1970s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[swo17]

No love for 3 Women? Number 1 on my hypothetical list were I not too busy to delve into this project (although I'll be watching this thread like a hawk when I can - definitely a decade I need to explore more).

I still have a lot of Altman to watch/rewatch, but I'll be be surprised if 3 Women doesn't end up as my top film of his.

[domino harvey]

No man born of woman should pick the merely good The Tenant over the the masterpiece Macbeth.

This board has an odd affinity for the Tenant. I don't get it at all, but I would bet money on it making the Top 100.

And LQ, I like 3 Women and it made my list last time, but I doubt I'll have room this round

[bamwc2]

3 Women is a great film, one that has a lot of intelligent things to say about identity. If it were made by just about any other director, it'd probably be my top choice for them of the decade. Somehow Altman was able to make four films even better than it in this span. It's truly a testament to his genius.

[domino harvey]

Peter Bogdanovich

Directed by John Ford (1971) R1 Warner OOP
the Last Picture Show (1971) R1/A Criterion
What's Up, Doc? (1972) R1/A Warner
Paper Moon (1973) R1 Paramount
Daisy Miller (1974) R1 Paramount OOP
At Long Last Love (1975) RA Fox
Nickelodeon (1976) R1 Sony
Saint Jack (1979) R1 Concorde OOP

Fair warning: I think all of these films are worth watching. However, I'll try to restrict my recommendations towards those who aren't as invested in the man's career this decade! Directed by John Ford (1971), produced for an AFI tribute to the director, is Bogdanovich in classic Hollywood kissass mode, and Ford's general unwillingness to participate only makes it that much more amusing. Not essential but worth a look for fans of either director. Bogdanovich's best-known and loved film, the Last Picture Show (1971), has a just and fair reputation. Remember, this is the film that prompted Time magazine to declare it the best film by a young director since Citizen Kane! It is unbelievable that the French Connection beat it for Best Pic, but that's how it goes sometimes. The film remains an uncompromising and achingly beautiful portrait of the death of a small Texas town, with wonderful performances by all principals. This and At Long Last Love are back to back in my Top 5 for the decade. Bogdanovich's love of classic Hollywood cinema manifests itself yet again in his feature-length Bringing Up Baby homage, What's Up, Doc? (1972), with Barbara Streisand and Ryan O'Neal bumbling around a hotel and ending up in what must be the longest car chase this side of Sex and the Single Girl. Nowhere near as good as the films it apes, this is still pretty entertaining stuff.

Bogdanovich's next two films hinge on strong central performances. Paper Moon (1973) is Tatum O'Neal's movie from start to finish and she earned every ounce of praise she received, including an Oscar. It's a joke to look at the child performances that garner noms (and wins) in the wake of O'Neal's real deal, and luckily the film offers a winning depression-era setting and colorful characters to make a complete whole. One of the most charming films of the decade and a film even Bogdanovich skeptics seem to love. I've already written a defense of Cybill Shepherd's performance in Daisy Miller (1974) here, but tl;dr: Shepherd's great as the title character, but she's not as lucky as O'Neal in her surroundings.

Shepherd's also a wonder in At Long Last Love (1975), as is the rest of the game cast, especially her sparring partner Burt Reynolds. The novelty of Reynolds in a musical quickly morphs into acceptance and finally respect, as he's a surprisingly natural fit. You can read more about my thoughts on this lovely film here. Also wonderful and also starring Reynolds is Nickelodeon (1976), a film with a spotty reputation that I've never understood. To me this is one of the breeziest and most entertaining films ever made about the movie business, packed with in jokes and actual stories (the basic premise is lifted from Allan Dwan's career) in aid of a winning communal approach that Bogdanovich's best films share. The repairing of the O'Neals may not be as effective as in Paper Moon, but O'Neal and Reynolds make a great comic pair. Bogdanovich was forced to cast someone who wasn't Cybill Shepherd in a role written for her, and model Jane Hitchcock does a fine job, though this ended up being her only film. The DVD contains a black and white graded "director's cut" that adds two inessential scenes back into the mix-- stick with the superior color original version. I've taught this twice now in my film classes and both times it's overwhelmingly proven to be one of the most popular screenings of the course with my students.

