Universal PicturesSome of the greatest villains in movie history are effective because they're complex. These are three-dimensional bad guys with good reasons for what they do, and audiences can't help but empathize with them despite their misdeeds. Maybe they're even antiheroes. The great Steven Spielberg has made movies featuring plenty of villains who fit this mold, but the baddie in his debut film is the exact opposite. Duel is about a truck driver who wants to run another motorist off the road, yet at no point does the audience get a good look at the trucker or a sense of what motivates his monstrous road rage. But far from being a failure from a young filmmaker, Duel's utter lack of character development for its baddie is essential to making the movie so good.Spielberg, who’d already directed episodes of shows like Night Gallery and Columbo, was only 24 when Universal Television asked him to direct his first feature-length film. Based on a short story by Richard Matheson published in Playboy earlier in the year, Duel premiered as an ABC Movie of the Week 55 years ago before later getting a theatrical release, making it the first film in Spielberg’s long career.Gunsmoke star Dennis Weaver plays David Mann, a salesman driving along one of California's many long and lonely desert highways. When he passes a gnarly-looking semi-truck, the driver develops a murderous vendetta, and the majority of this taut, dialogue-light thriller is spent watching Mann try to outrun or avoid the hulking tanker truck’s escalating attempts to run him off the road. It was clear from the moment when Spielberg turned the ignition key on his career that the young filmmaker had something special. Jaws, his legendary, industry-changing shark-attack blockbuster, came out four years later and is the more accomplished film, but Duel is remarkable as a dry-land test run that swaps a deadly shark for an 18-wheeler. You feel the same tension and suspense as the truck speeds down the highway towards Mann as you do when the great white closes in on unsuspecting swimmers. And just as the shark is a relentless eating machine, Duel’s truck is not a being that can be reasoned with. Spielberg does show the audience fleeting glimpses of the unnamed truck driver, played by stuntman Carey Loftin. He sticks his hand out the window to wave Mann on, nearly tricking him into pulling into oncoming traffic. At another point, when Mann and the truck are both at a rest stop, we see the driver's blue jeans and boots from underneath his rig. That's it. Camera angles and the glare on a dirty windshield prevent viewers (and Mann) from ever seeing his face. His appearance, like his motivations, is a mystery. That's what makes him so terrifying.This hand is about all we see of Duel’s villain. | Universal PicturesThey're such a part of daily life that it's easy to overlook it, but cars are scary. Basically anyone can get in the driver's seat, and suddenly they're in control of tons of speeding metal that can easily run down anything in front of them. There's an immense, dangerous power inherent in driving, and you only need to look at road rage to understand how people change behind the wheel. A person with hopes, dreams, a family, and an inner life didn't cut you off; that jerk in the white sedan did. Cars dehumanize, and Duel plays right into this in how it doesn't allow its trucker to have any humanity. Is he the villain? Or is it the truck itself? Is there a difference?Spielberg said the choice not to show the driver played on audiences' inherent fear of the unknown. That's certainly part of what makes Duel's unseen trucker such an effective villain. He's one-dimensional, but in another sense, his unrevealed backstory and motivations are infinite. Maybe he had the worst day of his life, and getting passed by Mann's little red Plymouth Valiant was what made him snap. Maybe he's a born psychopath. We'll never know. When all he exists as is the foot pressing on the gas and the white knuckles gripping the steering wheel, whatever fuels his animosity is irrelevant. He's certainly not a fellow human being Mann can reason with. He's just a metal monster, and even at age 24, Spielberg could get a lot of mileage out of a monster.Duel is available to rent on Prime Video.