The following things happened in 1971:
- The world population experienced its highest increase (in terms of percentage of previous population) in history.
- All in the Family aired for the first time on TV.
- The Aswan High Dam opened in Egypt.
- Charles Manson and 3 members of his "family" were found guilty of the Tate-LaBianca murders.
- The Nasdaq Composite stock market index debuted in the U.S.
- The Weather Underground claimed responsibility for the bombing of the United States Capitol.
- East Pakistan (now known as Bangladesh), Qatar, Oman and Bahrain declared independence.
- The My Lai Massacre took place in Vietnam.
- The first Starbucks opened in Seattle, Washington.
- Jim Morrison died.
- Gloria Steinem addressed the women of America.
- President Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system, which fixed the value of the dollar to a certain amount of gold.
- A riot occurred at Attica Prison in New York.
- Greenpeace was founded in Canada.
- The first microprocessor was released by Intel.
- The Khmer Rouge began their assault on Cambodian government positions.
Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.
Excellent
1. Wake in Fright
A schoolteacher on his way to Sydney is detained in the Outback. Wake in Fright is definitely not a film for animal lovers, but keep in mind that the scenes involving animal deaths were filmed separate from the movie itself, and involved local hunters. The director, Ted Kotcheff, would go on to do First Blood and Weekend at Bernie's in the 80s.
2. Two-Lane Blacktop
The Fast and the Furious: 1971 Edition. James Taylor (yes, that James Taylor!) and Dennis Wilson (of the Beach Boys!) star as two guys driving across American in a souped up car. And weirdly enough, the car racing that happens in-between conversations is beside the point. It's a movie that feels like it could have happened yesterday, and moreover a movie full of unorthodox choices.
Fun Fact: The director, Monte Hellman, was second unit director on the original Robocop.
3. Death in Venice
A very lonely, very closeted man journeys to Venice and falls in love. This Italian adaptation of Thomas Mann's novella manages to communicate all the melancholy and mortal terror present in the original story, while at the same time lavishly recreating the time period. The star, Dirk Bogarde, threw himself into the role.
4. Vanishing Point
A man in a white Challenger, armed with an envelope full of uppers, is on his way to San Francisco. It's a masterpiece of minimalistic storytelling, perhaps even more so than the above-mentioned Two-Lane Blacktop. These two movies would make a great double feature.
Fun Fact 1: The director wanted Gene Hackman for the lead role, but the studio insisted on relative unknown Barry Newman.
Fun Fact 2: The stunt coordinator also put together the car chase in The French Connection.
Fun Fact 3: Cleavon Little would go on to play a DJ a second time in 1978's far inferior FM. Three years after Vanishing Point he'd star in Blazing Saddles.
5. Harold and Maude
Long before Wes Anderson there was Hal Ashby, that oft-forgotten of 70s auteur directors. In Harold and Maude a morbid young man and a much older woman fall in love. It's a movie in which people react in a manner opposite to what's expected, and the ending will stay with you for a long time.
Haunting
1. Johnny Got His Gun
NOW THAT THE WAR IS THROUGH WITH ME
I'M WAKING UP I CANNOT SEE
THAT THERE'S NOT MUCH LEFT OF ME
NOTHING IS REAL BUT PAIN NOW
Man, I've been wanting to see this movie since 1988. In the late 80s I couldn't find a copy, life happened, and I thought about watching it off and on ever since. I'm happy to say that now I've finally seen it, and that in many ways this movie surpassed my expectations. Not only is this story of a maimed and mutilated war casualty more gruesome than the Metallica song it inspired, but it's also an exceptionally well put together film seething with anti-war sentiment. I'm only sorry it took me so long to finally make this movie's acquaintance.
Fun Fact 1: Dalton Trumbo wrote and directed this in collaboration with Luis Bunuel. It was based on Trumbo's novel of the same name.
Fun Fact 2: Metallica owns the rights to this film. They purchased these rights so that they could keep the video of One in rotation.
Fun Fact 3: This was Timothy Bottoms' first movie. He'd star in The Last Picture Show the same year, and two years after that he'd star in The Paper Chase.
Fun Fact 4: "The Swede" having a conversation with Jesus is actor David Soul, who'd go on to star in the TV show Starsky and Hutch.
2. The Devils
The second I saw director Ken Russell's name I expected quite a ride. I'm happy to say I wasn't disappointed.
The Devils is around two hours of religious and sexual hysteria. And Oliver Reed doesn't just star in this movie, he commands it. Is his Catholic priest a moral or immoral man? An enlightened or ignorant one? I suppose that depends entirely on whether you're viewing his actions through the morality of the past or the present, or his sentiments through the popular opinion of his time or ours. Whichever way you cut it, this is a movie full of brilliant sets, even better acting, and an ending that comes down like a hammer. Like Johnny Got His Gun it's not a happy film, but it's still very much worth seeing.
