The Driver's Seat

Starring: Elizabeth Taylor

With: Ian Bannen, Mona Washbourne and Andy Warhol

• Reflections In A Golden Eye
• Boom! (another Tennessee Williams adaptation)
• Secret Ceremony
• The Only Game In Town
• X, Y and Zee
• Hammersmith Is Out
• Divorce His - Divorce Hers
• Ash Wednesday
• The Night Watch
• The Driver's Seat

It's hard to say what precisely makes these bad Liz Taylor movies so entertaining to watch, but I'll try. It has a lot to do with Liz herself. No matter how ridiculous the dialogue, she delivers it with all the conviction she can muster. No matter how ludicrous the scenario into which she is posited, she gives her all. No matter how hideous the fashions the designer foists upon her, she proudly goes out there and wears them. You have to admire her even as you feel deeply embarrassed for her.

Really, nowhere is this more blatantly obvious than 1973's "The Driver's Seat."

It must have sounded good on paper, a film version of a novella written by Muriel Spark, best-known for writing "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and "The Abbess of Crewe" (the latter transformed into the delightfully satirical Glenda Jackson vehicle "Nasty Habits"). The appearance of old pros like Ian Bannen and Mona Washbourne likewise boded well, and a guest turn by the one and only Andy Warhol seemed enticing. What went wrong?

I have but two words for you, two words that should strike fear in the hearts of the most hardened filmgoer: "International co-production."

Shot in Rome with a script apparently cobbled together with the aid of an Italian-English dictionary and a Berlitz tape, "The Driver's Seat" was a disaster from the git-go. What follows is an absolute phantasmagoria of bad dialogue, bad dubbing,  bad acting, ridiculously garish clothes, ugly hairdos and an egregious excess of tacky, faux-artistic Eurotrash production design. How Liz got suckered into appearing in this atrocity is anyone's guess.



The "questionable" nature of this film begins before it's even started. The opening credits, plain black block letters over a white background, look nearly as cheap to those from John Waters' black-and-white opus "Multiple Maniacs." The solo piano soundtrack further cheapens proceedings.

From here we're whisked off to Liz wandering amongst a hall of nude mannequins, their heads wrapped in aluminum foil. Is she at a modern art exhibition? No, a dress-shop, apparently. Seconds later, we see Liz trying on an ugly new blue/red/orange dress, admiring herself in a mirror. The shop assistant is sure she's clinched the sale, when she makes the mistake of mentioning that the dress is made from a new, space-age, stain-resistant material. Liz flies into a rage, shrieking, "Who asked you for a stain-resistant dress?" then rips the dress off. The senior assistant comes along to see what the problem is, and asks to bring the other dress, the non-stain-resistant one, in the same hideous multi-coloured fabric. Liz, down to her underwear, seems placated for the time, but is still a bit snippy, going on about, "Pure colours! It was my dress!" And is that my imagination, or do I see Liz Taylor nipples through that "nude"-toned bustier?

The piano music fades in again as the camera pans across endless shop windows. Eventually, we return to Liz, ascending the stoop to her très 70's apartment. She calls her friend on the phone, telling her she's definitely going on vacation, alluding to some sort of "breakdown." This is followed by an overlong scene of Liz placing keys into an envelope and sealing it. Fetishists with a thing for Liz Taylor's tongue will be in ecstasy with this scene, though.

Lovers of bad cinema will be in ecstasy with the scene which immediately follows. A cab pulls up outside Liz's flat. We get a good, stinking look of Liz's vacation ensemble, which consists of that hideous rainbow coloured pattern blouse, a dowdy blue scarf, a vomit-yellow print skirt and a coat featuring zigzag stripes of only the most sickly colours of the rainbow. And if that weren't horrific enough, she's teased her hair into Medusa-like atrociousness. The cleaning lady gets one glance at her and bursts into laughter (seconds after we do), then says what's on all our minds. "Where you go dressed like that? To join a circus?" Liz coldly walks past her and gets into her cab.

