1970's Movies

[Jack Scorpion]

Shameless Plug.

I know the 70's isn't The Fedora Lounge's favorite decade, but it remains my favorite decade of film. I started a movie blog for only movies made in the 1970's. (I know, that is still a lot.)

Blog can be found here: It's Okay With Me

There are only 4 movies "reviewed" so far, but I hope to continue a twice-a-month frequency... as the bulk of movies I want to write about is endless.

So far I have written on:

Getting Straight
Alien
Farewell, My Lovely
Slap Shot

Upcoming:

Robin Hood (animated)
Chinatown

I ain't no professional, but I hope someone finds it entertaining.

Zach

 

[Sefton]

Jack, I'll check that out. The 1970s is a favorite decade for films for me also. Have you seen "The American Friend" directed by Wim Wenders and starring Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper? It's one of the best of the lot from the later part of the decade. Cheers!
Sefton

 

[5thprofession47]

When I think 1970's movies I think Enter The Dragon. Bruce Lee at his best!

 

[Sefton]

Yes, Bruce Lee has to be in any listing of 70s cinema. One thing about 1970s films that I love is the sheer variety. Blockbusters would of course dictate a predictable batch of copies (Exorcisms, Mafioso, Sharks, Sci-Fi, etc.) , but within these knock offs you'd often find some real gems that were sometimes more entertaining than the films that they ripped off. The Italians had an ability to make cinematic knock offs like nobodies business. It was also a decade filled with great Art and experimental films.

 

[Subvet642]

My favorite movies from the 70's have to be Paper Moon, The Godfather trilogy, and Nickelodeon.

 

[WH1]

The 1970's produced some of the strangest most bizarre movies of all time. Recently I watched "Day of the Locust", easily one of the most bizarre movies I have ever watched. Set in the 1930's in Hollywood starring Donald Sutherland as Homer Simpson. I about fell out of my seat when I heard him say the name. It also had one of the strangest endings I have seen, the script at times felt disjointed and a bit lost. I think my biggest problem with the movie was there was not a single character in the movie had a single redeeming quality.

 

[Nathan Dodge]

I will give the site a look--in fact, I'm now a "follower"! I'm another big 1970s movie lover. Recent obsession is with 1972's The Mechanic.

 

[Lincsong]

Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety hilarious films.

 

[KY Gentleman]

Some interesting '70's films you might enjoy: "Silent Partner" starring Elliot Gould, "Hardcore" starring George C. Scott, "The Boys of Company C" with Stan Shaw and Andrew Stevens.
I love '70's movies, too. I'll check out that site!

 

[SamMarlowPI]

Steve McQueen had a good run of films in the 70s...

the controversial The Getaway

the box-office smash, Towering Inferno

the huge bomb but car-buff favorite, Le Mans

my personal favorite, Papillon

and the rarely mentioned Junior Bonner...

 

[Nathan Dodge]

Some interesting '70's films you might enjoy: "Silent Partner" starring Elliot Gould, "Hardcore" starring George C. Scott, "The Boys of Company C" with Stan Shaw and Andrew Stevens.
I love '70's movies, too. I'll check out that site!

Silent Partner is a lost gem of a movie! I'll never see fishtanks the same after that...lol Nice Mid-Century Modern buildings in that, too.

 

[Pilgrim]

One of my favorites that hasn't been mentioned is the 1971 movie Valdez is Coming. It's an Elmore Leonard novel adapted for the screen. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067921/

It was a fun western, although I still cock one eyebrow quizically at the casting of Burt Lancaster as a Mexican-American constable. It wasn't as odd as John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conquerer, but it was still a bit hard to swallow.

Nonetheless, Lancaster did his typical superb job, and as the story unfolds we find that the calm, mild-mannered constable with tired and patient eyes, Bob Valdez, is an ex-cavalry soldier with a substantial arsenal that he's not afraid to use.