Post-Shepherd breakup Bogdanovich puttered around until he made Saint Jack (1979), a sorry imitation of his good friend John Cassavetes' work. It's an atypical film for Bogdanovich in his golden era, and despite some interesting production backstory (I believe it is still the only Hollywood film to be shot entirely in Singapore), there's not much else offered here. Star Ben Gazarra will of course be put to better use in Bogdanovich's next and best film… but that's next decade!

[bamwc2]

Post-Shepherd breakup Bogdanovich puttered around until he made Saint Jack (1979), a sorry imitation of his good friend John Cassavetes' work. It's an atypical film for Bogdanovich in his golden era, and despite some interesting production backstory (I believe it is still the only Hollywood film to be shot entirely in Singapore), there's not much else offered here. Star Ben Gazarra will of course be put to better use in Bogdanovich's next and best film… but that's next decade!

I've been trying to track this one down for what seems like forever and a day (no, I'm not willing to spend the outrageous Amazon OOP price). Now I'm not sure that it's worth it.

[knives]

What's Up, Doc? is actually probably going to be my top Bogdanovich.

No man born of woman should pick the merely good The Tenant over the the masterpiece Macbeth.

This board has an odd affinity for the Tenant. I don't get it at all, but I would bet money on it making the Top 100.

I can't speak for others, but The Tenant is extraordinarily personal for me in the way it tackles pretty much everything it does. Adding that to some great uneasy film making and a wacko performance by Polanski that seems to only be more honest the higher it gets and it actually winds up being my favorite of all of his films.

[life_boy]

A random collection of stray 70's viewings over the last few weeks, arranged in descending order of preference:
1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976)
The 20th century political struggles of Italy are seen in two families. This is allegory on a grand scale, but it is so much deeper than allegory. These are people and people make weird decisions that shock us, decisions that don't support our theory of the world. Sometimes they make decisions that don't mean much, sometimes they make decisions that have lingering consequences. I saw the struggle as being beyond communism and fascism: the struggle is reality and ideal. The trick is that each person sees one thing as the reality and the other as the ideal. They must then fight to make the ideal a reality. Bertolucci is not deterministic and he has made a film that breathes differently than many other similar epics. And it is all more complicated than it seems; more complicated than a simple affirmation of one political ideology over another. Paradoxes, contradictions, indecisions. This is where humanity lives. The sheer amount of time spent watching this movie has a cumulative effect, similar to other epics like Berlin Alexanderplatz, where seeing so many life phases of an individual intricately weaves an experiential understanding of that character that is felt even more than specifically remembered. There are so many great scenes (the opening scene, the padrone in the field with the wine bottle, Burt Lancaster's death, the blaming of Olmo at the wedding and the immediate conflict of Ada's marriage). This is a startling film and quickly one of my new favorites of the decade.

Alex in Wonderland (Paul Mazursky, 1970) [I would like to make this my spotlight title for this decade.]
A brilliant examination of the paralysis and paradox facing the directors of the New Hollywood era. Art vs. commerce, politics vs. life. Sutherland plays a director who has achieved apparent success with his first film (though it has not yet been released) but cannot move beyond his obligatory liberal guilt or European arthouse fetish to pick his next project. Thankfully, Mazursky makes us privy to a few of Alex's grandiose visions -- including a full-scale military assault on the pedestrians of Hollywood Boulevard scored to the song "Hooray for Hollywood" -- and ends it with Sutherland wandering through the empty house of success and, perhaps even, artistic freedom. In a decade full of good Sutherland performances, I think this might be my favorite. I was surprised by how much this movie won me over. Not simply a Hollywood aping of 8 1/2, but a co-opting of the imaginative framework of that film to express the reductive tendencies of its main character.

