Adventures of a Taxi Driver (1976) Online

I have now seen more British sex comedies than any non-British- compulsive-pud-puller-from-the-1970's by all rights should have. The best of this genre (relatively speaking, of course) is the "Confessions of" series, of which this an obvious--and clearly inferior--knock-off. Still, it's also better than stuff like "The Amorous Milkman" and the "What's Up" series (and I'm sure I've only begun to plumb the dismal depths of this genre). This movie, as you might guess, is about the adventures of a taxi driver. Like 'the "Confessions of" series it purports to be somewhat realistic slice-of-life look at the earthy British working-class (but I suspect that if the actual British working class were all getting laid this much, they wouldn't have always been angry and on strike in the 70's). This movie isn't any less realistic than the "Confessions of" series, but it's a lot less funny. And Barry Evans is not nearly as charming and likable as Robin Askwith, let alone Michael Caine (he is always turning around and talking into the camera like Cain in "Alfie").

But--let's face it--nobody really watched these movies for the comedy or for the male lead. And the female cast here is pretty impressive. Judy Geeson has one of those irritating roles of a stripper who we never actually see strip, but she is pretty funny as the Evan's roommate's girlfriend whose pet snake ("part of my act") creates much mayhem. Anna (daughter of Igemar) Bergman plays a fellow stripper who DOES strip and who later gives the protagonist a good sound shagging. The producers apparently couldn't get Linda Hayden from the "Confessions of" series, so they got the next best thing--her younger sister Jane, who Evan's character rescues from a suicide attempt and almost scores with. 50's bombshell Liz Frazier ("I'm Alright Jack") has a genuinely funny role as a prostitute who has a little, uh, accident with a very unfortunate client in the back of the hero's cab. And Angela Scoular and Prudence Drage have small parts (but clearly saved the producers a lot on wardrobe costs). Only Adrienne Posta is kind of irritating as Evan's oft-cuckolded fiancée (she's supposed to be irritating, but she REALLY overdoes it). She also belts out the horrid theme song "My Cruisin' Casanova" (it's no wonder the British Empire collapsed).

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who doesn't already have some misbegotten affection for this genre, but you could do worse I guess.

British Sex Comedies of the 1970s have always taken a bad rap, somewhat unfairly.

What people don't realise is that beyond the 'slapstick' humour and chauvinistic 'sexual titiliation' there are intelligent and amusing subplots and sidelines that work on oh so many different levels.

Try appreciating this film, and others like it, from an analytical and intellectual perspective, and you'll begin to pick up on some of the subtle ironies and trademarks of the genre.

See beyond the characters: the taxi driver is actually representive of all of us, his taxi the vehicle that conveys us through our lives, picking up and dropping off other people along the way. The sexual encounters represent the continuous cycle of human reproduction. The kidnapping and the final twist show that everything in life comes full circle.

This is far better than the inferior 'Taxi Driver' film, also made in 1976, with which it is often unfortunately confused.

I have heard it said that this film took more money at the U.K. box office than 'Taxi Driver' starring Robert De Niro! Easy to see why. Scorsese's film lacked the magic ingredient - Barry Evans' old boy.

Poor Barry. Having starred in the T.V. series 'Doctor In The House' and 'Doctor At Large', he was fired for 'erratic behaviour' and subsequently forced to appear in tat like this.

As you may have guessed, the 'Adventures' series is a shameless rip-off of the 'Confessions' movies starring Robin Askwith. The main gag in all these films is the hero, in bed with a love-starved nymph, being caught by her husband/boyfriend, and having to make a break for it by shinning down a ladder/drainpipe, his bare bottom exposed to the world.

