The Driver's Seat

Ah, Elizabeth Taylor, Empress of Batshittery.

"Who asked you for a stain-resistant dress!?"

And I say that with absolute love and respect. Elizabeth Taylor is the definitive movie star in many ways: She starred in film classics such as A Place in the Sun and National Velvet and big-budget blowouts like Cleopatra and Giant. Hell, she was denounced by the Vatican and in the United States House of Representatives and she was just like, "Whatever. Me and Richard Burton are going back to our yacht to eat diamonds." La Liz was one of the great film queens gifted with an abundance of beauty and a dearth of fucks to give: Louise Brooks, Kay Francis, Ava Gardner, none of whom cared that much for their careers, but saw glamour as a means to an end, to live, live live! (Usually in a way that involved lots of handsome men and top-shelf liquor and gorgeous clothes and five-star hotels.)

"In her walk, in her look! There was something about her that made you notice her right away. Something unseemly!"

But, anyway, long after Cat in a Hot Tin Roof and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf--hell, long after Butterfield 8--she made an array of weird-ass 70s movies like Boom! and Hammersmith Is Out and The Only Game in Town (which might have worked if it had been shot in Las Vegas with Frank Sinatra as originally planned, rather than faking Vegas in Paris with Warren Beatty). The Driver's Seat, also known as Identikit, is one such odd entry in the filmography.

The Driver's Seat is based on a short novel by Muriel Spark and has a plot best described as "stuff happens." It feels like an improvisational film or at least one made by someone who'd never made movies before--scenes of phone calls, letter writing, scarf buying, etc. go on and on in real time. Choosing a book involves a long, slow pan of paperback mystery novels. When characters go form one place to another, we watch a bunch of scenery go by and a few establishing shots.

"Not a presence, but a lack of absence. That's what it is."

I mean, I don't like spending time waiting for takeoff when I'm on a plane, much less watching someone else wait. Have you ever wanted to be trapped in a car with a guy who can't stop ranting about his macrobiotic diet? Me neither, but you get to in The Driver's Seat. The only time this time-consuming, time-wasting method of filmmaking is at all worthwhile is when we get to watch Taylor do her eye makeup in closeup, which is better than any YouTube tutorial.

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

There is a scene where she leaves her apartment in a crazy, mixed-pattern ensemble, looking for all the world like Jennifer Saunders as Edina Monsoon. then, as though the movie can read your mind, a little Italian lady jumps out of the shadows and crows "Are you going to join the CIRCUS in that outfit?!"

"Excuse me, which do you think would be more exciting? More sadomasochistic?"

So she has a shitty plane flight--middle seat, lecherous creep on one side, panic-attacking basket case on the other. Although we are reminded of a more innocent time, when you could buy knives at the airport gift shop and joke with security about having a bomb in your purse. And she lands and some dude gets shot and there's a lot of running and screaming and then Andy Warhol shows up with a white suit and a dubbed British accent to return the paperback she dropped--and, for all the noise made about his appearing in this film, it amount to three 60-second bits with someone else's voice. She carries the paperback everywhere, cover facing out, like a spy meeting a contact or a Tinder date that actually reads books (the former being more likely).

"It was as though something came out of her, some force that all women feel latent within themselves, stifled--a potential for catastrophe!"

At one point she and some weird old lady go to a deserted art deco department store with entire floors of grand pianos. They buy slippers and letter openers, there's a random act of terrorism that makes it hard to get a ride back to the Hilton..

This is not a picture of Divine.

It is a picture of Elizabeth Taylor in The Driver's Seat. For reals.

She spends a of of time smiling vacantly and then yelling at people. It's supposed to be a nervous breakdown, but it looks more like pills. Or perhaps just diva fits. And it seems Interpol is looking for her. Or will be looking for her: We get footage of various people being interrogated about Liz--or Lise, as she is called here--and even a few Rashomon-like revisions, which only add to the intertia and confusion. Also, everyone talks about going to the Hilton like the movie is a damn ad.

"I am an idealist."

Taylor may be having some kind of meltdown but you feel no sympathy for her. Mostly because she's a raging cunt to the help--dress shop salesgirls, hotel doormen, maids, she hollers at them all about stain-treated dresses, unwashed glasses, etc. She snaps her fingers at waiters, when she wants to know what time it is, she just shouts the question until someone answers....

