For further background on the year in film, please refer to the Some Other Movies From 1972 entry.
- Kurt Waldheim became Secretary-General of the U.N.
- The first scientific hand-held calculator was introduced.
- Pakistan began its nuclear weapons program.
- Anti-British riots took place throughout Ireland.
- The Winter Olympics were held in Sapporo, Japan.
- President Nixon visited China for 8 days, ushering in a new era of U.S.-China relations.
- The U.S. military resumed bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong in Vietnam.
- Okinawa was returned to Japan after 27 years of U.S. military occupation.
- The Watergate scandal began with the arrest of five White House operatives outside the offices of the Democratic National Committee.
- Idi Amin declared that he would expel 50,000 Asians from Uganda.
- China and Japan normalized relations.
- The arcade version of Pong was released.
Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.
Excellent
1. The Other
A boy living in rural isolation harbors a sinister secret. Viewers watching this in 2022 - provided they've seen enough horror movies - will see the plot twist coming from miles away, but that doesn't make this film any less creepy. I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone, but if you watch carefully there are many symbols/clues strewn throughout the movie. Many of these symbols/clues add another dimension to the plot.
Fun Fact: John Ritter is in this.
2. Across 110th Street
Yaphet Kotto and Anthony Quinn star in this rock solid crime thriller centered around money stolen from the Mafia. And if I've learned anything from movies like this, it's that you don't steal money from organized crime. They will come and find you. They will make your life unhappy.
The director knew what he was doing, the acting is on point, and the soundtrack seals the deal. Even the most loathsome character in this film is at least somewhat sympathetic, and the scenes are staged in the most economical manner possible. This is the kind of movie Quentin Tarantino's been trying to (re)make since the start of his career.
Critics at the time were almost universal in their hate for this movie, but it does score high on sites such as Rotten Tomatoes. For my part I think the critics of 1972 just weren't ready for it. Yes, it's similar in some ways to TV cop shows of the time, but compare this to the kind of movies that Tarantino and Scorsese have been praised for, and its prescience becomes obvious.
Fun Fact 1: Burt Young (Paulie in the Rocky movies) is in this for a second.
Fun Fact 2: Director Barry Shear, who came to this movie from a career in television, also directed the cult classic Wild in the Streets.
Fun Fact 3: Yaphet Kotto would appear opposite Roger Moore in Live and Let Die the following year. Even though his father was from Cameroon he was somehow also raised Jewish. To complicate the man even further, he was a vocal supporter of Donald Trump. He also died in the Philippines last year under mysterious circumstances.
Fun Fact 4: Anthony Quinn, who served as producer, only took the role after Kirk Douglas and John Wayne (!) passed on it. He originally wanted Sidney Poitier for Yaphet Kotto's role, but the residents of Harlem protested that Poitier was "too Hollywood."
3. Frenzy
I didn't know Hitchcock was still making films as late as 72. You can see him in the crowd just before the first body is discovered.
In Frenzy a "sexual deviant" is assaulting and killing young women in London, and a man down on his luck is accused of the murders. It was lavishly filmed, and the scenes involving the chief inspector and his wife are great. As with many Hitchcock movies, it gets a bit too psychological for its own good, but its still a meticulously crafted movie full of wonderfully flawed characters.
4. Roma
Fellini's masterpiece, and also a consistently interesting movie. There's a lot to unpack in this one: fascism, the old vs. the new, the ancient vs. the modern, religion and even food. My favorite parts were the discovery of the frescoes and the ecclesiastical fashion show, but then again having favorite parts assumes that I grasped the entire movie, that I understood its various parts in relation to one another. I'd have to watch this movie again to appreciate it fully. As it is I feel that I have the outlines of what the director was trying to do, but there are definitely aspects that I missed.
Some Good Ones
1. Avanti!
A wealthy American travels to Italy to secure his father's body. Jack Lemmon stars, again under the direction of Billy Wilder, and yes, like The Front Page this movie was also adapted from a play. I liked Avanti! a lot more however. It feels less like a play, with the director adding plenty of exterior shots and dialogue that feels less forced. I also enjoyed the chemistry Lemmon shares with costar Juliet Mills.
This movie got me thinking about one of my favorite 70s films, 1973's Save the Tiger, which also featured Lemmon. I think that Save the Tiger, a far more naturalistic movie, was probably more of a stretch for the actor, given his history in movies like Avanti! and The Front Page. Movies like Avanti! are definitely worth a look, but it's obvious why his performance in Save the Tiger earned him an Oscar in 1974.
2. The Heartbreak Kid
The Heartbreak Kid, The Goodbye Girl... I'm sensing a theme here. I've never been a huge Neil Simon fan, but this is definitely my favorite of his screenplays. Charles Grodin stars as an insincere man who gets exactly what he wants, with Cybill Shepard as a younger woman who falls into his desperate orbit. It's a little longer than it needs to be, but director Elaine May adds a lot of nuance to this story of "love" lost and found again.