Evans' character is 'Joe North', a chirpy Cockney cabby who lives at home with his mum ( a criminally wasted Diana Dors ) and his younger brother and sister, the latter fond of throwing food around the kitchen. He is betrothed to Carol Hotchkiss ( Adrienne Posta ), whom he hates the sight of. He eventually moves in with his mate, garage owner Tom ( a pre 'Citizen Smith' Robert Lindsay ), and that's when the fun really begins ( sort of ) with knickers and bras flying about confetti. At the end, North gets involved with jewel thieves and you think 'Great! We're going to have a 'Carry On Cabby' type finale!", but no, instead everyone stands around talking for what seems an eternity.

Another reviewer has stated how uncomfortable Evans looks in the role, and I would agree. Unsurprisingly, he was in neither of the two sequels. His career recovered though when he starred in the hit L.W.T. sitcom 'Mind Your Language'. In a sad irony, he became a taxi driver for real when his acting career foundered.

As was the case with 'Confessions', there is a stellar line-up of British comedy talent on display here, including Ian Lavender, Stephen Lewis, Brian Wilde, Liz Fraser, and Henry McGee, none of whom get the material they deserve. Three of Evans' co-stars - Angela Scoular, Adrienne Posta, and Judy Geeson - had acted with him a decade earlier in the superior sex comedy 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush'. Scoular charmed George Lazenby out of his kilt in 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', but looks a lot less sexy here ( probably due to that awful new hairstyle ). Posta is rather good as the annoying 'Carol', even if her vocalisation of the title theme put me in mind of the mice from 'Bagpuss'. Unable to secure the talents of Linda Hayden, producer Stanley Long settled for her sister Jane, playing a would-be suicidalist.

There are some nice shots of late '70's London, especially at night, but much of the comedy is forced, at times resembling the 'Fast Show' parody 'Confessions Of A Cucumber Salesman'. However, there are at least three genuine laugh-out loud moments, one involving two nuns, another a bathtub, and in the best scene, Liz Fraser's prostitute performs fellatio on a rich client in the back of North's taxi. He breaks suddenly to avoid knocking someone down, the cab lurches forward, and Fraser's client unleashes a terrible scream. Ironically, the movie showing nearby is 'Jaws'! Moments such as these go some way towards making the film at least partially endurable.

There is a video game from Sega called Crazy Taxi, in which you drove a taxi all over a city in a haphazard matter to earn bigger money and tips from your fares. But that game pales in comparision to this movie, the true "Crazy Taxi".

Barry Evans (who would ironically live his last years driving taxis after a succesful career as a British-sitcom star) plays Joe North, a taxi driver in London who is the subject of the adventure. There's no real plot, just him getting into all sorts of sexual situations with women of varying degrees of beauty. We see him talking into the camera to the audience about his plans to woo the women he meets into having sexual encounters with him.

Evans is pretty good, about the same as Christopher Neil would be in the next two films. Stephen Lewis (Inspector Blakey of "On The Buses" fame) has a small role as a doorman in a strip club. The aging Diana Dors plays Joe's mother. An O.K. timewatcher, but it's quite titalating at times (talky too). Bravo (The Canadian version) loves showing these 70's British sex comedies; they've shown three "Adventures" movies.

For some reason, they borrowed a bit of Sesame Street's theme song's music to create theirs.

Never one to pass up a good band wagon he could hop onto, small time independent producer Stanley Long saw the benefits major player Columbia was reaping from its innocuously naughty CONFESSIONS series with Robin Askwith portraying hapless Timothy Lea and decided that, yes, he would have a bit of that ! Already beaten to the punch as far as peeping tom window cleaners and pop performers knee-deep in groupies were concerned, he and regular screenwriter Suzanne Mercer (ironically, herself a reformed groupie and author of the supposedly autobiographical script for Long's surprise smash hit GROUPIE GIRL) turned their attentions towards another profession legendary for its lusty Lotharios, the London cabbie ?!