The Spider's Stratagem (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
A dense, slow and beautiful film that needs a decent DVD release (I had to watch a VHS rip on YouTube). Regardless, I found the film a very interesting meditation on the need of the mythic hero. I have really warmed up to Bertolucci in the last few months and imagine his first four 70's features will likely all find a spot on my list (I haven't seen La Luna yet). This is my least favorite of the four but still has some breathtaking images and moments.

Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974)
Absolutely bonkers. Imagine the Tralfamadore sequences in 'Slaughterhouse-5' rewritten by Monty Python but played completely straight and you are starting to get close to what Zardoz might be like.

Dillinger (John Milius, 1973)
Milius can't quite figure out how he wants to approach Dillinger: part myth, part man, part history lesson. He ends up not really settling for any one thing and the whole thing falls apart as it goes along. The most compelling character for me was actually Ben Johnson's FBI G-man Melvin Purvis, who feels like the amoral gangster hunter who wishes his name carried the same weight in the public as it does for the gangsters. Even though he narrates the first 30 minutes of the movie, even that fades away at some point. The best scene is when Dillinger beats the crap out of Baby Face Nelson, but Milius inexplicably cuts away from the action to a wide shot, completely undermining any emotional weight or allegorical shift that could have and (in my opinion) should have happened there. It's an ambitious movie, but not as successful as it should have been.

Hooper (Hal Needham, 1978)
A strange live-action cartoon that capitalizes on Burt Reynold's star power as an excuse to make a stunt compendium that masquerades as a rambling, uneven look at Hollywood egotism and mortality. Not that great as a film but has some good stunts.

Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
Sorry to break rank here, but I found this a total chore to get through. I was fascinated in the beginning with the extended playfulness of Julie following Celine through the city and later the little mirroring of gestures and activities, but in service of what? I guess it is a play on storytelling and film-viewing (that's what the critics I respect say, and I could see it partially), but none of that added up to anything special. I became more and more impatient with it as I found less and less meaning in it. To me, it all felt insufferably coy and frustratingly dull.

[domino harvey]

I'm loving all the continued discussion in this thread. I've got the summer off and a girlfriend who has a real job, so I've got nothing but time to keep up my end of the contributions!

11 Harrowhouse (Aram Avakian 1974) Charles Grodin, the defining comic element in several films this decade (classic or otherwise), smartly wrote himself into a film that seems to exist solely to alternately highlight and compliment Grodin's dryly sarcastic comic tone. I'm not sure I've ever seen a film so masterfully mold every actor and the narrative structure itself to a mimicry of a singular comic actor's persona, but this film does it and thank God for that. 70s stars Grodin and Candice Bergen are joined by Classic Hollywood Brits James Mason and Trevor Howard and yet all acclimate themselves expertly to Grodin's frequency. The film itself is a glacially paced caper film where no one much cares what's happening or why and indeed everyone seems either bemused or bored at all junctures. Periodically the film interjects a voiceover, with Grodin's arch commentary alternately mocking pulp convictions (every five minutes there's a new way to awkwardly foreshadow future complications, but it's played so straight that it doesn't even initially register as a joke) and providing additional comic zingers in the same disinterested tone of the rest of the film. Apparently a version of the film was circulated without these voiceovers, but dear lord what kind of monster would want to see that? Your mileage will depend precisely on how amusing you find Grodin and this particular tenor of low key. Me? I thought 11 Harrowhouse was brilliant and my first great discovery of the project. So, as Grodin might say, it does seem likely it would make my list

Foul Play (Colin Higgins 1978) Forget the fact that this is Chevy Chase's first starring role, it is hard to believe anyone in this movie had a film career after this piece of shit. Throwing a half-dozen Hitchcock references at the audience for no reason other than to remind them of far, far better films, this disaster pairs a histrionic librarian Goldie Hawn with barely awake detective Chase and throws them into an alleged comedy that has almost no jokes. The film instead merely presents comic situations, content to let that be the same thing. If you think the idea of an Albino, a man with a scar, and a dwarf working together in a murderous plot is a riot, or find hee-larious the concept of a dressed-down Brit like Dudley Moore, get this, enjoying sex, then this is the film for you! This was a long, slow, and cruel march down to the right side of 116 minutes

