Before Steven Spielberg became STEVEN SPIELBERG, he was a young television director searching for an opportunity to prove what he could do behind the camera. That opportunity arrived in November 1971 with Duel, a lean, nerve-shredding thriller produced for ABC’s Movie of the Week. Made on a modest budget and shot in just under two weeks, Duel remains one of the most astonishing directorial debuts in American cinema—not just because of its spectacle or scale, but also how masterfully it transforms an ordinary situation into sustained terror.
