notorious on the CB, nowadays it would be the web, for having various altercations in one form or another with the law, When one of his merry band of truckers gets in a fight with some of the local law enforcers including sheriff Dirty Lyle who has been gunning for The Duck since his name was incarnated, this leads with a pack of truckers racing to get over state line, where they feel Lyle wont be able to touch them, along the way however through the CB chat world a convoy of trucks begins to follow Duck and his merry men!
In showing cops to be incompetent buffoons and politicians opportunist sc#m, in turning Ernest Borgnine in the same cardboard corrupt authority villain that he played for Robert Aldrich in his rail movie Emperor of the North Pole a few years before, Convoy expresses public sentiment.Kris Kristofferson is the embodiment here, he's the Kowalski of few words and pedal to the floor, he's the guy who gets to say "p#ss on you and p#ss on your law" and wear the cool shades as he's about to plunge his truck straight into a National Guard roadblock in a final upflare of furious vengeance.
It seems that Convoy was very popular in the 80's, especially for kids, both in the UK and Europe.Basically you have the Rubber Duck leading a huge convoy of truckers protesting against the way they've been treated by one Dirty Lyle (and some police in general) while out on the road.
chases, trucks, you name it but the movie also has a more serious undertones - you can watch it on at least two levels.Based on a country & western song, I think the makers of the film did very well to bring it as they did to the screen.
Ever since I've seen this movie for the first time I can tell this was a picture well worth standing in line for, a film that is in the good old fashion american tradition thats nerated by the title tune which was a sold out record, all you truckers and convoy buffs out there, this is the biggest and baddest CONVOY of them all...
Movies and shows like "White Line Fever" and "Movin' On" catered to the fans of the big rigs and "Convoy" definitely satisfied in that respect.Of course, Kris Kristofferson plays Rubber Duck, a legendary trucker with "more stories than Jesse James" as one trucker says.
Borgnine shows what a good actor he is, because in addition to playing very likable characters, he succeeds at playing a real bastard here.After some trouble with Lyle (started by the Duck's trucker buddies actually), they start a convoy which soon becomes packed with seemingly an endless line of trucks.
Kris Kristofferson is great as truck driver "Rubber Duck", nemesis of Sheriff "Dirty" Lyle Wallace played by Ernest Borgnine.
This also attracted Wild Bunch star Ernest Borgnine as Sheriff Lyle Wallace, a great nemesis for our hero The Rubber Duck.(Kristofferson).
The film follows McCall's hit nicely, as it focuses on a deviant trucker nicknamed "Rubber Duck" (Kris Kristofferson), who bands together with his road-friends "Love Machine" (later nicknamed "Pig Pen," played by Burt Young), and "Spider Mike" (Franklyn Ajaye) to protest the corrupt ways of Sheriff Lyle "Cottonmouth" Wallace (Ernest Borgnine), by driving their trucks at top speed to the state line of New Mexico and as far as they can possibly go.
The gaggle of truckers eventually start a convoy, made up of truckers from all over the country, "long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus," among many others who are riding in protest of police corruption and the pursuit of individuality.Sam Peckinpah directs Convoy with a necessary sense of fun, gusto, and clear enjoyment, filming many shots of truckers and their drivers flooring it down interstates, weaving in and out of traffic, and even working to stop law-enforcement by using two eighteen-wheelers to crush a police cruiser flying down the highway at top speed.
The individualism in the film is nearly unmatchable, as we see that "Rubber Duck," "Pig Pen," and "Spider Mike" have a genuine love for what they do and, as McCall stated in his song, "ain't nothing' gonna get in their way." On top of that, the film is filled with talents that are fun to watch, specifically Kristofferson and Borgnine, two instantly recognizable actors in roles they were built to play.
But that is only one of several ways Peckinpah's Convoy surprises as it lives up to a terrific song and terrific idea in an entertaining manner.Starring: Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw, Burt Young, Franklin Ajaye, and Ernest Borgnine.
CONVOY Release Date: 6/28/1978 Runtime: 110 MinutesSTARRING: Convoy is a 1978 action film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw, Ernest Borgnine and Burt Young.
It is considered a member of the CB Radio/trucker film genre which rose to prominence in the 1970s following the success of Smokey and the Bandit, White Line Fever and the television series Movin' On.SUMMARY: Truck driver Martin "Rubber Duck" Penwald (Kristofferson) comes into conflict with Sheriff "Dirty Lyle" Wallace (Borgnine).
Rubber Duck and his trucker friends, Pig Pen (Burt Young), Spider Mike (Franklyn Ajaye) and Black Widow (Madge Sinclair), get into a fight with Wallace and his deputies at a truck stop.
In the film Kris Kristofferson plays a trucker known as Rubber Duck who leads a convoy after a worthless sheriff (Ernest Borgnine) assaults a driver.
If you're expecting to see something like THE WILD BUNCH or STRAW DOGS then it's best you watch one of those two films because the greatness Peckinpah is known for isn't going to be spotted here but at the same time there's no question that there's some mild entertainment to be had here.
its a film I've loved since i was a child and reminds me of siting round late at night watching the best from the early 80's and 70's, smokey and the bandit, cannon ball run etc a feel good movie that is literally retro filming at its very best, makes you wish deep down that you had a very big truck.
Kristofferson and MacGraw make a perfect team as they lead a convoy of outlaw truckers through three states while being chased by corrupt traffic cop "dirty Lyle."(Ernest Borgnine) This movie is a good one for getting your buddies together and drinking while laughing at this classic rebel trucker movie.
I had not seen this film for such a long time and i tought that there was no way that i could like this movie 15 years later, but to my surprise it had lost little of the charm it had.MY RATING.
On the one hand, this film is actually based on a song by someone called C.W. McCall; but on the other, it's directed by Sam Peckinpah - the great director behind masterpieces such as Straw Dogs and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia; so it was 50/50 as to whether or not it was going to be good.
as for convoy what not to like this movie just gets better and better on ever viewing.that may have something to do with my age than the film but still you could not make that today, and i hope they don't.a time cap for the late 70's.
CONVOY is a middling truck chase movie from director Sam Peckinpah, who by all accounts was off his head on drugs for much of the filming.
This movie begins with three truckers driving under the handles of "the Rubber Duck" (Kris Kristofferson), "Pig Pen" (Burt Young) and "Spider Mike" (Franklin Ajaye) minding their own business and cruising down the highway.