House Calls (Howard Zieff 1978) If Glenda Jackson's earlier romantic comedy for Melvin Frank, A Touch of Class, briefly flirted with late-period screwball romances from the 40s, here she's on board for a flick bringing back the gentle sex comedies of the sixties within an era when anything goes. House Calls is a pleasant surprise: A good-hearted and likable embodiment of a subgenre rendered superfluous by the death of the Code. Jackson's divorcee and Walter Matthau's windower make a winning couple with their tinged barbs and adult expectations and the characters get into plenty of zany situations that could stand with the best of their antecedents-- the Code-mocking "One foot on the floor" scene is as good as anything in any sixties sex comedy, though it could never have existed in one! Art Carney also gives a fine comedic supporting performance as a senile Chief of Staff overseeing Matthau and company-- it's a solid comic role that somehow avoids all opportunities for maudlin emotion by never succumbing to emotion in the first place! Though I'd never heard of it before, apparently the film was a huge hit when it first came out (and even inspired a long-running TV series), and it's easy to see why, as it's all quite charming

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

I have a number of horror films this time around (and an early Verhoeven), though nothing can compare to the terror of hearing Allen Funt ask random NYC men "How many chicks have you balled?" (yes, an exact quote) earlier this week. It was like watching your grandfather guest host Midnight Blue. I'll need years of therapy to get over it.

Daughters of Darkness (Harry Kümel, 1971): The legendary Countess Bathory returns as a vampire with her lesbian lover to terrorize a pair of newlyweds in this Belgian horror flick. The two killers work to seduce the young couple but to what end and if they succeed where will the their loyalties lie? Although this film has had a good deal of support in this thread over recent days, I didn't think that it was anything special. It does possess an undeniable stylistic flare, but the acting was stilted (as it always is in 70s Euro horror) and the tension virtually non-existent. It's a pretty enough film that I'd give it a marginal recommendation, but I don't see why others on this board think that its great.

Keetje Tippel (Paul Verhoeven, 1975): Before discussing the film, I have to admit that I unfortunately caught this one on Amazon streaming. The source was apparently taken from the Synergy DVD (a company who seems to be in a twisted competition with Alpha to see who can release the worst DVDs of important public domain films) with a transfer that looks like it was ripped from a second generation VHS. It was also the dubbed version remained as Katie's Passion. The film itself is taken loosely from the autobiography of author Neel Doff, and detail's Keetje's journey to provide for her family and herself by first working in a factory and then later a brothel. This was the earliest film from Verhoeven that I've seen (though I'd kill to see Turkish Delight), but I have to say that it merely came off as competent in comparison to some of his masterful later works. On it's own it was a decent enough film, but probably not anything that I'd feel the desire to return to.

Phase IV (Saul Bass, 1974): So this was the great Saul Bass's notorious film about a psychically connected ant collective that terrorize a desert town in a bid to take over the world? What's not to love here? The film features a pair of scientists trapped in their lab/fortress along with a young woman who is the only survivor of an ant attack on her family's farm. While the performances are nothing extraordinary, Bass proved himself to be more than a competent director, showing a grand visual flare. Legend has it that there exists (or at least existed) an extended sequences at the end detailing the ant's plan for humanity. Man alive, would I love to see this. Unfortunately, the DVD is barebones though it really deserves a special edition in HD.