She also keeps hanging out with the macrobiotic MRA creep she met on the plane who keeps talking about his need for a daily orgasm and how he can charge her hotel room "to the company." But, like every other man, she flounces off, shouting about how he's "not my type!" I'd say a good 25% of Taylor's dialogue consists of "Are you my type?" or "You're not my type" or "He wasn't my type." See, what Lise/Liz wants is to find a man who will kill her and the problem of the film is that she's looking for a murderer but she keeps meeting rapists. (Maybe she should asks one of those salesgirls she bitches at to gut her like a flounder. Pretty sure they'd be happy to.)

"I want to go back home, to feel all my loneliness again."

The Driver's Seat makes me think of that incredibly stupid movie with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp wandering around fancy hotels in Venice and running yachts into people. (Which may or may not be worse than the movie with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt wandering around fancy hotels in Malta and sighing a lot.) If you want to see a suicidal, clothing-obsessed diva have a nervous breakdown amidst European scenery, The Scarlet Lady is far more enjoyable. If you want a confusing story about a crazy woman loose in a strange city, Daughter of Horror has more giggles and more panache.

"After you stab, make sure you twist the knife upwards to penetrate deeply enough."

Overall, The Driver's Seat is just a bad movie. But gawd knows it'd be worse without Elizabeth Taylor.

The Manitou

The Manitou was one of the wave of occult horror flicks during the 70s--this time with some of that fashionable Native American culture and a few of those newfangled computers thrown in. Other than that, it's just your standard flick about a chick with a tumor on her back that has an undead Native American medicine man living in it.

Wot? I know--weird even by the addled standards of the Quaalude decade...

Our star is Tony Curtis, slumming--if you can call anything Tony Curtis does slumming, he always just seemed happy and bemused to be there, glad you see you, thank for the check--plays a two-bit psychic who hustles old ladies (so many Tony Curtis roles involve the words "two-bit" and "hustle")...

C'mon, sweetheart, let's go. I gotta get this schmatte back to Williams Costume by five
or I pay for another day's rental.

He's got a sweet San Fran bachelor pad with an awesome stereo, drinks beer out of a wineglass and knows lots of babes. Among said babes is his ex, played by Susan Strasberg with a pussycat bow at her neck and a fetus on her back. (Yes, Susan, your father was a guru of the American theatre, you fucked Richard Burton and Warren Beatty, you hung out with Marilyn Monroe, but here you are in The Manitou. And just wait until the topless laser scene...)

Strasberg shows up on his doorstep and they wander around the various tourist locales of San Francisco, as they always do in movies set there--everyone always goes to Fisherman's Wharf and the steep hills. No one ever goes to a Kwik-E-Mart. She tells him about this tumor she's got and Curtis is all, "Oh, that's too bad. But it's on your back, right? Not on your front? Like, not your lower front? Okay then." I mean, I was in New York during 9-11 and i know what fucking in the face of death is like but I'd consider "removal of a large tumor tomorrow" more of a "let's cuddle" occasion.

So, they bang, and as Strasberg and her tumor sleep, she mutters, "Panna witchy salatoo." It is not the last time we will hear this nonsense phrase repeated portentously. Nay, it will be repeated over and over until one longs for the simplicity of a "Klaatu barada nikto!" or "Pazuzu!"

So, they X-ray the tumor and the mop-topped and pastel-coated doctor declares, "They are sure that the tumor on her neck is actually a fetus." I cannot think I of something I would less want to hear from a medical professional. I' think I'd rather hear "malignant" than "monster fetus."

Of course, Tony Curtis rolls with this as he rolls with everything in The Manitou (or anywhere else) and goes to rip off another old lady. (Curtis would go on to remain unphased by the weird and the undead in Sextette.) However, when old lady goes full Linda Blair in the middle of a tarot reading, levitates and chants "Panna witchy salatoo," he finally freaks out. Bitch's monster baby tumor is fucking with my livelihood!

So he goes back and tells the doctor all about "Panna witchy salatoo"  and the doctor is like, "Whatever" and messes with his giant mainframe computer some more before stomping off to operate to remove said tumor. I'm waiting for some right-wing politician to run in and stop him because Unborn Undead Native American Mutant Demon Parasites have a right to be born, even in the case of threatening the life of the mother and jeopardizing all the lives and souls on Earth. But i'm getting ahead of myself in the story...