More piano music, more panning by images on the street. This goes on for...ever, then we finally get to an airport ticket officer asking, "Any hand luggage?" Then as she walks over to a man checking out her passport, we get brief B&W still frames of Liz's head and shoulders, as a voice-over intones:

"Send out copies, full-face and profile, to all Interpol headquarters in Northern and Central Europe. Notify all entry-stations and embassies. Check through newly-issued visas and passports."

After this annoying instance of contrived artiness has finished, we cut to an airport bookshop. Liz is window-shopping. A matronly European woman approaches Liz, shows her two cheap dime-store novels and utters one of the most drop-dead funny lines in the film that's not uttered (or, rather, shouted) by Liz herself, "Excuse me, which do you think would be the more exciting? The more...sado-masochistic?" Liz helps the lady with her choice. She starts telling Liz her life story, she claims to be from Johannesburg (in spite of her shrill, Italian accent), her son is a lawyer. Flash-forward to the old bat at her home in Johannesburg on the phone with her son, asking his legal counsel. Apparently, Liz's picture is in the paper, "in full-face and profile. I'm sure it was she!" She thinks she should go back and testify...or something. This film is very bad at many things, and explaining is one of the things it's worst at.

Liz tells the shrill-voiced lady that she's going..."south" to meet her boyfriend, and thinks she ought to buy him a gift. She looks at a curved paper knife, asks the price then snaps, "Too expensive! I can get it cheaper on the other side!"



From there, Liz moves on to the airport security checkpoint. We already know a classic scene is headed our way. A security officer demands to see her hand-luggage. She slams her purse down on the desk and sneers, "This may look like a purse, but actually it's a BOMB!"

Um...no, I won't say it. It's too easy!

She continues going bonkers by crescendoing to, "You're all so suspicious! SUSPICIOUS! SUSPICIOUS!" She holds out the cheap dime novel she bought in her hand fully extended as a security woman leads her behind a curtain. As the woman slips on her rubber gloves and starts to frisk her, La Liz grits her teeth and growls, "I can't stand being touched!"

Edward Albee: boy do we need him now!

Pan across some trees and shubs for no good reason at all. Then we cut to a parade of folks on the tarmac, on the way to the plane. Liz, of course, is among their number. Liz sits down next to a wispy, pretty young fellow. He takes one look at her and turns white as a sheet. Then she turns to her left and sees Ian Bannen, ogling her and licking his lips.

"You look like Red Riding Hood's grandmother," she sneers sarcastically, "Do you want to eat me?"

He bursts into laughter, then rejoinders, "I'd like to, but unfortunately I'm on a macrobiotic diet and can't eat meat!"

Is the art of conversation totally dead? It will be if this movie has anything to do with it.

Liz goes back to making goo-goo eyes at the young man in the window seat. At which he freaks out and sprints out of his seat as the plane takes off!

Cut to an investigation room with a very stylish translucent window-wall with a sort of rectangular latticework. The Interpol agents work Wispy-Boy over, asking if he's seen her before. Badly-dubbed, he tells them he's never seen her before. The very Eurotrash agents don't buy his sketchy story.

Back in the present, on the plane, Liz is still obsessing over Wispy-Boy. "He must be crazy," she muses, "I wonder who he is. He must be nutty." Ian, seeing his opportunity to put the moves on Liz, introduces himself to her. She's still obsessed with Wispy-Boy, though.



"You don't want anything to do with him!" says Ian, "He was frightened by your psychedelic dress! Terrified! But I'm not!" Then he tries to make an awkward pass at Liz, smooching his lips near her face, which she just ignores.

The plane lands, and we get a shot of Wispy-Boy walking at the front of a cluster of people in the airport. Meanwhile Liz is trying to ignore the constant jabber of Ian and his frighteningly askew dentition. Suddenly, there are screams as police chase a man through the airport, opening fire on him. As Liz and Ian calm themselves after their ordeal, Andy Warhol (looking more like one of the Children Of The Damned than ever. Seriously, horror-movie stinger music should have greeted his appearance) places a hand on Liz's shoulder and shows a book* to her. Understandably, Liz is freaked out until a woman with him explains, "You dropped your book." From the way his retainers talk to him, we learn he's some kind of royalty. Liz becomes both horrified by and obsessed with him. "He was afraid of me," she says, "Why is everybody afraid of me?"