Raw Meat (Gary Sherman, 1973): What a nastily fun little piece of work this one was. Donald Pleasence (another icon of British horror, Christopher Lee, also has a small role) stars as a British inspector investigating a missing persons case in the London underground who enlists the aid of the last man to see him alive. Soon we find out that the there is a bestial killer--the last of the descendants of a group of workers trapped in a cave in in the late 19th century--stalking and killing those who stray off from the line. While the film didn't get a warm reception from critics on its initial release (some of this may be due to the fact that it was apparently edited for the American release--a decision that Sherman rued), I found it to be a decent enough effort in the gore-fest genre. It was by no means anything special, but it did keep me entertained during its 80 some minute run time. What more could I ask for out of a film like this?

Tombs of the Blind Dead (Amando de Ossorio, 1972): This is the first of a tetralogy of zombie films from de Ossorio and ludicrously transforms the Knights Templar into a group of Satan worshiping ghouls who drink blood in exchange for eternal life. Hundreds of years after their execution they rise from their graves to terrorize those unlucky enough to spend the night in their deserted Spanish village. Although I liked the design of the shambling Templar zombies (especially after they took to horseback), there's basically nothing else to recommend here. The acting was atrocious all around and the plot holes were wide enough for the entire legion of zombies to ride their ghost steeds through. Plot elements are introduced and then abandoned for no discernible reason. Why does the Templar's first victim get turned into a zombie only to get killed attacking her second victim while none of their other kills ever rise from the dead? These were some very weird choices. Do yourself a favor and skip it.

[zedz]

Tetralogy.

[matrixschmatrix]

Damn you, Alien box set!

[zedz]

I know it's like putting up a parasol in an avalanche, but I think I'll just do that little autocorrect routine from now on.

[Matt]

Shockingly, "quadrilogy" is in the OED with usage going back to 1865. "n. a literary or artistic work consisting of four parts; a series or group of four related works; a tetralogy." It's not in general usage as much as "tetralogy," though, and "tetralogy" is still probably the better word, linguistically, given its fully Greek etymology (whereas "quadrilogy" crams Latin and Greek together inelegantly [but that's not exactly a rarity in the English language]).

[bamwc2]

Duly noted Matt. Yes, that damn Aliens box set was in my mind when I wrote that.

[zedz]

That's interesting (and a little shocking), Matt. My theory is that the nincompoop who christened the Aliens set (who had never heard the word 'tetralogy') made up the word, then verified its existence and ran with it. Luckily for him, some other nincompoop had anticipated him by a couple of centuries.

[Cold Bishop]

Ahem... and ahem....

[bamwc2]

Ken Russell

The Music Lovers (1970) (MGM Limited Edition R1)
The Devils (1971) (BFI R2)
The Boy Friend (1971) (Warner Archive R1)
Savage Messiah (1972) (Warner Archive R1)
Mahler (1974) (Odeon R2, Hulu)
Tommy (1975) (BD Sony R0)
Lisztomania (1975) (Warner Archive R1)
Valentino (1977) (MGM Limited Edition R1)

Russell had one amazing decade in the 1970s with his focus on making over the top biopics that manage to both heady and breezy at the same time. His work this decade began with The Music Lovers, a transitional film for him going from the relatively orthodox film making of the previous decade to the anarchic and unconventional work that typified much of the rest of his career. The film melded what are arguably his two greatest interests--sex and classical music--in its examination of the love life of composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and his wife Nina (played here in an uncompromising performance by his frequent muse, Glenda Jackson). While he was obviously getting his sea legs with his new and unique style when he made this, he had already mastered it by the time that he did the other two biographical looks at the lives of the composers: Mahler and Lisztomania. In the former Robert Powell plays the title role as his wife and he take a fatal train ride in which they reflect on his life. There are some amazing extended musical sequences in the film that show Russell at the top of his game. Lisztomania, however, is a different beast altogether. The second of back-to-back films that the director made with Roger Daltry, Lisztomania strips away any vestige or realism that remained in Russell's aesthetic and replaced it with sheer energy. It's hard to classify it as a good or a bad film, but it is undoubtedly a trip worth taking.

