1970s, group 7
- Five Easy Pieces (1970)
- Punishment Park (1971)
- The McKenzie Break (1970)
- Dark Star (1974)
- Midnight Express (1978)
- All the President’s Men (1976)
- Day of the Dolphin (1973)
- Play It Again, Sam (1972)
- Manhattan (1979)
- The Sunshine Boys (1975)
- The Hired Hand (1971)
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
- Images (1972)
- Carrie (1976)
- The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)
- Murder By Decree (1979)
- Magic (1978)
- The Last House on the Left (1972)
- The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
- Hardcore (1979)
Lots of memorable scenes in the films in this bunch; this list also contains one of my favorites, Hardcore, with George C. Scott, which is criminally underseen (and the ending differs from the ending Schrader wanted). Also notable are Philip Kaufman’s very atmospheric remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Altman’s experimental Images.
*****
previous: set 1; set 2; set 3; set 4; set 5; set 6.
“Seen” is all well and good, but maybe there should be bonus points for “Seen? Heck, I have the VHS/DVD.”
No one wants to be watching any damn movies from the 70s!
You’re right, Jason—especially when Spiderman 7 and The Dukes of Hazard 4: The Return of Roscoe’s Pants are due out…
Another good Scott film is They Might Be Giants. Odd little picture.
Sorry, Jeff. I’m just not much of a 70’s guy. When you get to the 1980s, I can provide more input.
Jason – My Netflix queue says differently.
You just wait until you’re up to your ass in Bob the Builder. That’s the list I want to see.
spam: married. Yeah, well. That’s what starts all the trouble isn’t it?
So, what ending did Schrader want?
Turing = answer, as in…oh, you know…
Underrated classic…
Dig Myrna Loy. And a Sax Rohmer script.
Spambuster: remember
Great set of lists, Jeff. For those of you bitching, unclinch your sphencters a bit. Besides, the seventies did suck, but their only redeeming features were music, movies and sports. For the cinephiles out there, it’s considered a golden age of some sort.
A bit of trivia for you Jeff: Manhattan was the first movie to ever be letterboxed when it went on VHS. Read that in an Ebert column years ago.
Number 15 reminds me of the ZZTop song “Tube Snake Boogie” in which it is observed, “I know a girl who lives on the hill. She won’t do it, but her sister will.”
It’s like we’re on the same wavelength or something.
What, no Rollerball? Worth it for the John Houseman cameo alone.
I have been waiting a while for “Day of the Dophine” to be mentioned. How did it go? “Fa love pa!” I don’t remeber the dolpin’s name.
Dark star? The giant beachball critter with the drumming fingernails. Weirdness.
Hardcore? The quest for a daughter culiminating in unexpected result.
Alien has already made an appearance, right?
Alpha wanted Beta.
‘fa want bee’
It’s an impressive list – just remember that 140 movies will clock in at around 280 hours, which is seven work weeks of sitting on your ass.
And, we’re only into the 70s.
By the time Jeff takes us into the 80s, when great movies like ‘The Soldier’ and ‘Remo Williams’ appear, the lists will grow manifold.
Eventually we will learn that Jeff has rarely seen actual sunlight, he may have even suffered from rickets until doctors made him start drinking Vitamin D enriched cow milk rather than the farm-fresh non-pasteurized goat’s milk he grew up on.
btw – KillDozer
I am a doctor of philosophy from Edinburgh, a doctor of law from Price College, a doctor of medicine from Harvard. My friends, out of courtesy, call me ‘Doctor’.
— Fu Manchu
I didn’t go to evil medical school for eight years in order to be called “Mister”, thank you very much…
— Dr. Evil
That’s an eclectic list! I haven’t seen a lot of them but will hunt them down and smoke them out. Five Easy Pieces was great–Nicholson, before he went totally Nicholson.
Abbie Hoffman hit the nail on the head when he called the 70s “that slum of a decade”. Sorry, but IMHO that applies to about 80% of these lists. However, the other 20% are pure gold.
Turing “then” as in that was then, this is…
To each his own, Norm.