Jeez, you think it might have something with the Medusa-snakes hairdo and terrifyingly gaudy clothes? Maybe the fact that you're a psycho who overreacts to the smallest thing? Stop me if I'm confusing you at all.

Anyway, Ian gives Liz a lift in his rental car. More death of the art of conversation turns up when Ian insists on going on and on about his macrobiotic diet. "The macrobiotic diet keeps the spirit young and the sex is always sexy!" he crows. He goes on to explain the yin-yang principles of macrobiotic diet, and the brown rice which is the staple of the diet. To which, Liz responds, "I...HATE...rice!"

Delivered by anyone else, that would have been a throwaway line. Delivered by Liz Taylor, with each word articulated, and awkwardly at that, it has us rolling in the aisles.

She tries to change the subject, and starts obsessing over the Andy Warhol character. Out of a clear blue sky, she pipes up with, "Let's go to the Hilton!" a particularly perverse line to anyone with a passing familiarity of Liz Taylor's marriage history. Ian has plans of his own, though, he's lodged at the Metropole, and wants to book Liz a room there too because, and prepare to set faces to "shocked" mode, "I have to have an orgasm a day on my macrobiotic diet, you see."

Ian Bannen, you smooth talker you...

Liz responds with a total non-sequitur, "I...am an i-de-al-ist."

She follows that up with one of the biggest laugh lines in the whole film.

"When I diet, I diet...and when I orgasm...I orgasm! I don't believe in mixing the two cultures."

After we've picked ourselves up from rolling on the floor with laughter, we catch up with our budding star-crossed lovers. Ian invites Liz for a drink, but she blows him off, saying she has to meet someone. He asks if it's a boyfriend.

Liz shoots him an irritated look. "None of your business!" she snips, "Just stick to your yin and your yang!"

Ian's pissed that she's not putting out, so he pulls over to try and have his way with her. He plants a soggy one on her, and she just stares at him wryly, fanning herself with her cheapo paperback.

At last, he drops her off at the Hilton, leaking rice all the way. Flash-forward to the police breaking into Ian's hotel room, rummaging through his belongings. "I don't believe you really are policemen!" he shouts, "You look like two thugs to me!"



Back in the current timeline, Liz examines her hotel room. This is a bravura performance of bad acting the likes of which really tops out nearly every other bad actress, even Liz in other bad movies ("Butterfield 8" and "Reflections In A Golden Eye" spring immediately to mind). First, she opens the window and does Martha Graham motions in front of it. Then she plops down onto the bed, flailing about like a little girl and playing with the bedside radio, eventually settling on classical piano music. She then takes off her scarf, opens her blouse and...and...

She STARTS FONDLING HER OWN BREASTS!!!!!

No, I'm NOT making this up, though I almost wish I was. Quite possibly this is the films unintentionally funny high point, at least that doesn't involve Liz Taylor delivering a bad line with all the conviction actors generally conserve for good dialogue.

With her dough freshly kneaded, she leaps up and steps out of her dress. Cut to Liz sitting before the bathroom mirror, trying in vain to make her hair look less hideous. She gradually gets that "psycho killer just about to stab someone to death" look on her face as she spots a glass on the washstand. She grabs the glass and storms out of the bathroom. She slams herself down onto the bed and stabs at the phone with her fingers.

Cut to outside, where a maid knocks on the door and enters the room. Still dressed in only her slip, Liz strides up to the maid, waving the glass in her face. "Look at this," she berates, "Look what I have found. Filthy! Stale! What kind of a hotel is this? Dirty!" She slams the glass down into the maid's hand, demanding a clean one. Then she ineptly fiddles with her hair some more.

Stale?

