What if Sam Peckinpah directed Smokey and the Bandit?

Not too long ago, I notice a movie that sounded like it might be bad in a fun way was available on multiple of the FAST services: Convoy. I knew it was based on the novelty song from the mid-1970s, so I think I might have vaguely heard the movie but never seen it before. With that in mind, I decided to watch it before it leaves the FAST services.

The song tells about a trucker nicknamed "Rubber Duck", or at least that's his CB handle; those of you old enough to remember the 1970s will recall CB radio. Rubber Duck is played by Kris Kristofferson, and as the movie opens he's driving through Arizona in his semi when he gets passed by a woman in a convertible sports car, Melissa (Ali McGraw). This results in all sorts of dangerous driving, and Rubber Duck getting pulled over by a a cop. He gets out of it, however, by making up a story about the woman driving pantsless, which of course gets the cop to go chasing after the women.

The truckers chat with each other over the CB, as there are a bunch of them out on the road. In addition to Rubber Duck, there's "Love Machine" (Burt Young), who also gets named Pig Pen because he's hauling pigs. There's also Spider Mike (Franklin Ajaye). Then a fourth trucker called Cottonmouth comes on talking about the lack of police. It's a ruse, however, as Cottonmouth is actually the local sheriff (Ernest Borgnine) setting up a speed trap.

Eventually, the truckers decamp to a truck stop where, it turns out, Melissa is there, now without her car, which she had to sell for money to get to a job offer in Dallas. She'll eventually take up Rubber Duck's offer to ride in his truck, but not after some other shenanigans. The sheriff shows up looking for the truckers. He taunts poor Spider Mike, which results in a barroom brawl, and the truckers' case becoming a cause celebre as a whole bunch of other drivers start following them in the hopes that Rubber Duck can make it to Texas where he'll presumably avoid extradtion.

Now, you'd thnk the authorities could simply set up road blocks, but then, we wouldn't have much of a movie. Instead, they decide to jail and torture poor Spider Mike to try to get Rubber Duck to out himself in an attempt to rescue Spider Mike. But a lot of people, including the governor, seem to be on Rubber Duck's side.

I mentioned Smokey and the Bandit in the title of this post, and it should be obvious why. The material here has the potential to be reasonably funny, although Smokey and the Bandit would still probably be better thanks to the starring turn from Burt Reynolds. He had the charm to make this sort of role work, in a way that Kristofferson is just there.

The bigger problem, however, is that the movie was directed by Sam Peckinpah, who was known for his boundary-pushing violent westerns, notably The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah seems unsure here whether he should be directing a comedy, or whether he should try to push the boundaries again. So in things like the big fight at the truck stop, we get a lot of Peckinpah-style slow-motion gore that just doesn't work for the sort of comedy that Convoy is supposed to be. And the treatment of Spider Mike in the third act takes Convoy down much too dark a road.

Then again, Convoy was also based on a song that was well past its sell-by date, so it should be no wonder that it doesn't work. 45-plus years on, the movie is little more than a curiosity.