This decade also saw the release of The Devils, an amazing piece of filmmaking that has always been neglected by a nervous Warner Brothers. The film, like so many of his others, is based on real events, but treated with an extreme artistic license. Telling the story of an instance of mass hysteria that gripped a French nunnery, this sexually driven tale is essential viewing for anyone in this project. Next comes Twiggy's star turn in The Boy Friend an adaptation of a mid-century British play with all of the stops pulled out. Rounding out my Russell recommendations is Tommy, a rock opera made from The Who's album of the same name. Although it is far from his best film of the decade, the soundtrack elevate the generally silly storyline and make it an easy recommendation for any fan of the era's music.

There are only two films in Russell's 70s output that I'm not going to recommend, but I have to admit that they're both near misses for me. On another day either Savage Messiah or Valentino could have gone in the other category. Both of these biopics detail the life of an artist. In the case of the former, it's Henri Gaudier-Brzeska the 19th century French sculptor. I never felt as emotionally invested in the characters as I did in his other films. I just finished Valentino a bit earlier today, and while there's a lot to love here, the film could have used some more judicious editing. Several scenes feel like they could have been shortened without any loss to the movie and perhaps a few others lopped off altogether.

Until he lost the ability to make the films that he wanted to and became just another director for hire in the 90s, Russell was one of the most important artists of his generation. Making movies for adults that treated us as adults, Russells films could sometimes seem like an unbridled Bacchanalia. With few other filmmakers at all interested in this sort of subject matter, Russell's work filled a niche, but one that I think the world is richer for having been filled.

[bamwc2]

Ahem... and ahem....

Thank you, yes, I took both films as recommendations from the horror list. Although I agree with your assessment of Deathline, we'll just have to agree to disagree on Tomb of the Blind Dead.

[domino harvey]

The longest day of the year felt a lot longer after sitting through these

Bilitis (David Hamilton 1977) / Laura (David Hamilton 1979) On an aesthetic level, these are both crudely made and narratively inept failures. Bilitis is a clumsy attempt at an Emmanuelle-style soft core flick with a homely title character and her pisspoor La ronde antics. Laura, the "story" of a sculptor who falls for a ballet dancing nymph, is more interesting in that it's flat out awful but in an entertaining fashion, with a let's say creative editing style and a self-serious tone that drowns everything in self-importance despite the fact that it seems only to exist to place the comely young girl at the center into various scenarios of questionable legality.

Of course Hamilton brings his own (just, I'd say) level of baggage to these works. The primary problem of these films beyond their unseemly appeal for the raincoat brigade is that for someone who seemingly specializes in capturing their image, Hamilton has no idea of what young women are like. Rather than engaging with these girls on their level, he infantalizes them. Hamilton hedges his bets in Laura by never revealing exactly how old Dawn Dunlap's character is, but regardless of appearances the teenager behaves like she's eight, not sixteen. That Hamilton's ladies all behave like petulant little kids says a lot about how Hamilton sees these girls. The employment of this methodology doesn't come off as capturing innocence as much as glorifying the naiveté of a child-- which would be ideologically suspect but morally admissible where it not for the inescapable sexual element Hamilton brings to these films, strained protestations to the contrary aside. For all the forced politeness of their tone, these are films that feature young women of question-mark age undressing and, in the case of Laura, doing so while accompanied by a funky disco beat right out of a porno film. Both feature young female leads who become fixated on older charismatic figures and surround themselves with artists obsessed with image. It's not hard to read the subtext with regards to why these projects appealed to Hamilton. What is harder to figure is why they'd appeal to anyone who wasn't watching for the wrong reasons. In a decade where directors such as Jacques Rozier and Eric Rohmer brought us such vibrant portraits of female youth, why would anyone bother with these? Well, we all know the answer to that question, don't we…

the Pyx (Harvey Hart 1973) Released the same year as the Exorcist, this is a drowsy Canadian flick about detective Christopher Plummer working to figure out who killed Karen Black's dead hooker. The answer involves Catholic desecration via a Black Mass and a possessed clergyman, both of which only come into the picture in the last ten minutes. There. That's the film. I've spared you from nearly two hours of the movie stretching this out like taffy. Sitting through this one was like watching an entire film in slow motion. Karen Black provides some original music, and let's just say she learned a lot between this film and Nashville.

