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

[knives]

I think we actually have a fairly similar interpretation of the film Tomasso. In general I don't believe Antonioni cared about politics let alone American politics and he was more concerned with what sort of people would do this stuff. I didn't even think to consider any of the movie to be fantasy. So no, I wasn't missing what he was doing. He was just doing it in a pretty awful way that I don't care for and can't understand why anyone would.

[Mr Sheldrake]

Zabriskie Point is one of my favorites. I was 21 in 1970 and I find the movie more and more to be a moving elegy that captures the look, the feel, the mood, the futility of that particular crazy moment in time. Even the awkwardness of the two leads is mitigated by Mark's tragic real life fate almost mirroring his cinematic one, and Daria is just so damn beautiful. I wouldn't argue that by conventional criticism it doesn't fill the bill, but it has a mystery to it.

[bamwc2]

I figure I'll never be taken seriously again for calling Jesus Christ Superstar a great film and honestly sometimes I don't believe it either, but all the same I have to admit that the metaphor works really well and the music is killer. Add onto that a strong set of performances that accomplish everything they need to and more to a pretty amusing Pasolini lite style and frankly it becomes the rock musical of the decade. Sorry Russell fans.

I'm a Russell fan and agree with every word of this. Jesus Christ Superstar is the greatest rock opera of all time. Ted Neeley does a fantastic job as Jesus, but Carl Anderson's as Judas has to go down as one of the all time great musical performances. I'm also partial to Josh Mostel's sybarite King Herod. It is a fully ridiculous movie, but one that works so very, very well.

[knives]

It is a silly movie, as best exemplified by the hilarious performances of Larry Marshall and Bob Bingham, but it works surprisingly effectively when it wants such as with the aforementioned Carl Anderson stuff and I think Barry Dennen too. That said I do like Tommy a fair bit even if I generally am not a fan of The Who.

[oh yeah]

I can understand why so many dislike Zabriskie Point (the acting by Daria and Mark is hard to defend), but to call its images "boring"..? It's always seemed to me the most visually beautiful, if not the best, Antonioni -- which is saying a lot. He captures the Southwest U.S. so evocatively -- I find the scenes in smoggy downtown L.A. just as stunning as the ones at the titular desert. To me it's just a joy to watch that kind of painterly, visual storytelling. And the opening scene with the student meeting/debate is a masterpiece even if on a totally abstracted, formalist level. It's a flawed film, but it's telling that it is by far the film of his that I have watched the most.

Certainly agree that The Passenger is his finest film, though.

[zedz]

I love Zabriskie Point, but I still think it's ridiculously bad in many respects (themes, script, performances). In part, I feel like the weakness of all those components actually helps make it perhaps Antonioni's most visually compelling film. If I disconnect my brain and just let it wash over me I have a great time.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Dark Star (John Carpenter, 1974): In John Carpenter's first feature length film, a group of four astronauts (plus their captain in suspended animation) travel the galaxy in search of both alien intelligence and planets that could be suitable for habitation. At least that's what they're after in theory. In practice, they just go around looking for shit to blow up while listening to space country music. According to the introduction by the late Dan O'Bannon (both the film's co-writer and actor in the role of one of the crew), few of the film's initial audience understood that it was meant to be funny. I'm not surprised as the jokes have a low hit to miss ratio. However, the mapcap hijinx of the crew was enough to keep me entertained. Who doesn't love fuzzy men men with a passion for bombing entire planets? By the way, does anyone know the answer to O'Bannon trivia question about the actor/scene shot high on LSD?

Spoiler

At the end of the film Lt. Doolittle did not use anything unique to phenomenology to delay Bomb 20 from exploding. Instead, the external world skepticism he discussed is straight out of post-Kantian epistemology.