Incidentally, I should have mentioned this earlier, but for those of you who are interested in finding out more about late 60s, 70s, early 80s cinema, try these documentaries:
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
A Decade Under the Influence
Baadasssss Cinema
The Kid Stays in the Picture
S.I. —
If you go to IMDB and look under trivia, you can find how Schrader wanted to end the film. But if I mention it here, those who haven’t seen the film as is would fall prey to a huge spoiler.
Five Easy Pieces
The “hold the chicken” scene is a classic and one that would warm the heart of anyone who has had the misfortune of getting the bitchzoid from hell diner waitress.
One of my many quirks is that I hate horror movies. For a variety of reasons, not least of which that they don’t scare me.
But Magic is just bout the only horror genre film that I like. When you watch it, besides how well it does its plot, you realize two things: Anthony Hopkins used to be a magnificent actor and Ann Margaret can act too.
Ah, yes. A Woman Under the Influence. Great!
Someone mentioned mescaline earlier, and it reminded me that I thought “Magic Christian” was an exquisite film. But I haven’t seen it since. Then.
Hardcore would’ve sucked if it had ended that way.
Anyhow, I barely remember seeing that movie. All I really remember is that it introduced me to Season Hubley, star of 1982’s Vice Squad, which, by the way, would be an excellent choice should you decide to make a list of 1980’s prostitution exploitation films. Better than Angel’s Back. Honest.
RR.. Try “Black Christmas” (1974)… The plot synopsis sounds like a routine Sorority House slasher flick, but its not.. It was actually creepy. Stars: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea (2001), Margot Kidder & John Saxon.. Back when they were young.
Scare Factor was replaced by body count many years ago.. You have to look back a good 25-30 years to find creepy.. You know “Psycho” had no actual ‘knife penetration’ shown and only 2 killings…
Jeff… When you get done with your collection of the best of the 70s, top it off with a list of the 20 suckiest movies of the 70s.. The ones that were so crappy that they made crappy into an art form of its own.. Just a thought…
Since I’m the only one commenting this morning, I’m going to add two more words..
“Rocky Horror” (1975)
And crawling on the planet’s face
Some insects called the human race
Lost in time, and lost in space
And meaning.
Rocky Horror is pretty well known. Black Christmas, though, was slated to go on one of the lists upcoming.
Do you happen to keep track of when the unreleased movies show up on DVD? I think there’s about a dozen that I can’t find. I’ve created a word file with all the movies so I can mark the ones I’ve seen, so I’m keeping track of the unavailable ones, but it’d sure be cool if you put up a post when a DVD is released.
If not, that’s cool too. But you could just bury it in a conversation with your neighbor or a hat or something. Or even make it the caption to a picture of your cat.
I use a site called videoeta.com. It will email you when a DVD is being released.
Cool. Thanks, man.
“The McKenzie Break”. Verrrrrrrrry underrated movie. As far as WW2 POW flicks go, it’s right up there with “Stalag 17”, “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, “King Rat”, and my personal favorite, “The Great Escape”.
Really, the ‘78 remake of “Body Snatchers” made the list? Other than having Karen Black (I think) walking around naked, what did it do that the ‘90s remake didn’t do better?
Or that the original didn’t do perfectly?
Or—did you include it as an example of adult-ish ‘70s horror filmmaking?
Brooke Adams, Steve.
The original is a good movie that hasn’t aged particularly well, I don’t think—a fairly obvious allegory of Cold War fears, it strikes me as dated and a bit wooden.
Whereas Kaufman (a very underrated director; see The Wanderers, if you haven’t already) takes the story and removes the obvious allegory, concentrating instead on using odd camera angles to create a feel that is ultimately quite claustraphobic, and a look that is surreal.
Great performance by Sutherland, too.
Interesting choices in ‘Last House On The Left’ and ‘The Hills Have Eyes.’ Of course, the other legacy of the seventies was the shlock horror, of which these are interesting examples.
Whenever people say that films are getting more violent nowadays, I point out to them that of all the films reviewed by the British censors in 1976, over a quarter contained a rape scene.
A truly bizarre cultural phenomenon, really.
I like ‘The Hills Have Eyes’, by the way, but hate ‘Last House’ with a passion. That Craven tried to mix goofball comedy into his film is, when you consider the subject matter, truly revolting.