Sitting before the bathroom mirror again, this time fully clothed, Liz puts on some blue eye shadow and some monstrously thick black eye-liner in a scene that will send shivers down your spine. Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen Liz Taylor look as scary as she does in this one scene from this one movie, bugging her eyes like a crazed killer. She then completes her grotesque ensemble with a pair of "That Girl" sunglasses, which she slides down her nose dramatically. She then poses before the mirror, holding her cheap paperback dramatically in front of her chest.

Who designed this film, anyway? Vincent Peranio?

We then see her closing her suitcase and marking a spot on a map, holding it against the window. Then she goes out into the lobby, demanding a taxi as she's being observed by Miss Hathaway. All right, not really, but a resonable facsimile thereof. Flash-forward to Miss Hathaway in the interrogation room we saw Wispy-Boy in earlier (in the movie). She's sitting at a desk with lamps and phones all over it and it's all very Eurotrash. "There was something of a prostitute in her!" shouts the woman.



Cut back to the front of the hotel, with a taxi zooming up. Liz allows nice old lady Mona Washbourne to share her taxi. Both of them have shopping to do. "We'll go together," offers Liz cheerily. Mona admits that she's recently become a Jehovah's Witness, and she's in town for the convention. At no point does Liz say, "Here's my stop, driver! I get off here!" and do a runner. Proof positive that the character she plays is totally mad.

After Liz stuffs her passport between the seat cushions of the cab (Mona looks understandably concerned), they go into a lush department store where a man (presumably the man who scored the film) is playing a piano. Liz insists on going on about how insulted she was that she had been offered a stain-resistant dress. "Do I look like the kind of person who spills stains on my clothing?" she asks indignantly.

Liz, do you really want us to answer that question? Honestly?

Mona says she's getting slippers for her nephew as they promenade through the restroom. She disappears into a stall as Liz gets to grips with her makeup (jeez, isn't she wearing enough?) and the attendants snicker behind her back. Liz continues talking, but Mona doesn't answer back. She then leaves the restroom completely unconcerned, but mentions something about it to the attendants in passing.

Liz buys a hideous clear plastic bag with a butterfly print on it, followed by using Mona's attempt to grab her attention as an opportunity to shoplift an even uglier striped scarf. In between the two incidents, we cut to a flash-forward to the Moustache Squad ascending the escalator showing a bloodied scarf to the attendants and asking to see one like it. Then in the TV department, all the channels are switched to a station displaying a news report on the latest unrest in the Middle East.

Mona buys the slippers and a paper-knife, very much like the one Liz looked at in the airport. Meanwhile, Liz ties a knot maniacally into a necktie. The attendant shows her how to tie it properly. She buys two different ones instead. Mona puts her things in Liz's bag. Thus follows yet another flash-forward of cops interviewing the shop assistants. Again, everyone's atrociously backlit in a pretentiously Eurotrash style.

At the Roman ruins, the pretentiousness continues as Mona and Liz have a ludicrously poorly-written philosophical dialogue about this mysterious man Liz is looking for.

"Is it a presence?" asks Mona, "Is that how you'll know?"

"Not a presence," responds Liz, "A...lack...of...absence. That's what it is."

Mona is certain that her nephew, Pierre, is the man she's looking for. Liz then tries to flag down a cab, as a man (very awkwardly) lobs a grenade into the car of a visiting Middle Eastern dignitary. The explosion causes chaos (step-frame through this scene to see extras with inappropriate big grins on their faces), ending with a ludicrous shot of Liz sprawled out in the street. There's a long, lingering pan across the scene to pounding piano music.

Next comes another of those incomprehensible flash-forwards, this time made doubly incomprehensible because they're interviewing a character we haven't met yet! As badly dubbed as this guy is, I get the distinct feeling that he may be dubbed by himself, as his accent is so thick as to be nearly as incomprehensible as the film itself. The fact that he sounds like he has a mouth full of marbles most of the time doesn't help. I can't help but wonder if the rôle was originally offered to Liz's "Reflections In A Golden Eye" co-star Marlon Brando. Anyway, they handcuff him and he flips out. His performance is so over-the-top, he nearly rivals Liz in the Bad, Overdone, Hammy Acting Department. They then ask a cop to enter and give his testimony. He verifies that it was the new guy's car that Liz was in when the cop stopped her.