[bamwc2]

I've seen two films by Hamilton: Tendres cousines and Hulu's own Premiers désirs. Aside from being terrible pieces of exploitative garbage, there was always something else that bothered me about them that I could never put me finger on (not that I gave them much thought), but I think that you've nailed it. He treats his female characters as lacking in all intelligence and volition. They are no more than child-like puppets in his hand to be twisted for his own aesthetic pleasure. My God, this man is skeevier than I thought.

[bamwc2]

David Cronenberg

Crimes of the Future (1970) (Supplement on the Fast Company BD RO)
Shivers (1975) (Image R1 OOP, Prism R2)
Rabid (1977) (Somerville House R1)
Fast Company (1979) (Blue Underground RO)
The Brood (1979) (MGM R1 OOP, Second Sight BD RB)

David Cronenberg's career started slowly with little of the fanfare that he would achieve later in the decade. After making the independent film Stereo and a couple of shorts at the tail end of the 1960s, he began the 70s with the complex, but elusive Crimes of the Future. This bizarre science fiction film tells the story of dystopian future where a cosmetics company has accidentally wrought a plague that has killed all post-pubescent women in the world. Adrian Tripod (played in a very slow and over enunciated Canadian accent by Ronald Mlodzik) spend his time wandering in search of his mentor (and cause of the plague) Antoine Rouge. Little actually happens, but the film does end on a disturbing note. It's visually impressive and shows the director's promise, but is ultimately bogged down with too many ideas but not enough interesting ones. From here he languished in Canadian television for a few years before returning with a theme that would define much of his work for the next three decades: the modification of the body. In this case Shivers presents us with a mad scientist, a parasitologist who decides to fix man's hyper-rationality by introducing a genetically engineered parasite to the apartment complex where he lives. When he realizes that the beings turn their hosts into murderous sex maniacs he tries to stop it, but can his mess be cleaned up? His next film, Rabid, features a similar story with a parasitic infection turning those afflicted into killers. Adult film actress Marilyn Chambers stars as the innocent protagonist who becomes swept up in the psycho-sexual cravings that are the root of the trouble. Both films do an outstanding job of blending eroticism and horror. Cronenberg then followed this up with a film about...drag racing. Although he remains very proud of the movie, I find auto races interminably boring, and this one did not work for me on any level. I know that it has its fans, but I'm not going to defend it. Cronenberg ended the decade with a return to horror in the form of The Brood. The film tells the story of a single father whose ex-wife has the power to create terrifying killer children using the power of her rage. The cast does an adequate job (the always reliable Oliver Reed shines in his role as the wife's psychiatrist), but the film has never clicked for me. Perhaps its the silliness of the premise or something else that I can't quite put my finger on, but it feels like a qualified failure to me.

[knives]

If nothing else I think Crimes of the Future and Stereo really highlight how much Cronenberg owes to Dick and Burroughs at least before he started to find his own voice. They basically play out like Chris Marker type readings of those two authors.

[bamwc2]

If nothing else I think Crimes of the Future and Stereo really highlight how much Cronenberg owes to Dick and Burroughs at least before he started to find his own voice. They basically play out like Chris Marker type readings of those two authors.

I'm ashamed to say that I've never read anything by either author, but am eager to. I received the Fast Company BD in the mail yesterday. Since I don't like the main feature at all, I bought it exclusively for the early works. I'll definitely watch Stereo soon.

[knives]

If you like early Cronenberg at all you'll love those two especially Dick. Scanners and The Brood are really blatant rip-offs of Dick for instance. The switch from the mind/ existence to the body (especially sex organs) seems to me where Burroughs comes in.

[bamwc2]

Does anyone know where to get a copy of Fedora? As of tonight it'll be the last of Wilder's 70s output for me to see.