Holy diver, Batman!

Anyway, the doctors try to X-ray the tumor, Strasberg has seizures and speaks in "possessed voice." They try to cut it off, the surgeon slits his wrist. They try to laser it off, the laser goes nuts like a Spinal Tap stage prop gone wrong. So Tony Curtis flounces off to to find Stella Stevens, who is slathered in self-tanner to the edge of blackface and is apparently some kind of California psychic buddy of his.

They have a seance with a Gabor sister, some weird shit goes down with heads rising up out of the table and people speaking in tongues and freaky wind (But isn't there always freaky wind?) Stella's stoner hubby finds a passage in a book that seems to mention the human-tumor phenomena as well as the "panna witchy salatoo" and the gang is off to find the author...

Burgess Meredith! Yes! You loved his kung fu battle in Foul Play and leading motherfuckers straight to hell in Torture Garden, so here he is! The Scooby Gang asks for his help, he yadda yaddas about some more old books. Then they go up in his attic, which is a mere staircase above his paneling n' shag, ferns n' pre-Columbia art living room, but shrouded in yard-square cobwebs and inches of dust because, y'know, attic.

Burgess Meredith tells them that what they need is a non-parasitical undead Native American shaman to battle the Native American shaman that is attempting to resurrect himself. Tony Curtis hustles and bribes (via a deus ex machina "aunt" who has $100,000 to donate to the little Indian kids or whatever because Tony Curtis knows motherfuckers don't do shit for free). In the meantime, the tumor has finally given birth to itself--although it's a dwarf thank to the goddamn X-rays, which means it looks kind of like Tom Cruise in Rock of Ages drag.

Tonight, the role of the undead medicine man will be played by Glen Danzig...

So Tony Curtis and Live Shaman do battle with Undead Shaman. There's ice storms and computer malfunctions and random gore. Little Undead Shaman seems rather arbitrary in his attacks--he might use mind control to force a doctor to cut himself with a scalpel, or it might somehow create a giant lizard to chew on your hand, he might throw a possessed old lady at your or he might just rip your skin off. But, well, we already understand that logic isn't part of the The Manitou's universe. Panna witchy salatoo. Anahl nathrak, uthvas bethud, do cheol dienve...

Anyway, The Manitou is what happens when no one's really paying attention, just throwing casting options and plot points against the wall like so much chimp scat and seeing what sticks. But that's what makes it fun to watch: If you can't come up with good snark for The Manitou, no one can help you....

The Donny & Marie Star Wars.... Special?

The Star Wars Holiday Special is considered by many to be the Holy Grail of crappy Star Wars kitsch and, oh, it is not. That honor belongs to the Star Wars episode of Donny & Marie. It makes the Holiday Special look like it was scripted by Billy Wilder and directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Unsurprisingly, we open with Marie in Leia drag and Donny Skywalker (in white, stack-heel go-go boots) boogieing through their first excruciating musical number in front of a bunch of glitter-covered risers. R2-D2 and C3-PO wander in, along with Chewbacca and Darth Vader because the producers apparently had a platinum account at Western Costume.

But then things start to get (really) weird: Redd Foxx meanders past a primitive green screen as “Obi Ben Okefenokee,” while Paul Lynde briefly turns up to whine and wave his hands in the air as the Grand Moff Tarkin. But the oddest guest star is a visibly, erm, out of it Kris Kristofferson, wearing aviator shades and leaning against a cardboard rocket ship like it’s the only thing that’s holding him up. He lurches through a half-assed disco cover of “I Want to Take You Higher” (Sure you do, Kris, sure you do.), then a half-dozen Stormtroopers show up, accompanied by a slew of chorus girls in white unitards and motorcycle helmets for an awkward dance routine to Up With People-like renditions of “Get Ready” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” The whole experience takes about thirteen minutes: Ten to watch and three to try to figure out what the hell you just saw.

Three the Hard Way

Can I get a "Hell, yeah!" or, at the very least, a "What! What!"

Three the Hard Way is a blaxploitation flick directed by Gordon Parks, Jr. of Super Fly fame and starring legendary football player Jim Brown, football player of some repute and grindhouse hero Fred Williamson and martial arts star Jim Kelly, whom you probably know from Enter the Dragon. They're fighting  Nazis.