Dolemite (D'Urville Martin, 1975): So this was my second Rudy Ray Moore film. My only other experience with the actor came in a decidedly surreal viewing of Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-In-Law in high school. While not as bizarre as that film, Dolemite was quite the experience itself. The titular character (played by Moore) begins the film falsely convicted for crimes that he was set up for. He's then enlisted in an FBI(!) plot to clean up his streets, sprung from jail, and immediately goes back to hustling and seeking revenge. Since I'm a sucker for a good blaxsploitation film, I really wanted to like this one. However, a couple of things got in my way. First, while most films of the genre are amateurish due to their microbudgets, this one suffered from it to the nth degree. The special effects--consisting mainly of fake blood--was some of the worst I've ever seen (okay, that part was rather charming) and the editing was confusing as all hell, with a couple of the shots ending in mid-sentence! Second, the rotund Moore just didn't come off as a believable action hero. In the climatic fight sequences he looked stiff and out of shape compared to his martial arts bodyguards. It's not horrible, but far from the vanguard of the genre.

Ganja and Hess (Bill Gunn, 1973): Going in to this all I knew about it was "black vampire movie" so I thought that it would be a Blackula ripoff. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Gunn's film, which he wrote, directed, and starred in, is a slow and meditative film that shares more in common with European art house than it does Harlem grindhouse. I'm still collecting my thoughts on this one, but I can say that I loved it and it has a very good shot at making my list. Unfortunately, I went cheap and watched it on a Youtube rip, but will definitely purchase the new Kino BD.

Rolling Thunder (John Flynn, 1977): William Devane stars as Major Charles Rane, a POW who returns to his small Texas town after several years of being imprisoned by the Vietcong. Although his community welcomes him with open arms, he has a hard time readjusting. His problems are further compounded by a wife who has fallen in love with someone else and a son who he doesn't know. His luck takes a turn for the worse as a group of local thugs decide to rob him of a cache of silver dollars that he received as a gift and kill his family in the process. He then stalks the killers and with the help of Tommy Lee Jones's character get revenge in an explosive finale. I can see why this film has quite the cult following. I think that I can safely say that it was the highlight of the director's career and probably Devane's too (anyone who counters with Family Plot will receive a punch to the throat). While I wouldn't say that it was a masterpiece, it was a tight revenge flick that has a lot going for it.

Soldier Blue (Ralph Nelson, 1970): Private Honus Gent (Peter Strauss) is the sole survivor of a Cheyenne attack on his unit. During the battle he meets up with the strong willed Cresta played by Candice Bergen. The able Cresta and the naive Gent must traverse open road in hostile Indian territory to make it to safety. Luckily they do with Gent making it to an army outpost and Cresta finding her way to a peaceful band of Cheyenne. The film then climaxes with a depiction of the Sand Creek Massacre, where the US Calvary ignored the signs of peace offered by the native, and wiped out the men while killing many of the women and children. While the first and second acts were rather lighthearted and humorous (though punctuated with violence), the film takes a tonal shift for its final act with its graphic depiction of the slaughter. Anyone who watches this can tell that it is a very angry movie given its depiction of the soldiers in the massacre, but I'm ashamed to say that I failed to make the connection to the My Lai Massacre. Once I read about this connection, it seemed like a fairly obvious Vietnam allegory, but no less of a powerful one despite its bluntness.

Zombie (Lucio Fulci, 1979): This was only my third experience with a Fulci film (the other two being The Beyond and Don't Torture a Duckling) and I have to say that I enjoyed his straight Giallo over the zombie flick. Believe it or not, this one is about zombies. A boat drifts into a New York harbor without any signs of life. A reporter and the daughter of the ship's owner then travel to the Antilles to investigate her missing father only to find an uncharted island overrun by the undead. Fulci's zombies certainly have a unique look, but clunky storytelling and a story populated by barely competent morons drag this one down. I can understand the film's cult following, but the negatives outweighed the positives for me. I say pass.

[Mr Sausage]

If you liked Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling, make sure you watch his earlier giallo, Lizard in a Woman's Skin. It's easily the best thing he ever did and one of the best of the early Bird with the Crystal Plumage imitators.

[knives]

Ganja and Hess really is one of the best horrors of a great decade for horror. Though that should be obvious with the talent behind the camera as Bill Gunn is simply one of the great artists of the decade. Between this and the equally amazing The Landlord Gunn deserves every bit of praise possible. The Angel Levine while not as good as those films is probably my favorite of the films made by the eastern block ex-pats in the decade not named Polanski or Skolimowski. He also gave one of the best performances from The Outer Limits in the episode Nightmare.

[colinr0380]

Amusingly I just watched the Cinema Snob video review of Dolemite a couple of nights ago, which didn't really inspire me to track down the film!