In VERY typical 70's fashion, it takes you to a showdown and then refuses to resolve the last moments of the event. That's about as 70's as you can get!

Not a great movie, but a nice example of the western as morality play, and although oddly cast, Burt Lancaster shines. If you like westerns, there's a good chance you haven't seen it - and I'll bet you enjoy it.

 

[SamMarlowPI]

although I still cock one eyebrow quizically at the casting of Burt Lancaster as a Mexican-American constable.

Charleton Heston, Touch Of Evil

-------------------------------------------------

i forgot to add Death Wish as a 70s classic...

 

[K.D. Lightner]

I enjoyed a lot of films in the 70's: Godfather I and II, arguably the best two films of all-time, plus the first Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Saturday Night Fever, Grease, those male "buddy" films. Also Five Easy Pieces, I Never Sang for my Father, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and many others.

My biggest problem with the 70's has to do with the image of women in the early years of that decade -- it was the era of prostitutes and throw-away girlfriends. Not the best time for good, strong women's roles. That finally began to change in the late 70's, thank goodness, but it did keep me away from attending a lot of movies at that time.

There were a lot of "black exploitation" films around, too, but there was also Sounder. What a great film that was! And two of the best films, ever, were TV Serials: Roots and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Try watching the latter without a box of kleenex.

karol

 

[Belegnole]

Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Little Big Man (1970)
M*A*S*H (1970)
Bananas (1971)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Dirty Harry (1971)
The Candidate (1972)
Deliverance (1972)
Play It Again, Sam (1972)
Solaris (1972, USSR)
Silent Running (1972)
American Graffiti (1973)
Serpico (1973)
The Sting (1973)
The Wicker Man (1973, UK)
Chinatown (1974)
The Parallax View (1974)
The Three Musketeers (1974)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Tommy (1975)
Marathon Man (1976)
Network (1976)
Robin and Marian (1976)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Eraserhead (1977)
Star Wars (1977)
Coma (1978)
National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
Alien (1979)
All That Jazz (1979)
Breaking Away (1979)
Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979, UK)
Star Trek - The Motion Picture (1979)


So I browsed through a list of 70s movies and these stood out for me.

 

[just_me]

Belegnole - I was amazed at our similar taste in films. I was reading down your list and saying, "yup, yup, yup..." and then I came to a screeching halt when you listed the movie I consider the worst movie ever made. I hated it, hated it, hated it and I can't remember ever saying that about another movie.

ERASERHEAD. Worst piece of dreck I've ever seen. Torture to sit through. Atrocious, awful, horrendous, dreadful, and that's just for starters. I wanted to bang my head against a wall and run screaming from the theatre. lol

 

[Atticus Finch]

Do you smell that? It's napalm, son. Nothing else on the world smells like that . I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Yes, I would have to say that the seventies produced the best film ever made.

AF

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Paper Moon" remains my favorite '70s film. I saw it when I was 10, and spent the rest of that summer wishing I too could travel thru the sticks in a '37 Ford swindling widows.

But my second favorite would have to be "Network," which remains one of the most trenchant media satires ever produced. And sad to say, just about everything it postulated has come true. Howard Beale, where are you now that we need you?

I worked in my uncle's drive-in theatre during the summer of 1977 -- my first behind-the-scenes involvement in exhibition, and got to see "Star Wars" as it *should* be seen: outdoors, on a fifty-foot-high screen. Best drive-in film ever made.

 

[Feraud]

Recent obsession is with 1972's The Mechanic.

What a flashback. I haven't seen this one since the late 70s. Bronson was the man.

 

[Sefton]

What a flashback. I haven't seen this one since the late 70s. Bronson was the man.

Yes, Bronson was the man and the 70s was his decade as a superstar. I enjoyed The Mechanic so much I bought the original U.S. and Japanese posters. They would look too odd hanging in my 1924 bungalow so for now they are in storage...

Here's another worthy Bronson film: Mr.Majestyk