Now you must understand something about the British sex comedy and, by extension, the British themselves. These frothy farces play much like popular TV sitcoms like, say, ON THE BUSES or SOME MOTHERS DO 'AVE 'EM but with a little bit of what the goggle box would not allow in the form of nowadays - and actually even back then - really rather tame nudity, made to seem a lot dirtier by the leering, wink-wink, nudge-nudge approach. As any attempt at genuine eroticism made domestic audiences uncomfortable, evoked by disappointing box office takings for the likes of Henry Herbert's AWAKENING OF EMILY and Chris Boger's CRUEL PASSION, this tits 'n' titters combo proved just the meal ticket Long was looking for, jump-starting a separate series that ran for three episodes (subsequent installments concerning private detectives and...plumbers ?!) with several more planned that sadly (?) went unrealized.

Adhering to tried and true formula, Long secured the talents of Barry Evans (star of the hit TV show DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE and its follow-up DOCTOR AT LARGE) for the central part of working class laddie Joe North and surrounded him with many comfortingly familiar faces for the home viewing audience he was trying to lure away from their sets with the promise of T&A. Post-war British bombshell Diana Dors had a few funny scenes as Joe's loud-mouthed single mom with three kids sired by different dads and was starting to carve out a niche as a sexploitation character actress since American director Joe Sarno had cast her as the whorehouse Madam in EVERY AFTERNOON. Formerly respectable comedienne Liz Fraser showed no shame as kindhearted working girl Maisie in one of the film's best gags when Joe's sudden slamming the brakes makes her back seat fellatio end in tears. Already a sitcom veteran by her mid-20s, Adrienne Posta gives it her all as our hero's obnoxious fiancée Carol.

Plot, such as it is, concerns Joe trying to leave an overpopulated homestead by working long hours as a London cab driver and the outrageous scrapes he gets himself into, effectively breaking down the narrative into a series of sketches building variety show style towards punchlines. Joe shacks up with buddy Tom, a greasy mechanic played in an early professional assignment by Robert Lindsay, best know for heading the cast of long-running BBC sitcom MY FAMILY, who has just moved in with sweet stripper Nikki (Blighty cinema royalty Judy Geeson, who doesn't bare much of anything, profession notwithstanding) who keeps a python around the house as part of her act. One of the more extended stretches has the trio inviting Nikki's fellow stripper Helga (Anna Bergman, Ingmar's daughter, making her Brit sex film debut) over for a game of strip poker, ending in a bedroom romp with Joe, rudely interrupted by Carol. A bungled diamond heist takes up flick's latter part in a fruitless effort to tie up loose ends.

Technically on the crude side with flat, colorless cinematography by Peter Sinclair (who would shoot Madonna's legendary Like a Virgin video), movie's not without its share of laughs for the undemanding. The late Prudence Drage (also in Martin Campbell's ESKIMO NELL and Derek Ford's SEXPLORER) has a field day as an upper-crust pick-up who bemoans the clothing industry's poor workmanship as her fancy frock "accidentally" falls to the floor. Respected denizen of stage and screen Angela Scoular, who played Cathy in a '60s BBC version of WUTHERING HEIGHTS, performs surprisingly extensive nudity as the wife of a wealthy businessman who has inadvertently locked herself out of the house and winds up sharing a particularly uncomfortable bubble bath with Joe. Benny Hill's straight man Henry McGee turns up as the police inspector in film's final scene. Long most obviously flirted with the CONFESSIONS franchise by casting its leading lady Linda Hayden's sister Jane as suicide-prone drama queen Linda (!) in an amusing bit with DAD'S ARMY's Ian Lavender.

The first in a series of abysmal Confessions-wannabes, the Adventures trilogy are sterile, desperately unfunny sex comedies, with horrendous direction and dire production values.

The first starred a miscast Barry Evans, trying hard to be laddish but drawing somewhat short. He's a sensitive chap, the sort that can tell "whether a bird's had a right good seeing-to the night before" and cheers himself up by "picking up a bit of crumpet." Evans's constant talking straight to camera is supposed to be endearing, but it's really just irritating. Christopher Neil's Bob West made this a more likeable trait in Adventures of a Private Eye, though it was toned down and notably dropped altogether for the third film in the franchise.