Finally, we cut back to the current timeline. Or is it the past timeline? Does anyone really care? Liz is in the sleazy, oily guy's car, and he's wearing a zippered white jumpsuit! He just oozes sleazy Eurotrash like nothing else in this film, and that's saying a lot! Liz, in that clipped voice of hers, snaps, "Stop...at...once!" Instead of stopping, he places an oily arm around Liz's shoulder, at which point she bursts out with, "If you have any funny ideas about me, you're very much mistaken! I don't want sex with you! I'm not interested in sex! I'm interested in other things!" Then she tries to wrest control of the car from him. He claims the circuitous route he's taking is a short-cut to the Hilton. He then tries to put the sleazy moves on Liz, involving kissing her boobs, zipping his jumpsuit down all the way and reaching in and nastily groping himself. She eventually frees herself from his awkward rape attempt, then runs out of the car down the road. He runs off after her, his dingy outfit still unzipped to the crotch. Then he gets back into the car and takes off after her.

He pulls up beside her and gets out and chases her. She uses the opportunity to jump in and steal his car. Then she drives back into town, pulling up beside the cop from earlier, honking at him. She asks for directions to the Hilton, then dreamily says, "Excuse me, do you carry a revolver? Because if you did you could shoot me." Then she takes off merry on her way, as the befuddled officer recedes in her rear-view mirror.

Back in the future timeline (or is that the present timeline? Again, who cares?) the Moustache Squad are working over Oily Guy, realizing that he'll only respond to violence. He denies ever having seen her a second time. Briefly flash-back to Oily Guy's Garage, where we see a glimpse of Liz running in after the explosion. The cops approach at a story close to the truth, that he drove her off to an isolated spot and tried to put the moves on her, but he continues to deny it.

"No! No! No!" he screams, "Can't you see she was a thief? A whore? One of those foreign women? Who's got the HOTS FOR THIS!" With which, he spreads his legs and...grabs his crotch!

Believe me, not since "Sado-Masochistic Lady" has such a peripheral character made us laugh so hard in this film.

Flash back to the garage, where Oily Guy is lamely attempting to clean the dirt from Liz's technicolor coat, ruined in the explosion. (Betcha wished you'd gone for the stain-resistant fabric now, eh Liz?) He takes the opportunity to peep up her skirt when she rubs her sprained leg, then implies that she'll never be able to find a cab after the explosion, and that he'll have to drive her.

OK, here's where things start getting confusing, as they eventually do in pompous Euro-thrillers such as this. Return to the Hilton, where Liz orders a Scotch at the lounge, then clutches her novel. Then flash-forward to the Moustache Squad interviewing the bartender in his own bar. Then back to Liz, cornering Andy Warhol. She thinks he's the one, but then he goes into a grotesque story about a safari hunt which horrifies her. She dismisses him, saying, "You're not my type after all."



Liz then pauses to watch some foreign dignitaries descending a staircase, then wanders back outside and throws the keys to the stolen car in the bushes. Then she has Ian drive her out to the park. We hear their conversation set against images of the park (très artistique!), including this little gem from Liz, "I'm homesick for my loneliness. I want to go home and feel all my loneliness again." She asks him to drive her to the pavilion. It turns out to look like another art installation, with chairs arranged in a sort mound/cluster that looks too artificial to be really haphazard. He continues to try to put the moves on her, but she just walks away. Then follows one of the most entertaining dialogues in the entire film:

LIZ: If you think you're going to have sex with me, you're very much mistaken.
IAN: But I haven't had my daily orgasm! It's an essential part of the diet! An orgasm a day! If you miss a day, you have to have two the next day, and that gives me indigestion!
LIZ: I have no time for sex, I mean it. Sex is of no interest to me...I assure you.
IAN: BUT ORGASMS ARE YANG!

