Nice to be back in the 70s. After working my way up to 2021, I now find myself in a movie era before cgi, before the internet, and before movie stars with chiseled abs. It was in some respects a more innocent time, when movies often featured characters driving drunk, and everyone smoked like there was no tomorrow.
This first entry for 1974 will be about pop culture; the second will list some news items from that year. I'll be following this format for the foreseeable future. At some point I'll probably return to 2021 and the movies I missed, but I'm in no hurry to do so.
The Top 10 Movies of 1974:
The Towering Inferno (love it), Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Earthquake (also love it), The Trial of Billy Jack, The Godfather Part II (classic), Airport 1975, The Longest Yard, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams and Murder on the Orient Express.
Popular Albums of 1974:
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John (great album), Greatest Hits - John Denver, Innervisions - Stevie Wonder (another great album), American Graffiti soundtrack, Imagination - Gladys Knight and the Pips, Behind Closed Doors - Charlie Rich, The Sting soundtrack, The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd, Bachman-Turner Overdrive II ("Takin' Care of Business") and Court and Spark - Joni Mitchell.
1974 Books Later Adapted Into Movies:
Carrie by Stephen King, Jaws by Peter Benchley, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre, All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein, Alive: the Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read, The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth, The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols, Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean, and A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan.
Major Sporting Events of 1974
The Miami Dolphins won the Superbowl, West Germany won the FIFA World Cup, the Oakland Athletics won the World Series, the Boston Celtics won the NBA Finals, Muhammad Ali regained the World Heavyweight title after defeating George Foreman in Zaire (a.k.a. "The Rumble in the Jungle."), Eddy Merckx of Belgium won the Tour de France, the Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup and Jimmy Connors won the Wimbledon championship.
Comic Books in 1974:
Marvel debuted their Giant-Size series, The Punisher appeared for the first time in Amazing Spider-Man #129, Marvel raised the cost of comic books from 20 cents to 25 cents, Wolverine made his first appearance in The Incredible Hulk #180, Arkham Asylum appeared for the first time in Batman #258 and the first chapter of Champion du monde (featuring Tintin) was published in France.
Excellent
1. All Fear Eats the Soul
Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed this story of an older widow who falls in love with a much younger man from another culture. Even given the fact that I'm jumping into the films of 1974 from the films of 2021, I never found this movie boring. It tells an interesting tale of love in the face of various forms of exclusion, be they sexual, racial or economic. Prior to this I'd only seen Veronika Voss and Querelle, both of which appeared toward the end of Fassbinder's career, and All Fear Eats the Soul has me curious about the director's earlier work.
It may be worth comparing Fassbinder's work, which is very theatrical and centered around the craft of acting, to Robert Bresson's work, which emphasizes cinematography and other storytelling conventions at the expense of individual performances. Fassbinder's "New German Cinema" or Bresson's "minimalism?" By comparing the ranking of this movie to the ranking of Lancelot du Lac (below), you'll know what camp I'm in, but even so I'm glad the two film makers inhabit the same time period. Between the two and the different types of stories they told there's a lot of room for exploration.
Un-Fun Fact: The star of this movie, El Hedi ben Salem, was seduced by the director in a gay bathhouse before filming. He was in reality a very violent man battling alcoholism, and he ended up hanging himself in a French prison after stabbing three people in Germany. The director dedicated his last film, Querelle, to Salem.
2. Arabian Nights
Pasolini's 1974 offering: stories within stories, spanning several continents and several cultures. It shares a frankness with the work of literature that inspired it, though in Pasolini's version there's more of an emphasis on sexuality, which at times veers into the explicit. If I were you I'd split it into two sittings. It seems straightforward, but there's a lot to absorb in the second half.
Fun Fact: This movie was filmed in Iran, Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Nepal. Star Ines Pelligrini, who was discovered by Pasolini, is half Italian and half Eritrean.
3. Pastoral Hide and Seek (a.k.a. Pastoral: To Die in the Country)
Wonderfully weird Japanese movie in which the director and his double explore their memories of life in rural Japan. Where a lot of impressionistic movies end up seeming somewhat random, the images built up in this film actually add up to something - even if that something is open to interpretation. Anyone who enjoys writers like Philip K. Dick or Borges will appreciate this movie's recursive elements.