The series always goes farther than Confessions ever did, too. So that while Timmy Lea's escapades were really the next generation of Carry Ons with a few more boobs, the Adventures have a slightly nasty edge. After four weeks of watching Robin Askwith's rear end it's a shock to see Evans's and Neil's willy flapping all over the place, and the sex scenes are notably more graphic. In particular, a scene intimating a woman being penetrated by a snake lurches the film towards X-rated territory. Sex with animals seemed to be a particular preoccupation of the series, with the second sequel, Plumber's Mate, featuring a coupling with a mouse. Look out too for pathetically staged "squashed cat" scenario (cue man off camera making unconvincing "cat" noises), the nadir of Plumber's Mate, one of the most amateurish films I've ever seen.

On the subject of the sequels, Private Eye surprises by being halfway decent, though still cries out for incidental music to perk up the somewhat lifeless atmosphere. Even performing the theme song, Christopher Neil gives a zippy, amiable performance, something he was unable to do with the obnoxious character of Sid South in Plumber's Mate. One thing the series did bring to the proceedings was plots, so much so that Private Eye even largely forgets to put the sex into sex comedy. It takes away the nasty edge for once, and is more traditionally humorous. (Basically, it's got some jokes in it.)

But back to Taxi Driver, a picture that never gets started. The irksome theme tune is sung twice during the movie in a flagging bid to pep up proceedings, and five times as an instrumental. David Brierley (One of the K-9s from Doctor Who, no less!) provides an opening monologue, juxtaposing images of cab life with an upbeat narration. So then when he talks about the "gallant knights of the road", we see a cabbie flicking the v-sign, and so on. And on. And on. Like the rest of the films pace, it's a joke that wears thin after the first three seconds, and positively aches by being extended past its natural lifespan.

Transvestites, prostitutes and oral sex references, the weirdest thing about all this is that this sexist tripe was written by a woman.

I could not recommend this film, unless you are a fan of similarly-themed films of this period, such as 'Percy's Progress' and 'No Sex Please, We're British', and of course the 'Carry On' films, although this is on a par with the worst of them, not the best. It consisted mainly of Barry Evans (who had previously starred in 'Doctor in the House' and 'Doctor at Large') having meaningless sexual encounters with a number of women, and walking around with his tackle out.

It is generally believed that Barry Evans appeared in this film to rid himself of his wholesome 'Doctor' image. He never really succeeded (he was later cast as the straight-laced English teacher in 'Mind Your Language'). This film would not appeal to his mainstream fans, and its appeal as a tits-and-bums English film (if you like that sort of thing) is pretty low. It was dismal.

What is to be said in the favour of Adventures of a Taxi Driver? Very little, it's sad to say. The film gives new meaning to the term second hand: it's a rip-off of the Robin Askwith Confessions series of sex comedies, which themselves were already sub-Carry On crossed with continental saucy fare. Taxi Driver also mixes in elements of Alfie (the direct to camera narration of the Lothario protagonist), On the Buses (the bickering family arguments) and British B movies of the early 60s involving petty crime. This wholesale appropriation of other people's ideas might be acceptable if they were used here with any skill or aplomb; as it is, the film is tedious, plot less, poorly directed and almost aggressively unfunny. It's attitude to women is dismissive and offensive, and even the usually charming Barry Evans - who made the infantile and racist sitcom Mind Your Language palatable - is heavy handed and dislikeable here.

The few pluses include good comic turns from Adrienne Posta and Diana Dors, a winsome performance from Marc Harrison as Evans' thieving brother and the chance to see, briefly, Stephan Lewis doing Blakey as a strip-show doorman. There's also some intriguing footage of mid-70s Soho which might be of value to social historians.

I suppose that the film does capture a certain mood of cultural desperation which clearly reigned in the UK at the time. Evans' sexual shennanigans seem like the last resort of a man with nothing else to do; the sexual revolution has failed to make life interesting, as people are just as boorish and neurotic and dumb as they ever were. Whether this is a real reflection of the times or merely the projection of the filmmakers' own limited intelligence and wit is a matter of conjecture, although the huge box office success of the film suggests that it did offer the film-going population something they could respond to.