[bamwc2]

Amusingly I just watched the Cinema Snob video review of Dolemite a couple of nights ago, which didn't really inspire me to track down the film!

Thanks. After seeing that I can't believe that I missed almost all of the boom-mikes, including the one with the operator's head in the shot! It also reminded me of my favorite line from the movie:

Dolemite's my name and fucking up motha fuckas is my game.

[knives]

Is the two Dardenne shorts, Lorsque le bateau de Léon M. descendit la Meuse pour la première fois and Le chant du rossignol, available anywhere?

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

For those who have no access to it--I haven't noticed a DVD release--some nice person posted One Way Boogie Woogie (and 27 Years Later) on YouTube. It looks crappy (although its presence here probably means it's being shared somewhere with better pq), but for those who haven't seen it, I highly recommend this seminal Benning film even in this highly compromised form for a potential '70s entry. For those who are more used to his mostly uninterrupted landscapes (e.g., 13 Lakes), it might come as a surprise to see so many slow-burn sight and sound gags in this film, to the point where the connection between him and Jarmusch becomes undeniable. It's an absolutely beautiful film in 16mm, as 360p can only remotely suggest, but worth watching nonetheless if only for the sake of piquing one's interest toward Benning's '70s output.

Thom Andersen's Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer is also sputtering away on YouTube. I love this film's examination of the moving picture pioneer's curious methods, and Dean Stockwell's punctilious, perfectly modulated narration is a joy to hear.

I have had the good fortune to see both of these in the theater, where of course they are best appreciated, but I don't think others who don't have truck with private trackers should be too catholic about avoiding a poor reproduction if the result of such scrupulousness means remaining ignorant of a major filmmaker's work.

[bamwc2]

For those who have no access to it--I haven't noticed a DVD release--some nice person posted One Way Boogie Woogie (and 27 Years Later) on YouTube. It looks crappy (although its presence here probably means it's being shared somewhere with better pq), but for those who haven't seen it, I highly recommend this seminal Benning film even in this highly compromised form for a potential '70s entry. For those who are more used to his mostly uninterrupted landscapes (e.g., 13 Lakes), it might come as a surprise to see so many slow-burn sight and sound gags in this film, to the point where the connection between him and Jarmusch becomes undeniable. It's an absolutely beautiful film in 16mm, as 360p can only remotely suggest, but worth watching nonetheless if only for the sake of piquing one's interest toward Benning's '70s output.

Thom Andersen's Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer is also sputtering away on YouTube. I love this film's examination of the moving picture pioneer's curious methods, and Dean Stockwell's punctilious, perfectly modulated narration is a joy to hear.

I have had the good fortune to see both of these in the theater, where of course they are best appreciated, but I don't think others who don't have truck with private trackers should be too catholic about avoiding a poor reproduction if the result of such scrupulousness means remaining ignorant of a major filmmaker's work.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I've been looking for both films for quite some time now and even checked Youtube for them at the beginning of the 70s project without any luck.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Elvis (John Carpenter, 1979): Horrormeister John Carpenter ended the 70s with...a made for TV biopic of Elvis. While out of character for the director, this is an oddly compelling look at the King and his self-destructive behavior. This nearly three hour long film tells the story of Elvis's life from childhood (which if the film is to be believed consisted mainly of being bullied) through his '68 NBC comeback special. The film is far from a masterpiece, but it has a strange and indefinable vibe to it that often works. Kurt Russell--who looks nothing like Presley--masterfully exudes both the cool that made Elvis famous and the obsessive behavior that made him unbearable. God help me, but I actually dug this bloated mess of a movie.

I Only Want You to Love Me (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1976): Another TV movie from a cinematic master, Fassbinder's I Only Want You to Love Me presents us with the madness and hopelessness of one man's experiences with parental indifference and financial woes. After building his uncaring parents a house, carpenter Peter Trepper expects them to give him and his expectant wife their flat. When they don't the two leave for Munich where he finds steady but not gainful employment. Despite their situation Peter regularly showers his wife Erika (played by the mousey Elke Aberle) with expensive gifts bought on credit. Keeping the extent of their money problems secret, Peter goes through an emotional and moral descent with an explosive ending. There's not much new to say here. Fassbinder's output from this era was consistently outstanding and this is no exception. The performances that he got from his cast was topnotch and his script--penned from a book by Klaus Antes--played up to his film making strengths. In most other director's oeuvres this would be considered their masterpiece. For Fassbinder it's maybe his seventh or eighth best films of one of the greatest decades had by any director.

