So at LepreCon this weekend, probably at the "Killing Your Characters" panel, matociquala was talking about the Demon Logging Truck that cruises Hollywood movies looking for convenient victims, and I said, "It's the truck from Duel!"

There's a problem with this, of course, in that at the end of Duel, the truck goes over a cliff, and we see the wreckage. Truck and truck driver, both dead.

But I realized while I was out walking this morning that the problem is resolvable, without leaving the world of B-movies. Because Christine establishes that a man with a sufficiently unhealthy relationship with his vehicle can make that vehicle demonically self-propelling and self-repairing. Roland LeBay does it by killing his wife and daughter in his Plymouth Fury, and you know, I can't believe that Dennis Weaver's character was the first victim of the Truck and her driver. So post-1971, the trucker may be dead, but the Truck can just keep on killing.

And she's found her apex-predator niche, too, as the Homicidal Plot Device.

The Truck always wins.