Midnight Movie of the Week #161 - The Driver

There are about two things in the world cooler than a '70s car chase movie. I'm not sure what those two things are, but there can't be more than two of them.  Among the coolest of those cool things is an early effort from Walter Hill - the man behind The Warriors, Streets of Fire, and plenty of other totally tubular flicks that I love - known simply as The Driver.  This thing is somewhere between Hitchcock and Fast and the Furious on the continuum of action cinema, working on one hand as a twisty high concept thriller and on the other as a showcase for car stunts and high-speed pursuits.  Most interestingly, at least to me, is that it's also a film with no names.

Ryan O'Neal stars as the title character, which is exactly how his character is credited.  He plays that brand of anti-hero/criminal who doesn't hurt good people that we've seen plenty of times in these kind of movies - the most obvious comparison for most modern viewers is to that flick Drive with Ryan Gosling - a guy who also doesn't ask for details and doesn't fall for a trap easily. He's more of a construct than a character, like the cowboy heroes of pulp westerns gone by, because he operates by a set of principles in everything he does.

The film is meticulous as it reminds us of the character's nameless purity, never stooping to self-referential lows like many modern action flicks do.  You know how a Jason Statham character likes to spout off pre-rehearsed quips about his rules and what he never does? That's not The Driver's game.  Sure, the idea branches off of what Hill's script established here (though this is in no way the first film to pull the detached control monger as hero card), but The Driver is notable because it doesn't allow the lead to preach his code of ethics to the viewer.  O'Neal was apparently a big deal in the '70s, but I wasn't there and I don't really "get" his appeal as an actor.  I'm tempted to say that the actor can be one of the film's biggest flaws during the moments that might suggest character development and require him to speak or emote, but at the same time the actor's skill for monotone and ability to hold a vapid expression while the character is in the middle of high risk situations is one of the film's greatest strengths. You could assume that the casting decision was made for this benefit, and that makes it feel like a slightly genius move by Hill and company.

While O'Neal's driver is kept to few words and fewer emotions, the film draws us in completely with the always enjoyable Bruce Dern as The Detective, the primary adversary to the driver.  While dialogue is very limited for our criminal - in fact, a fantastic opening sequence runs over 15 minutes before he speaks - Dern's work as the cop is quite the opposite.  He spouts out his knowledge - mostly from those kind of assumptions that cops always seem to get right in these movies - about the driver often, most effectively when the characters meet.  Dern has always had that kind of sly angst mixed with his everyday appearance, and hearing him tell the driver things like "sad songs ain't sellin' this year" is more than enough to advance their feud through the film. Dern can do pissed-off but in control as well as anyone can, and it's safe to say that the film's conflict would go nowhere without his wonderful performance.

Of course, there always needs to be a girl in these situations, and Hill manages to put two of the most attention grabbing female performers of the era into the mix here.  The stunning Isabelle Adjani, with her dark hair and eyes the size of Kansas, is what the credits refer to as The Player, while Ronee Blakely - known to most horror fans for her drunkenly fascinating performance in A Nightmare on Elm Street - is The Connection.  Adjani gets plenty of screen time as the kind of yin to the driver's kind of yang, while Blakely's supporting turn is key to the film's final heist and leads to one of the film's most artistic and grabbing moments at the end of her final scene.  These characters seem like they walked right out of a '50s film noir offering, and they team up with the rest of the bit players to give the film a poetic depth that pushes the film above simple car chases and cops-and-robbers cliches. Nothing here is groundbreaking or unique - the fact that all of the characters can be summed up by their role in the plot is not a joke, it's a truth - but there's a good chance the viewer will be impressed with how well the parts of the puzzle all fit together.

The Driver is one of Hill's most abstract and cinematic works, the kind of straightforward, no frills action film that only could have existed in the 1970s.  It would make a fantastic double bill with John Carpenter's second film - the gang war epic Assault on Precinct 13, because both films seem like a case of a director showing off how much he can do with the simplest of ideas.  Hill would rise to greater commercial success in the following years - The Warriors opened a year later, and he soon was behind the camera for bigger projects - but The Driver remains as a cool piece of the '70s that's worth revisiting. In cinema, less is often more, and The Driver reminds us of how true that statement can be.