The Scar (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1976): In Krzysztof Kieslowski's first feature length work Stefan Bednarz (Franciszek Pieczka) is a honest and member of the communist party of Poland who is surrounded by graft and negligence. His idealism would appear to suit him well for the task of overseeing the building of a chemical plant in his hometown--a project that he believes will bring much needed employment to the impoverished area. However, his ideals are soon put to the test by the less than rosy reality of the ground conditions in the town upon his return. Although this film is not at the same level of some of his late career masterpieces, this is still a very good film by the late Polish master. There are some scenes (in particular I'm thinking of the shot where Benarz looks out his window while fiddling with the light switch) that are as beautiful as anything from his career.

The Traitor (Raymundo Gleyzer, 1973): I'm ashamed to say that I had never even heard of the Argentinian documentarian Raymundo Gleyzer before watching this, his only work of fiction. Sadly his life was cut short after being dissapeared by that bastard Pinochet in the Spring of '76. At least he left behind a powerful work in this early 70s political thriller starring Víctor Proncet as union leader who is enveloped by the corruption afforded by his position. The film itself is spectacular, but the disc from Facets looks like utter shit. Despite their lackluster reputation, it's not the production company's fault. As the forward says at the beginning of the disc, the dictator's junta outlawed the film. The only surviving copies were in extremely poor condition. Nevertheless, this is a very important film and an easy one to recommend.

[knives]

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
This isn't as good as the other films in the series with a lot of the plot happening because the characters are stupid beyond reason (the bee, my god). That said it remains pretty fun with Harryhousen making just beautiful creatures moving in impossible ways. It's also always fun to see a retired doctor in a film.

Cria Cuervos
This was a beautiful implacable nightmare I didn't wish to wake from. Every frame and sound features a perfect everything to the point I am almost without words to express how much I loved this film. I'm curious to what degree my viewing was effected by Spirit of the Beehive which I suspect made view the film much more as an act of imagination then it really did especially since the film suggests itself more as a hyperreal memory. It would have been easy for this to have been a Bad Seed type story, but I think the empathy for Ann is so extreme that the morality isn't one in terms of the actual actions, but what they represent for her which naturally leads her to being just a kid I guess. It also helps that Chaplin looks like Parker Posey throughout.

Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me
I've not had the best of luck with Truffaut who aside from a few films has struck me as the consistently weakest of the new wave directors, but that went out the window with this film which is one of the funniest I've seen from France. Admittedly intellectually doesn't amount to much and goes on too long slipping into a dull von Sternberg pastiche which winds up as a misogynistic missing the point of those beautiful movies. All that is easily swept under the carpet though with just how cartoonishly Truffaut ratchets everything higher and higher until it becomes a living Tex Avery film. Lafont really holds the film together making the otherwise weak attempts of ethos work completely and fully and the comedy have a dangerous sort of edge which makes it even funnier.

Strongman Ferdinand
At first this was rather off putting for me as this is nothing like any of the other forty or so Kluge films I've ever seen. At least on its surface it is so ordinary. When I left my expectation of what a Kluge film should constitute though this really did come across as one of Kluge's best efforts with the humour being so unusually subtle and the cinematography being shockingly bright and compelling. Even just the color of some things like a green car becomes a marvelous joke. I did feel a little lost on the satire which feels like it is referencing some very specific things to West Germany's then recent history, but the larger points regarding protectors and faith in a system are clear no matter what and very stimulating.

The House of Seven Corpses
This was a shockingly good film. Not a masterpiece per say, but as a self aware excuse to see old actors slumming excellently its sublime. The horror element isn't even really brought up until the last ten minutes of the film and maybe features in three of those minutes. Instead it's an old person's Day and Night with John Ireland and Faith Domergue doing some melodrama with their old relationship very well. It even gets touching at some points with Domergue's facial expressions being genuinely pained.