It seems a group of business-suited white supremacists have somehow created a poison (unlike today's business-suited white supremacists, they actually believe in science) that will kill only the black residents of Los Angeles, Detroit and Washington, D.C. Jim Brown's buddy finds out about this, they kill buddy and kidnap Jim's girl. So it's time to go out and get some payback. And save a few million people, of course. Give back to the community...

It was seeing shit like this that made the NRA and Ronald Regan
support gun control back in the 60s.

Along with plenty of righteous 70s threads, Brown shows off the tremendous physical grace--vaulting over barricades, leaping down stairwells, hanging on to the hoods of cars--that helped him lead the NFL in rushing for eight seasons (Although note that the suit is worn with a nice pair of kicks--which i am guessing are Pumas or Keds--because no one could do this in a pair of alligator Ferragamos.) Three the Hard Way does not stint on prolonged action scenes and isn't that why we're all here anyway?

 Although the fact that two of those action sequences involve wrecking a herd of sweet Detroit-made sedans and pumping hundreds of bullets into a collection of vintage pinball games does make a me a little sad. The latter takes places once Jim  Brown travels to New York City to get the first member of his posse: Fred Williamson. Fred Williamson is, as always, one smooth badass who always seems to be having a good time in his flicks, even crap like 1990: The Bronx Warriors and he seems to be enjoying Three the Hard Way even more than usual.

 

Then we come across Jim Kelly, or at least his bitchin' Lincoln  Continental having drugs planted in it by a herd of crooked cops. But with a mighty yell of  "Gonna set me up?!" he kicks the crap out of them.

It's a bit like a drawn-out version of a similar skirmish in Enter the Dragon; the next sequence will also reference the climactic car wash battle in Black Belt Jones. Our heroes manage to capture one of the Nazis and figure he ought to be good for some information...

We then get a glorious montage of a red-white-blue clad trio of biker babes coming into Manhattan from Brooklyn. The ladies are Countess, Princess and Empress (the last of whom is played by Irene Tsu of Ebony, Ivory and Jade, so she's rolled like this before). And, well, the ladies handle interrogations in a way that gives pause to even this rather rugged set of gentlemen. (If you want true brutality, call upon the women.)

More fistfights, more car chases, more running around shooting. It occurs to me that we never learn how these guys know each other or how they all became such profound ass-kickers. Usually they at least throw in a line about being Green Berets in 'Nam or, in this case, ex-football players. (Even Kelly, though he didn't go pro--he was also apparently a hell of a tennis player, though i somehow sense he must've had some hoop game as well.) We see Jim Brown as a producer (of the Impressions), but no idea what the other two guys do.

This band of nutjob cartoon white supremacists lacks the over-the-top misanthropic lunacy of a Donald Trump or Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee, any of whom would be a far more ridiculous villain than Three the Hard Way's unctuous businessman. The Nazis of Three the Hard Way aren't really your classic movie Nazis: Their hair touches their collars and they are listening to music with acoustic guitars and synthesizers which, as we all know, is mixing the races. Their Nazi banquet is totally dorky--no The Damned or The Night Porter decadence here.

 

 

It's pretty obvious that our trio of heroes certainly possess physical, intellectual and sartorial superiority  over these schlubs in berets. (A beret only works if you're a chick doing some kind of Bonnie Parker/Patty Hearst or a guy with good hair and cheekbones that could cut diamonds who is somehow affiliated with MI6.)

The climactic attack on the Nazi mansion has that peculiar day-for-night mix where you keep wondering if the battle took three days or we're on an alternate Earth where the days and nights are 15 minutes long. Still, busting up Nazis in a flawlessly spherical 'fro and black leather pants, Jim Kelly comes off like a cross between Dr. J., Bruce Lee and Iggy Pop. Can you imagine anything cooler? Jim Brown shows off his superior skill at kicking down doors and leaping across furniture while firing a shotgun. Fred Williamson lays waste to many bad guys without taking the grin off of his face or the cigar out of his mouth.

One can fantasize that Eric Garner had been endowed with the cop-clobbering powers of Jim Kelly. Or that right at the moment Dylan Roof raises that gun in the Emanuel Church, Jim Brown busts through a stained-glass window, slides down the aisle and shotguns the little cracker with the Moe Howard haircut. A superhero ass-kicking wasted on a redshirt weasel, but still... 

... anyway, Three the Hard Way could do with a little more plot, but it's still pretty damn gratifying.