Midnight Movie of the Week #146 - The Car

I really hope the people of the 1970s knew how awesome of a world they lived in, particularly if they liked horror films.  It's about the one time in the history of horror when nearly every single movie put all of its weight behind the ideas of evil and the devil, a trend that started around the release of Rosemary's Baby in 1968 and ended around the time that viewers mistook evil for a man in 1978's Halloween.  (Someday I'm gonna write my masterpiece on evil and Halloween, and it's gonna be glorious. But today is not that day.)

In that time span, with films like The Exorcist and The Omen standing tall above many horror films and actually earning respect from critical circles and Oscar voters, film studios of all sizes and shapes began to put their faith in people's willingness to fear devilish forces.  But while most took evil forces and embodiments of evil very seriously and focused on gritty realism, one film chose to lead with a quote from the leader of The Church of Satan and then follows with an unmanned and self-aware demon car.

That movie, of course, is The Car, in which the great and powerful James Brolin faces off with a customized 1971 Lincoln Continental.  As a Police Captain in fictional Santa Ynez, Utah, Brolin's Wade Parent is basically the everyman of the decade - which means he's a single dad who hooks up with a young music teacher and has a mustache and really cool sunglasses.  He's living the dream, until that black demon vehicle rolls into town and starts rolling over anyone and everyone it can.

The trick behind The Car is that this is literally all the film is about. A car. The cover of the DVD release suggests that the viewer consider "What evil drives...The Car", but do not expect much of a reveal during the film.  A lot of people would suggest that The Car needs a face to its terror, at least in the form of a deranged cult leader that controls it from afar or a scared priest who connects the terror to some prophecy.  Alas, director Elliot Silverstein - who previously helmed successful westerns Cat Ballou and A Man Called Horse and wrote episodes of The Twlight Zone and Tales from the Crypt - lets the car stand alone as the villain for the film.  (Which can be kind of confusing when I'm typing this. So for the rest of this post, I will refer to the vehicle as a character as "Boris".  And will still refer to the film as The Car.)

Anyway, Boris The Car, as I like to call him, is basically the biggest paradox in horror history. On one hand, Boris is something that could kill us, on the other, Boris is a big freakin' car in the middle of a Utah desert.  One one hand, we know Boris has some kind of evil force driving him, but on the other hand we have no idea why that makes any kind of sense.  I've seen The Car a few times now, and I keep going back to it willingly, yet there are so many moments throughout the film when I just don't get Boris.  I do know that I love that he doesn't have door handles, but the rest of Boris is confusing.

Am I overthinking Boris? Should I just sit back and be afraid of Boris and stop trying to rationalize Boris? Probably. Most horror fans will notice obvious similarities between The Car and Stephen King's Christine (which was published six years after The Car was released), and maybe that's why I struggle so much with accepting the fact that Boris simply is who Boris is.  King gives his killer car a name and a personality, while this film leaves me making up the name Boris and knowing no motive for a killer car rampage.

But, we get James Brolin reacting with fear, we get his girlfriend - Kathleen Lloyd, creating something out of nothing with a side character - fighting to protect children, and we get Ronny Cox as the unsure deputy who brings up the possibility that Boris is a force of biblical evil.  Like plenty of my favorite ridiculously plotted horrors - and like almost all horrors of the 1970s - The Car never winks at the audience and gives us a reason not to feel that Boris The Car is a credible threat to legitimate people in a legitimate movie. 

The film still probably works best as something to watch with friends and laugh at, thanks to its premise and how dated it is, but I still find it fascinating in its own way.  The final reveal isn't a Soylent Green-style punch to the gut, but it is grand and provokes more thought than anything else in the movie does.  The Car plays like a made for TV drama with a killer car, but if you're looking for a movie where James Brolin takes on an evil car then you're not going to find anything more fun than this one.