Excellent? Or Exploitation?
1. The Night Porter
Critics at the time dismissed it as "Nazisploitation," whatever that's supposed to mean, but I think this movie has a surprising depth that they might have overlooked. The luminous Charlotte Rampling plays a concentration camp survivor, encountering a former tormentor in a Viennese hotel around the time of the Nuremberg Trials. The fruit of their meeting is both surprising and disturbing.
As a viewer you have to be brave enough to ask yourself, could someone in a concentration camp become sexually fixated on one of their Nazi overseers? Was a combination of sadomasochism and Stockholm syndrome possible? I think that yes, it was, and even though the implications of that possibility are disturbing I don't think the film uses them inappropriately, or otherwise paints a false picture of what happens to the characters in this movie. There was a spectrum of people sent to the camps, and certainly some of them suffered from various mental illnesses, either directly related to or predating their experiences at the hands of the Nazis.
Add to this the time in which this movie was released. It was the early 70s, "self-help" was becoming more and more of a thing, and many people, rather than working through their various neuroses, were actually feeding into them.
For me the definition of "Excellent" in this context is whether or not I'll be thinking about a movie later on, and whether or not I'll remember it and compare future films to it. In the case of The Night Porter the answer is definitely yes. Will I watch it again? Probably not, but I'd rank it alongside movies like Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Sophie's Choice or Come and See as WWII-related films that had me reflecting on their content long after I'd seen them.
Further Viewing: Many of director Liliana Cavani's other films sound fascinating. She came up with Bertolucci and Pasolini (director of Salo and Arabian Nights), and even though she never received the same level of acclaim one gets the impression that her movies have a lot of depth.
Some Good Ones
1. The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires
The biggest loser in this movie is the Chinese expedition leader. That Swedish countess was ready to get LAID, and you can tell she would have been the fuck of a lifetime.
Aside from that, this Hammer Films/Shaw Brothers co-production (!) is a helluva lot of fun, and whether you're on the "so good it's good" or "so bad it's good" train matters not. Dracula somehow morphs into a Chinese warlord (!), various pairs of boobies are exposed, and martial arts predominate. It's a movie that wants to cash in on the horror film craze and the kung fu craze at the same time, and in terms of crass movie capitalism it succeeds brilliantly.
This movie did make me a bit sad about Hong Kong though. The British once had this wonderful, Asian back yard in which to do things like this, and now Hong Kong is in the bosom of boring, communist China. The Hong Kong film industry really was a kind of miracle. Too bad it's not longer with us.
And R.I.P. Peter Cushing. He had a face that was made for the camera.
Fun Fact 1: Julie Ege, like Christina Lindberg (below) was also a Penthouse Pet.
Fun Fact 2: A sequel, "Devil Bride of Dracula," would have been filmed in India. Unfortunately this movie was a financial failure and the sequel never happened.
2. The Marseille Contract
Anthony Quinn stars as a DEA agent in Paris, with Michael Caine as a hired killer pursuing a drug dealer. It's not The French Connection by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still a serviceable thriller even if the ending is weak. I have no idea what the DEA would be doing in France. Interpol maybe?
3. Lancelot du Lac (a.k.a. "Lancelot of the Lake")
I recently finished T.H. White's The Once and Future King series, and while I have to say that version of the Knights of the Round Table does more with the source material, Lancelot du Lac offers enough of a spin on the King Arthur mythos to keep things interesting. Robert Bresson directed this surprisingly violent film, and while I'm not in a hurry to see his other movies I have to say this movie has me intrigued.
4. The Great Gatsby
The middle section puts the "M" in melodramatic, but the performances are solid and Bruce Dern steals every scene he's in. Robert Redford stars as the mysterious man about town, with Mia Farrow as his ladylove and Sam Waterston as the one who brings them together. Francis Ford Coppola wrote the script, and even though Jack Clayton's direction wallows in the love triangle aspect it's an obviously lavish production intended to put the story in the best possible light.
Fun Fact: If you look real close you can see Brooke Adams at the party. This was her second movie.
5. The Year Without Santa Claus
Santa Claus gets tired and decides to skip Christmas. It's very primitive work of stop motion animation from Rankin/Bass, and only an hour long to boot. I'm old enough to have had trouble focusing on it, but I'm sure most young children loved it at the time.