[domino harvey]

the Police Connection AKA the Mad Bomber (Bert I Gordon 1973) One of the better French Connection-inspired cop flicks of the decade, this grindhouse-y bit of bad taste alternates between the criminal element and our alleged protagonist, a dull cop with no defining characteristics beyond what i just wrote (and that he looks exactly like Mark Ruffalo) on the hunt for a rapist, but only because the rapist can identify a mad bomber who's been plaguing the city. There's something so callously deviant about the cop's attitude towards the rapist's crimes that hits the right note of tasteless excess for the subgenre. And along those lines, the film also features a surreal sequence wherein the LA police squadron carries out a citywide sting in which the only thing needed to incite rape from random males is the sight a comely young woman alone-- removed from the rest of the film, it'd be easy to hold up as a savage satire of masculinity. It's surrounded by plenty of gratuitous scenes of nudity, much of it rape assisted, though, so it's a bit of a wash in the end. The real reason to watch, however, is of course the mad bomber himself, expertly portrayed by Chuck Connors as a pre-Falling Down everyman vigilante, enacting small acts of assertion like demanding a litterbug pick up his trash or taking the keys from a honking motorist and tossing them into a USPS mailbox. Connors plays the scenes with such unsettling unease that I wish the film had forgone all of the unrelated bombing aspects and just followed him around as he enacts surly acts of petty justice. A cut and censored version of this one's in the public domain but Code Red just released a great definitive DVD of this title a couple months ago

[zedz]

Strongman Ferdinand
At first this was rather off putting for me as this is nothing like any of the other forty or so Kluge films I've ever seen. At least on its surface it is so ordinary. When I left my expectation of what a Kluge film should constitute though this really did come across as one of Kluge's best efforts with the humour being so unusually subtle and the cinematography being shockingly bright and compelling. Even just the color of some things like a green car becomes a marvelous joke. I did feel a little lost on the satire which feels like it is referencing some very specific things to West Germany's then recent history, but the larger points regarding protectors and faith in a system are clear no matter what and very stimulating.

This would probably be my top Kluge pick for the 70s (with Occasional Work of a Female Slave right behind), but you're right: it is disconcertingly straight when you come to it after something like The Big Mess or his kaleidoscopic later features. However, his characteristically tough analysis of societal norms and the very devious satire of the whole thing provides a wonderful backbone. And it shows just how well Kluge could make a regular, commercial film (not that this is one, especially) if he ever cared to do so. We should count our blessings that he never did.

[knives]

Yes, if nothing else it shows Kluge as a versatile nut. At the same I'm glad this is the most usual work of his I've seen, because even within it my favorite parts where when two characters talked to each other over seemingly inane things like with the ending and when they're in that lab or whatever it was plotting.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

I had a free Amazon prime membership expire today and decided to go a little crazy with some free exploitation titles.

Au Pair Girls (Val Guest, 1972): My friend Gary hated this one, but let's just say that I found its charms to be, uh, more charming than he did. This sex dramedy from swinging London features a quartet of young foreign au pairs who all happen to be frequently nude gorgeous nubile women. Two of the stories are comedies, while the two others take a more serious approach to sex (one in which the woman falls in love with her teenage charge, the second where a virgin's first time is complicated by his free-spirited approach to sex and her desire for a relationship). Of course there's nothing heady or particularly new about the film, but I did enjoy its unpretentious view of sex. While it certainly was not pornography, it was also a long way off from art. It was a fun time if you're just looking for entertainment that evokes a particular time in London's history that's now sadly long gone.

Gas Pump Girls (Joel Bender, 1979): In this film, which as clearly the progenitor to 90's Cinemax fare like The Bikini Carwash Company, Friday the 13th Part 2's Kristin Baker plays June, a recent high school graduate who decides to turn her beloved uncle's failing gas station into a sexy full service station manned by her and her scantily clad friends in a last ditch attempt to save it from having to shut down. At the beginning of the film one of her male "friends" rigs her graduation gown (as well as three of her friends: named, January April, and...Betty) to rip open and expose their nude breasts (who knew that the women were nude underneath?! Oh wait, they're not?) underneath. After that, the virginal June discovers that she has an exhibitionist streak and spends the rest of the film getting topless at random moments with her friends. This proves to be a winning formula for her uncle's business but soon attracts the attention of her unscrupulous competitors that want to shut her down. Even though this was my first time viewing it, I couldn't help but feel as though I saw this a dozen times already as an early teen late at night. It was occasionally fun, but there's not much to recommend here. I did, however, enjoy seeing Car 54, Where Are You? star Joe E. Ross in a brief cameo as a thug doing his famous "ooh, ooh!" line.

