The Twilight Zone Review: You Drive

By William Kozy

I like “You Drive” for the simplicity of its premise, but that is still able to ratchet up the suspense and tension we feel regarding a man who has done something awful but seems to have been able to avoid detection. It’s a very relatable feeling, and the episode succeeds in using the Hithchcockian technique of placing us in the shoes of the criminal and thereby squirming when things get dicey for him. Part of the reason for our feeling any sympathy for him when we shouldn’t at all, is that the episode stirs in the additional plot point of man vs. machine, of technology running roughshod over us, even if the particular machine in this episode is acting with a good conscience. So, I thought this episode deserved a bit more than the 6 votes it received in my survey of fans and writers asking, ‘What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?’ tying it with 11 other episodes for 106th thru 116th place of the 156 episodes.

Sure enough though, casting actor Edward Andrews as the ironically named Oliver Pope in this ethics tale, was an effective way of making our empathy for him ebb as the episode progresses. Mr. Andrews has made a long career sculpting out weaselly characters, men bent on seeing that people’s plans are thwarted. Watch the glee on his face when he learns that a co-worker of his, whom he suspects of going after his job, is mistakenly taken in as a suspect for the hit-and-run accident that Oliver perpetrated in the opening scene.

It was a rain-slicked street and Pope was driving his 1956 Ford Fairlane 2-door sedan with rear fender skirts, and he was not paying enough attention to the road because of his paranoia over his job. He winds up hitting a newspaper delivery boy riding his bicycle. Pope does get out of his car to go over and see how the boy is, but when he glances around and sees that no one’s nearby, he runs back to his car. Out of nowhere comes a woman, calling after him, but not getting a good enough look at his face or license plate.

When he arrives home, his wife Lillian has set the table for dinner but Oliver is temperamental and nervous, canceling their plans to see a movie after dinner. He diverts her fussing attention to see if he’s sick by blaming his anger on a co-worker, Pete Radcliff for setting his sights on Oliver’s job. But suddenly, Ollie’s car keeps flashing its headlights in the garage outside the door that adjoins their kitchen. Lillian alerts Oliver to it, thinking someone might be in the garage. He gets up off the couch and very tentatively investigates. No honking, just an almost gentle reminder—the lights coming on and off repeatedly, slowly. More annoyingly harsh honks will ensue from this Robocop/Christine hybrid when Oliver displays no intention of turning himself in.

Sometime later, in this pre-caller ID age, Oliver will place a call (probably to the hospital) and ask very sotto voce about the boy’s condition. The outlook is not good. So, that evening as Oliver and Lillian lay in bed, the car knows that Oliver hasn’t taken proper steps yet, so it escalates the jabs at his conscience by honking its horn. One can imagine how writer Earl Hamner Jr., a homespun former country boy from Virginia’s backwoods might have felt that little could be more bothersome then a car honking endlessly. Back into the garage goes Oliver. He eventually pops open the hood and desperately rips out the battery connections to stop the honking.

The next morning Oliver sits at the breakfast table with newspaper in hand, and his wife reports how terrible it is that the boy won’t make it and that she hopes they catch “that man.” Oliver asks a little too quickly and with a little too much hope, “How do you know it was a man?” She points out that the article says there was a witness. Sickened, Oliver says he won’t go into work and retreats to the couch. The car starts honking again, the pressure mounts, and his wife insists on taking the car to the mechanic to have it looked at. Director John Brahm has done a very good job of pacing the escalation of the episode’s tightening grip.

Out on the road, the car isn’t cooperating with Lillian, as it forcefully steers itself no matter how hard she struggles and pulls at the wheel. And then it stalls right in the middle of an intersection and she is beset by other cars, honking at her as she blocks traffic. She gets to the phone booth and reports her location to a tow truck, and that location just happens to be where Oliver hit the newspaper boy. Back home, when she relates the whole incident to Oliver, when she says “even the police couldn’t get it started” watch for Andrews’ nearly comical rapid fire “What were the police doing there?”