6. Swallows and Amazons
Kid's movie in which several British children play on and around an island. In 2022 what kind of parents would leave their children unsupervised for that long? And what might the consequences of doing so be? I know not, but once upon a time I had my own childish adventures, and this movie brought some of them back to me.
Pseudoporn
1. Flesh Gordon
It's actually quite endearing. The cheap sets, the bad acting, the nonsensical story - it all works. Hats off to anyone who managed to jerk off to this back in the 70s. That would have taken both willpower and a lot of imagination. In Flesh Gordon the planet Porno sends a sex ray our way, and Flesh Gordon, alongside Dr. Jerkoff and Dale Ardor, heads to that planet to confront the evil Emperor Wang.
Not Stoned Enough?
1. The Island at the Top of the World
Before Disney was a media conglomerate, whose marketing strategy decided the fate of nations, they were making weird movies like this one, in which dudes were riding zeppelins to the north pole and discovering Viking settlements. While watching it I often regretted the fact that I hadn't fired up a bowl beforehand. This movie would've been twice as good if I had.
Fun Fact 1: John Whedon, who wrote the screeenplay, was Joss Whedon's grandfather.
Fun Fact 2: Mako is in this. He plays an eskimo.
Fun Fact 3: British director Robert Stevenson had a very successful run of films at Disney. He also directed Old Yeller, The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, Mary Poppins and The Love Bug.
Cheesy Fun
1. Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter
Caroline Munro... it was only a matter of time before she'd be a Bond girl. Who else could make Barbara Bach look average?
And speaking of Hammer Films, this one's more in line with what they were known for. Creepy movies produced on the cheap, often done with a nod and a wink at the audience. The title explains most of the plot, which aside from the European setting isn't all that different from The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires above. It was supposed to be the first in a series, but an R rating and a lukewarm response put an end to those plans.
2. It's Alive
"Hunting and killing babies doesn't seem to be my specialty." Really, Detective? Ya think?
This movie does three things right though: 1) The way it sets up its premise, with the wide angle lens roving through the hospital hallways. This lends a sense of surrealism that makes the whole thing work. 2) Star John Ryan, who sells the fuck out of a ludicrous concept. 3) The fact that they never show the baby in its entirety, which adds a sense of menace to the proceedings.
Further Viewing: Director Larry Cohen contributed a lot to 70s and 80s horror cinema. Other movies in his filmography include God Told Me To, Q, The Stuff, Maniac Cop and The Ambulance.
Firmly in the Realm of Exploitation
1. Thriller: A Cruel Picture
Swedish rape/revenge film along the lines of I Spit On Your Grave. The selling point of this movie seems to have been explicit sex and slow motion gunshots, and it's chock full of "what the fuck" moments from beginning to end. I watched the uncut version, and let me tell you that if you haven't seen it you're not missing anything. Some claim that this movie influenced Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, but I think Switchblade Sisters, which also features a monocular protagonist, is a more likely candidate.
Fun Fact: Star Christina Lindberg posed for both Playboy and Penthouse in the late 60s and early 70s. In June 1970 she was a Penthouse Pet. She also appeared in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Some Bad Ones
1. Dirty Mary Crazy Larry
I saw that ending coming from a walnut grove away.
For what it's worth, Peter Fonda and Adam Roarke star as two guys evading the law after robbing a supermarket, with Susan George thrown in as a woman Fonda's character picks up. Most of the dialogue in this movie is laughable - it's like they tried to cram in every "hip" expression they possibly could - and Susan George might be one of the worst actresses in the history of cinema.
2. Caged Heat (a.k.a. Renegade Girls)
Directed by Jonathan Demme! Everybody had to start somewhere I guess.
But this movie is actually quite boring. It's the most famous of the "women in prison" films, but as Roger Corman movies go there are more memorably bad examples. The star of this movie, Erica Gavin, was also featured in Vixen!, the first X-rated movie ever made. The best thing I can say about Caged Heat is that Gavin's costar Juanita Brown is very beautiful in it.
Porn
1. A Touch of Sex
A songwriter visits L.A. hoping to make it big. Unfortunately for him he sees phantom people having sex everywhere. Spoiler Alert: In the end he has sex with the phantom people.
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