Is it still funny though? No, not really, but it's still very good.
3. The Cowboys
John Wayne leads a group of young boys on a cattle drive. There are dozens of John Wayne movies I haven't seen, but this one is my favorite so far. The Shootist was good, but this one is even better. I especially liked Roscoe Lee Brown, who plays the cook.
Fun Fact: One of those boys look familiar? That's Robert Carradine, brother of David and Keith. He'd go on to play Lewis Skolnik in Revenge of the Nerds. The Cowboys was his first movie.
4. The Mechanic
Charles Bronson stars as an assassin, with Jan-Michael Vincent as his protege. I wasn't buying the twist at the end (Bronson knew all along, right?) and it spends a bit too much time on Jan-Michael Vincent's character, but other than that it's a solid movie with a lot of atmosphere. Certain scenes, in particular the party and the suicide attempt, feel like they belong to the previous decade. Director Michael Winner also oversaw the first three Death Wish movies.
I haven't seen the 2011 remake, which features Jason Statham. I have the feeling the remake has little in common with the original.
Fun Fact: In the original script Bronson's and Vincent's characters were lovers.
5. The Getaway
Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw star in this Peckinpah-directed heist movie. Walter Hill wrote the script, so you know it's going to be a double dose of manliness. I liked it, but I have trouble with McQueen's character's reputation as some kind of mastermind. He always seems one step behind everybody else, rather than the opposite.
Fun Fact 1: This was almost a completely different movie. Peter Bogdanovich was originally hired to direct, with author Jim Thompson on board to write the screenplay. Unfortunately (?) McQueen and Bogdanovich didn't get along, and the result is The Getaway.
Fun Fact 2: In 1972 Ali MacGraw was voted the world's top box office star. Much of her popularity was due to 1970's Love Story, which was a massive hit. After The Getaway she took a five-year break from acting, reappearing with Kris Kristofferson in the not-nearly-as-good Convoy, which Sam Peckinpah also directed.
Good? Bad? No Idea.
1. Play It Again, Sam
Woody Allen. No thanks.
Some Bad Ones
1. The Harder They Come
Jimmy Cliff plays... Jimmy Cliff... to a point. I get the novelty of this movie - and I like a lot of those songs too - but it also features some truly bad acting and an extremely low budget. It's interesting to see Jamaica during that time, but I just barely made it through this one. It ends how you'd expect it to end, and its historic nature (it was the first Jamaican film ever, and introduced reggae to an international audience) doesn't make it any less derivative.
It has a high score on Rotten Tomatoes, but we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. A lot of the praise it receives seems condescending to me, as if no one expected better from those producing the film. Those who disagree might take a look at Touki Bouki, a Senegalese film released two years later. To me the difference in quality between the two films is obvious.
Tuesday Weld stars as a mentally unstable actress, with Anthony Perkins as her sexually ambiguous best friend. I'm guessing it worked better as a novel? The movie is by turns melodramatic and pretentious, topped off by an ending that falls extremely flat.
Yawn.
1. Solaris
I tried...
...but I was also warned beforehand. I watched Tarkovsky's Stalker not long ago, and like Stalker Solaris bored me to death. Film critics will call me crazy, but I'd take the Soderbergh version any day of the week. For the record, Stanislaw Lem's novel is one of my favorite books.
So Bad It's Good
You've seen The Thing, right? Or, going still further back, The Thing From Another World? OK, now imagine the "thing" from The Thing, but instead of shapeshifting and/or absorbing people it has telepathic powers. And it's stuck in the frozen body of an abominable snowman. And the frozen body of the abominable snowman is stuck on a train... with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
It makes about as much sense as you'd expect. By the time Telly Savalas shows up (as a Cossack!), you're either along for the ride or you've already disembarked at the last station.
Shock Tactics
1. The Last House on the Left
I recently watched a review in which the reviewer referred to The Gore Gore Girls as the only movie that "made him feel sleazy for watching it." The Last House on the Left is along the same lines. It's NOT a movie you should take seriously, but even so it does make you feel kind of dirty. It's the first movie Wes Craven directed, and you can tell he would have made it even more extreme if he'd been able.
Note Sean S. Cunningham in the opening credits. He'd go on to direct Friday the 13th in 1980, and he was involved in the production of John Carpenter's Halloween before that. Of the three directors I'd have to say that Wes Craven is the most overrated. He definitely had his finger on something, but in terms of craftsmanship I'd rank him below the other two.
Fun Fact 1: This movie started out as an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring.
Fun Fact 2: Sherriff's deputy Martin Kove look familiar? He also played the evil karate instructor in The Karate Kid.
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