Cut back to the front desk of the Hilton, where Wispy-Boy is talking with the desk clerk. Liz is right there, waiting for him. She gives the book to the desk clerk, then strokes Wispy Boy's face like a blind woman. "You're coming with me," she says, "Ever since I saw you this morning, I knew you were the one! You're my type!"

Then cut to them out in the park, wandering through very arty shots of sideways light through trees. "I've never killed anyone before," says Wispy-Boy. She leads him to the pavilion, overflowing with artificial studio lighting emanating from behind the chair sculpture. She sits him down opposite her at a table, and makes him watch as she unfurls her scarf and unbuttons her blouse. She then puts on the ugly scarf she bought earlier. "This is mine," she says, "and this is yours. It's a present from your aunt." She then hands him the paper knife. She then feels his face like a blind woman again, teasing him with the possibility of a kiss.

Flash-forward to the interrogation room. The cops note that a mark had been made on the map, and they say that he made it. Wispy-Boy guesses (correctly) that she must have made it. "She made me go," he says. They continue to ask what frightened him in the plane, but we never find out what it was. The book explains it much better.

Back in the park, Liz is instructing him on how to kill her. First, he is to bind her wrists with her scarf, then her ankles with his necktie. "Then you strike," she says, "First here," indicating her throat, "then here," indicating her heart, "then here," indicating her side, "Then anyplace you like." He's clutching to the hem of her skirt like a sad puppy, begging her to let him go. She ignores his pleas. "After you stab," she continues, "make sure to twist the knife upward...to penetrate...deeply enough." She sounds almost like she's giving a cooking demonstration. She then lies down and hands him the knife.

He takes off her scarf, lifting slowly so we get to see the light passing through it. He panics, and tries to make love to her.

"I DON'T WANT SEX!" she bellows, "TIE MY FEET AND KILL ME! You can do anything you want afterwards, just KILL! KILL ME!"

"Yes!" he cries, "And then you'll love me!" Then he stabs. And kisses her passionately.

"Kill me," moans Liz orgasmically, "Kill me! KILL ME!" He stabs her again. She lets out a moan, somewhere on the border of pain and orgasm. He stabs and stabs as she makes sounds like a very sexually satisfied woman. It's really, really sick. The end. Cue creepy piano music.

"The Driver's Seat" is many things. "Boring" is not one of them. Neither is "good." The script is so far off-base it's frightening. Muriel Spark's creepy character study injected with some whimsical black humour was transformed into pompously arty B.S. which would be insufferable if it weren't so damned laughable. Director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi (probably best known for a 1971 film adaptation of John Ford's "'Tis Pity She's A Whore" starring Charlotte Rampling) ought to be ashamed.

Really, though, no one comes out of this smelling like a rose. Mona Washbourne probably comes closest. And at least Ian Bannen seemed to be conscious of how silly it all was. But let's be honest, one doesn't watch this film for them. One watches it 'cause it's a complete and total Liz Taylor freak-show. In that, it's absolutely unparallelled ("Boom!" comes close. Supposedly, so does "X, Y and Zee," but I can't yet comment on that one, not having seen it). Trotted out in the ugliest outfits and hairdos, with slatternly make-up that looks like that worn by your aunt's chain-smoking, hard-drinking best friend, Liz looks about as far from her glamour days here as ever. Maggie The Cat she ain't. And yet, if you look really close at times, you can still catch a glimmer of the charming twelve year old girl everyone fell in love with back in 1944. It's almost sad in a way.

Like a lot of films from this period, Liz has taken great pains to bury this film, but it managed to get several cheapie video releases anyway. Look for it at your local mom & pop video store under this title or one of its alternates ("Psychotic" or "Identikit").

IMDB Entry for "The Driver's Seat"

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©2003 by Progbear.


















































*Incidentally, for the curious, the book is "The Walter Syndrome" by Richard Neely. I wonder if a bad movie adaptation of that's in the works.