And then…the car is back. It’s honking in the garage but it’s a mystery to both of them how it got there. Overlapping their dialogue, the phone rings and it’s the repair shop asking about the car’s whereabouts. Oliver tells them its at his home and says he thought one of their men must’ve brought it, and he argues with them about the bill, and just then the front doorbell rings. Again, the pacing of all these bells and honks serves well in upping the chaotic whirlwind that envelopes Oliver more and more, as he delays justice.

The visitor at the door is co-worker Pet Radcliff who presents Oliver with some documents from Oliver’s in-desk basket that now just need Oliver’s signature. An argument ensues as Oliver sees this as a power play. Pete gets up to leave and peacemaker Lillian comes up to him to allay the anger. The two talk softly and civilly and we learn that Pete’s family knew the boy, and that he died about an hour ago. It just doesn’t end for poor Oliver.

The next scene however, serves up a gleefully fortunate turn of events, fortunate that is, is you’re as Satanic-inclined as Oliver seems to be. We see a cop on motorcycle near the scene of the crime and beside him is that woman who came upon the accident in time to see the man getting away. And here actually might be the scariest scene of the episode when we consider the implications it has on the nature of what we use as “evidence” in our society as we fervently pursue justice. A car pulls up to the corner and the witness scuttles over to the cop saying, “I think that’s him!” “That’s no good”, says the officer, “You have to be sure.” So the woman pauses and looks and says, as she licks her lips, “That’s him. I’m sure.” So the cop starts up his motorcycle and takes off after the driver, siren wailing. He stops him, and guess who it is? Pete Radcliff. A little bit too ironically coincidental but it does turn up the heat even more on Oliver.

Now we figure, well, Oliver can’t let Pete go down for his crime can he? Surely, this will be the turning point. And in a way it does become the turning point as we are completely drained of any ill-placed sense of suspense over “getting caught.” Because the next morning, again holding the morning paper, Oliver reads to Lillian that they’ve arrested that hit-and-run driver. He tells her they arrested Pete Radcliff and Lillian is in denial: “I still can’t believe it. You could tell if a man would do a thing like that.” The poignancy of her making that statement hit me at a later viewing of the episode—Yes, she’s right in a way; I think a lot of us in normal society do have a nose for the type of person who could possibly be capable of such a thing…and yet, look who she herself chose to marry.

And that look on Oliver’s face. He’s the cat that ran over the canary. The suppressed giddiness on his face is a riot. He sits contentedly at the table, but the car isn’t having any of it. It starts honking its rage. When Oliver goes in, the engine starts up, making Oliver leap backward in fear. That night in bed, a blaring wakes Lillian, who wakes Oliver to get him to do something. One might protest, “How can this guy sleep?” until we realize how relieved he was at Pete Radcliff taking the fall. Oliver goes to the garage and the car radio plays a news report about Pete Radcliff. And then it repeats the very same new report. Oliver gets a hammer and starts wailing away at the radio, the headlights, everything. It seems to have worked, but we know that we know better than that.

That morning, as Oliver happily starts off for work he tells his wife he’s going to walk because he just doesn’t trust that car. And then after he’s gone away, the garage doors open and Lillian stands there speechless. The car backs out of the garage, and starts a driverless journey after Oliver. (Driverless that is, except for the stunt driver who was positioned low in the car and utilized a miniature periscope to see where he was going.)
It catches up to Oliver who nervously trots away, and then he does a complete reversal of direction and starts running. Lightning breaks open the sky and it starts raining, just as it had been the day of the accident. Oliver keeps running down the middle of the street (why oh why do they always do that?) and then he loses his footing and trips and falls. In an effectively designed shot using a very simple old trick, we see Oliver in a close-up, with the camera down low at street level with Oliver. The car rushes up speedily, stopping right before the wheel hits his head. The trick, as you might have suspected is that they ran the footage backwards—starting out with car’s wheel already next to the actor’s head and having the car go backwards. Play that footage backwards and voila, it looks like it’s coming toward him.

Oliver gets up slowly, defeated, and climbs into the passenger seat whereupon the car escorts him to police headquarters. And in a shot reminiscent of the end of the terrific Richard Gere/Diane Lane thriller “Unfaithful”, Oliver exits the car to face justice, finally.

I’ll rate the episode a speed limit of 6.8.

[si-contact-form form=’2′]