I Am Frigid...Why? (Max Pécas, 1972): My wife and I used to joke about renting this on VHS when we were undergrads to answer the challenge of the film's tagline "See how she melts". We never did it, and now that I've finally seen it, I think that we made a wise choice. The film, which is the epitome of failed Euro attempts to meld erotica with the arthouse, tells the tale of Doris, a young woman develops an aversion to sex after being raped by a pair of male/female siblings. She goes through numerous adventures where she often finds herself being sexually assaulted by those around her. Of course, in the end she finds the right man to "melt" her and do away with all of the traumas of her rapes after her psychologist reveals that she really wanted it the whole time. Horrible! While the film is a real stinker, it is worth watching or the subplot about the groovy stage production of the life of the Marquis de Sade.

If You Don't Stop It, You'll Go Blind (Keefe Brasselle and I. Robert Levy, 1975): Revolving around the paper thin notion of deciding the winners for "The Sex Awards", the film concerns a group of judges who watch a series of vignettes acting out blue jokes. Some are a few minutes long, while other clock in at about twenty seconds or so. A few are funny, but the hit to miss ratio is fairly low. There's also a few rape jokes in the film that are not only tasteless, but extremely offensive. If you're in the mood for cheap potty humor, then watching it for free on prime might a decent option. I can't envision ever paying money for something like this.

Keyholes are For Peeping (Doris Wishman, 1972): I really enjoy the innocent early "nudie cuties" of Doris Wishman like Diary of a Nudist. This was the first film that I've seen by her from this period, and I have to say that her focus on sex after marriage and voyeurism didn't work nearly as well for me. Like all of her films, it looks like it was filmed on a hundred dollar budget, but lacks the well, uh, innocent charms of her early career which was always about nudism. The film stars Sammy Petrillo (who looks like what would happen if a mad scientist found a way to make Mick Jagger and Buster Poindexter have a baby) as a man who one day decides to become a marriage councilor for the tenants of his apartment building. Of course, he's horrible at it and screws things up for everyone. None of the jokes were funny, including the repeated painful use of the slide whistle as Petrillo's character pulls his pants on and off as he goes back and forth thinking that he will/won't be having sex. I'm sad to say it, but there's absolutely nothing to recommend here.

Lady Frankenstein (Mel Welles, 1971): Is there any actor from classic Hollywood with a more varied career than Joseph Cotton? Here he's at a career nadir, appearing as Dr. Victor Frankenstein in the film's first act. He sticks around long enough to reanimate a killer, before being done in by his own creation. His daughter, who has just finished her training as a surgeon, take up his research and soon begins to show a blood lust the worries her father's former helper (who also happens to be madly in love with her). The Frankenstein monster goes on a killing spree around town and somehow has a knack for stumbling upon nude women and couples engaged in coitus. Lady Frankenstein is less interested in stopping him than she is in using the monster to vindicate her father's name (and also getting nude herself). While the film never reaches the same heights as some of Hammer's contemporaneous work, it's not without its charms.

Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine (Sergio Grieco, 1974): Lucita has been sent to live a cloistered in a convent by her parents who wish to keep her from marrying Esteban, a young man who they do not meet their approval. However, they don't know what a terrible choice they made, since the convent's abbess is an insane murder/sexual deviant. Her activities soon draw the attention of the region's inquisitor and he finds that the convent has become a den of Satan's. The nuns go wild (and yet again, starkers) in their shared madness only to be walled in by order of the corrupt inquisitor. Can Esteban save them? Watching this Italian nunsploitation film, I couldn't help but be reminded of Ken Russell's The Devils, a film that hits on most of the same notes but only better. That's not to say that this is a bad film; I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. However, it's not exactly high art.