Although the film is about sexual adventures, the sex scenes themselves are as sexy as bromide, with not a single moment of chemistry between Evans (who was gay in reality) and the various women he disrobes.

Despite this being a real adventure, and a lot of Brit fun, especially when you have a very likable actor in it, this is of course, is just an excuse for a T and A romp. Yes it's a lot of saucy fun, and we know exactly where this film is heading or what kind of film it is, if good looking Evans is involved. The film has no plot, but some familiar faces, especially the very talented Judy Geeson, the girlfriend of Evans's friend. His home life is no picnic, his taxi, the only form of release, and sanctuary where we see him do a few dames, one an older, and hot one who gets locked outside her two story house, which ends with a very familiar clichéd scene in a bathtub, like those in the Confession's movies. It becomes quite a frustrating scene, rather than amusing. We also have a staged taxi hold up, that was a surprise I liked. Poor Evans does cop it, either from his nagging Mum who can't cook, and a harping girlfriend, any guy would righteously strangle. There are funny moments, the most humorous part is in it's starting, where the film takes digs at taxi drivers. One truly unforgivable, but cutely forgivable blooper was Evans ducking back into his taxi naked, after a close call at that married woman's house earlier, where he's in full view, of a female fuzz, walking towards him. Why do I like this bad movie? 1. The soundtrack, 2. The T and A aspect, and 3. Evans, a not so fortunate actor when measured against his talent, and tragically, his suspected murder. One scene, totally unwarranted, was the weird conversation, mostly on Judy's part, where Geeson's' boyfriend asks her to choose between him or her beloved Python. The end scene that marked the return of that sexy suicide jumper, provided the most memorable line. Just watch and enjoy.

Spurred on by the success of the ribald, 1970s 'Confessions of…' sex comedies, producer/director Stanley Long began his own series in the same vein, the 'Adventures of…' films, starting with Adventures of a Taxi Driver. This first film quickly sets the tone for the whole series: crude and not particularly funny.

Mind Your Language star Barry Evans plays Joe North, a cheeky London cabbie who uses his job as a means of chatting his way into the knickers of his tastier clientèle. Little more than a series of smutty skits in which North experiences variety of silly sexcapades (allowing for the obligatory nudity from some quality British crumpet, and occasional flash of Evan's todger), the film is unsophisticated nonsense with little of the charm or wit of the films it so obviously seeks to emulate.

3.5/10, generously rounded up to 4 for lovely Jane Hayden as Linda (which, coincidentally, is the name of Jane's equally attractive big sister), a suicidal woman saved by North, who tries to help the poor girl out by shagging her (NOT a method recommended by The Samaritans, I believe).

This was the first film I saw on TV in 2003, in the early hours of Jan 1st (admittedly the little worse for wear after the New Year celebrations! Presumably this is why films like this are scheduled at such hours - the audience is simply too drunk to change channels!). I have to say, it was awful... simply too awful for words i.e. there aren't any words strong enough to describe just HOW awful it was (and therefore quite watchable - in the same way that most of us will stop in the street to watch the aftermath of a traffic accident). It is a perfect example of the pitiful decline of British cinema following the boom years (in terms of talent, at least) of the 60's. Perhaps a relaxing of censorship laws was partly responsible for the plague of "tit and bum" "comedies" that broke out in the 70's, most of which appeared to star the comically ugly Robin Asquith. No Robin is this one however, but Barry Evans, who went on to play the teacher in the execrable racist sitcom Mind Your Language. One thing I will say about him which isn't completely negative is that his physical resemblance to Neil - "Men Behaving Badly" - Morrisey in this film was quite uncanny.

I would recommend this film, despite my criticism of it, to anybody suffering from temporary brain death brought on by New Year celebrations, and to students of the absolutely appalling.