Superchick (Ed Forsyth, 1973): Who could pass up a film named Superchick? Sadly, this exploitation flick fails to live up to the sheer awesomeness of its name, but more on that later. Joyce Jillson plays the titular character, an airline stewardess who maintains four different boyfriends: one at of her frequent stops. When one of the boyfriends gets in trouble with a mafia loan shark, Tara B. True/Superchick (seriously, those are her names in the film) uses her martial arts prowess to fight off gun runners and hijackers that appear aboard her plane. While this movie contains just about everything you could want out of 70s exploitation flick (sex, drugs, rock n' roll, and karate chops--and lots of them), it never gelled for me. Interesting fact about the film's star: looking up Miss Jillson on the imdb, I see that she quit acting to become an astrologer. In fact, she was the official astrologer for both the film Star Wars and then president Ronald Reagan!

[colinr0380]

I Am Frigid...Why? (Max Pécas, 1972): My wife and I used to joke about renting this on VHS when we were undergrads to answer the challenge of the film's tagline "See how she melts". We never did it, and now that I've finally seen it, I think that we made a wise choice. The film, which is the epitome of failed Euro attempts to meld erotica with the arthouse, tells the tale of Doris, a young woman develops an aversion to sex after being raped by a pair of male/female siblings. She goes through numerous adventures where she often finds herself being sexually assaulted by those around her. Of course, in the end she finds the right man to "melt" her and do away with all of the traumas of her rapes after her psychologist reveals that she really wanted it the whole time. Horrible! While the film is a real stinker, it is worth watching or the subplot about the groovy stage production of the life of the Marquis de Sade.

It does have that immortal line though "Let's say that I am as stupid as you think I am!"

Here's the very entertaining Eurotika episode about Max Pecas, in which he talks sadly about the failure of I Am Frigid...Why?, the follow up to his huge success I Am A Nymphomaniac, attributing the sequel's failure as being related to the "Frigid" title fatally suggesting a lack of sexual antics!

[bamwc2]

John Carpenter

Dark Star (1974) (RA BD VCI Entertainment)
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) (RA BD Image)
Halloween (1978) (RA BD Anchor Bay)
Someone's Watching Me! (1978) (R1 Warner Brothers)
Elvis (1979) (R1 Shout! Factory)

John Carpenter, one of the decade's biggest breakout stars, began the 70s on a quiet note. Having released a number of short films in the 1960s, he was unheard of for the decade's first four years. However, in 1974 he and co-writer Dan O'Bannon would release Dark Star, a hit and miss sci-fi comedy about a group of men aboard an intergalactic destroyer. As I noted in my previous review, I'm on the fence about this one. The film's amateurish vibe/acting can be both simultaneously charming/frustrating. Additionally, the film strives to be funny, but more often than not the jokes fall flat. It's an interesting little flick, but probably Carpenter's least essential film from the era.

He would then come back two years later firing on all cylinders, with his great genre film Assault on Precinct 13. The film concerns a motley crew of policemen and death row inmates that band together to defend an isolated police precinct under attack from a group of psychopathic street thugs bent on murdering them all. This highly stylized flick runs on pure adrenaline, and uses both a smart script and well crafted characters to create some real tension throughout. From here Carpenter would team up with producer/co-writer Debra Hill to make the best film of his career, Halloween. The film, which is streets ahead of the countless slasher films that it influenced, stars Jamie Lee Curtis as a teenage sister of escaped sociopath Michael Myers who must somehow escape his night of terror. The character of Michael Myers embodies remorseless evil through his silent killings better than any horror character that I've ever seen. For those of you who haven't seen it, this is a work of pure genius.

Carpenter would then finish the decade by making a pair of made for television films. The first, Someone's Watching Me!, shifts the terror from the vaguely preternatural Myers to an all too real, though unseen, human. Supermodel Lauren Hutton stars as a television producer who is menaced by a series of increasingly disturbing phone calls, gifts, and letters after relocating to New York. The film builds up with an appropriate level of creepiness before descending into full blown horror when the killing starts. Indeed, it may well be the best in a series of strong psychological horror films throughout the decade. In retrospect his final film of the decade, Elvis sticks out like a sore thumb (and not just because it's the first time that Carpenter made a film using someone else's screenplay). The film, made just after the singer's untimely demise, tells the story of Elvis Presley's life from birth through his 1968 comeback special on NBC. While the film is overly long and sometimes disjointed, it also features an extremely strong performance by star Kurt Russell, who broke out of his post-Disney rut and began a string of a starring roles (some of which will definitely be discussed in the forthcoming 80s thread). The film is a mess, but an enjoyable one thanks mainly to the strength of Russell's performance.

[bamwc2]

Larry Cohen

Bone (1972) (R0 Blue Underground)
Black Caesar (1973) (R1 MGM)
Hell Up in Harlem (1973) (R1 MGM)
It's Alive (1974) (1974) (R1 Triple Pack from Warner Brothers)
God Told Me To (1976) (R1 Blue Underground)
The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977) (R1 DVD-R MGM)
It Lives Again (1978) (R1 Triple Pack from Warner Brothers)

Though the quality of his directorial efforts dropped before completely petering out in the mid-90s, Larry Cohen was one of the great genre filmmakers of the 1970s. He came on to the scene with the thunderous debut Bone in 1972. With the title role played by the great Yaphet Kotto as a sociopathic thief/rapist/murderer, Bone is a menacing force that violently enters the lives of an uptight & unhappy white couple in Beverly Hills. Nothing goes as expected and soon the audience has no idea of who will be on who's side. Not only is the film funny as hell (despite a few very un-PC jokes), but it also speaks intelligently about race and class in LA. Quite simply it is a masterpiece! From there Cohen went on to make a blaxsploitation classic in the form of Black Caesar. Former football all-star Fred Williamson stars as a young man who rebels against the racist power structure in New York by taking out corrupt cops and the white mafiosi that run the drug trade. This ultra violent flick masks a classic morality tale about allowing the end to justify the means. Despite the seeming finality of the film's ending, the popularity of Black Caesar resulted in Cohen quickly making the follow up Hell Up in Harlem. The story of Tommy Gibbs wears a little thin in this sequel, but Cohen finds enough of a new direction to take the characters in so as to justify their continued presence. Like the original, Hell Up in Harlem tells a violent story, but it comes with the territory of kingpin, I suppose. Williamson gives it his all in both films and comes off looking like a movie star.

Cohen also tried his hand at horror this decade with mixed results. In both It's Alive and its sequel It Lives Again, pregnant women randomly begin to give birth to violent mutant babies that come out of the delivery room ready to kick some ass. Unfortunately, neither film is the least bit frightening. Instead most of the chills are schlocky reaction shots of the "terrified" cast. Nothing in either film worked for me. God Told Me To, on the other hand, is nothing less than a masterpiece. Starring Tony Lo Bianco as a police detective, the film revolves around a series of homicides with the suspects telling the police "God told me to". The film's creepy atmosphere shifts from a police procedural thriller into sci-fi horror of the highest order.

The odd man out of Cohen oeuvre in this decade has got to be the outstanding The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover. His film is less a straight biopic of the former FBI director than it is a psychoanalytic deconstruction of the nation's top cop over four decades. Broderick Crawford does an outstanding job in the titular role, expertly bringing to both the determination and imbalance that marked Hoover's tenure at the bureau. It's a true shame that this film has been consigned to DVD-R hell. Actually, despite the decent discs from Blue Underground, the home video releases of his work from this decade could really use some updating. There's already a blu-ray of Q: The Winged Serpent (one of his weaker films) on the way, so why not some of his 70s output too?

[colinr0380]

Sylvia Sidney certainly had some strange roles in the latter days of her career: the grandmother in Mars Attacks!, Damien: Omen II, and getting the 'explanatory' flashback in God Told Me To where she gets abducted by aliens and impregnated with the Messiah!

Don't forget Andy Kaufman's cameo in God Told Me To as a policeman going on a shooting spree during a 4th July parade! I've often thought that it was a shame that the Jim Carrey-starring Kaufman biopic did not try re-creating that scene!

EDIT: It is also amusing to compare the early scenes of God Told Me To, where various people act out being gunned down in the middle of a crowded street to the unfaked shock of innocent bystanders, to the similar sequence near the end of Bunuel's Phantom of Liberty from a couple of years earlier! I've occasionally wondered whether this sequence was inspired in any way by the Bunuel.

[knives]

Or mentioning Heart Beeps.