Fun Fact 1: This movie was partly adapted from a book by Aldous Huxley.
Fun Fact 2: This movie was rated X and banned in several countries upon its release.
Fun Fact 3: There's a documentary on the making of this movie. It's often referred to as "one of the most controversial films ever made."
Some Good Ones
1. Red Sun
I'd seen it before, but it was good to see it again.
Charles Bronson stars as a morally ambiguous bank robber, with the great Toshiro Mifune as a samurai on his way to Washington D.C. to deliver a sword. It's a very concise Western, the characters are well drawn and the plot is the direct product of personal conflicts laid out within the script.
Fun Fact 1: This movie wasn't just a hit in Japan because of Toshiro Mifune. Charles Bronson was also well known in Japan by that time. He'd appeared in The Magnificent Seven not long before, which was based on The Seven Samurai, starring Toshiro Mifune.
Fun Fact 2: Ursula Andress, arguably the first Bond girl, is in this film, but that's not the only 007 connection. The director, Terence Young, also helmed Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Thunderball.
2. Get Carter
Michael Caine puts it on a slow boil as a London gangster looking to avenge his brother's death. Caine was in his share of bad 70s films, but this isn't one of them. If the name sounds familiar, it's because there was a 2000 remake with Sylvester Stallone in the lead.
Fun Fact 1: The director, Mike Hodges, would go on to helm Flash Gordon in 1980.
Fun Fact 2: The 1972 blaxploitation film Hit Man, which starred Bernie Casey, was based on the same novel.
3. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
I know this movie has its champions but I found it a little boring. It takes FOREVER for the kids to get to the chocolate factory, and by the time they do Willy Wonka interrupts what might have been fun little scenes with a lot of talking. I'd take Tim Burton's remake any day of the week.
By no means is the original bad, but I think Burton's Wonka-by-way-of-Bowie worked a lot better.
4. Daughters of Darkness
A stylish exercise in erotic horror, even though the deaths that occur in the course of the film are very improbable. The director, Harry Kumel, didn't do many films, but some of what he did sounds interesting.
5. Shaft
A Harlem crime boss hires hard boiled detective John Shaft to find his kidnapped daughter. Shaft is, like Super Fly and Foxy Brown, one of the pillars of the blaxploitation genre, and certainly its most popular film. It's far from flawless, but it's definitely entertaining and it's aged very well.
Good? Bad? Not Sure...
1. Duck, You Sucker! (a.k.a. A Fistful of Dynamite or Once Upon a Time... the Revolution)
Rod Steiger and James Coburn enter the sweaty, dusty world of Sergio Leone. You can tell the director was swinging for the cheap seats here, perhaps even attempting the Western to end all Westerns, but the results are decidedly mixed. On the one hand this movie features excellent performances by the two leads, on the other it goes on way too long. Ending it just after the massacre in the cave would have resulted in a movie that made a more lasting impression. As it is there's a whole other part after the massacre, which to me felt like little more than the scriptwriter checking off all the remaining boxes. Traitor? Dead. President? Dead. Evil general? Dead. And I'm not even spoiling the plot by listing those deaths. After a certain point those deaths are a foregone conclusion.
Certain shots in this film are a wonder to behold. Unfortunately many of these shots look more like Spain, where this movie was shot, than like Mexico, where the story's supposed to be set.
Some Bad Ones
1. The Organization
A detective (Sidney Poitier) finds himself caught between an idealistic group of young people and a less idealistic group of drug smugglers. This movie isn't terrible; it's just too convoluted for its own good. The ending is also rather unsatisfying.
Fun Fact: Raul Julia is in this. The Organization was his third movie.
2. Please Sir!
The late 60s called and they want their movie back.
I was missing the humor in this film. The plot has something to do with a particularly difficult secondary school class going on an outdoor excursion. It was hugely popular in Britain at the time, being a spinoff of a popular TV show.
So Bad It's Good
1. The Big Boss (a.k.a. Fists of Fury)
You're in Thailand, you've got Bruce Lee on tap, a few pretty girls and around 100 Hong Kong dollars. Make a movie! Go!
How's the whole "drug smuggling via blocks of ice" scheme supposed to work, anyway? Wouldn't it be a lot of trouble to freeze the drugs inside the ice? Especially in Southeast Asia? And wouldn't the drugs be easily visible inside the ice? And it's not like drugs were that hard to transport through Thailand back then. Why not just pay the cops to look the other way?
Fun Fact 1: Don't get confused. The U.S. title of this film was FISTS of Fury, not to be confused with the 1972 sequel FIST of Fury. This movie was Lee's first as leading man.
Fun Fact 2: A lot of the prostitutes in the brothel scene were actual prostitutes. They filmed some of those scenes in a nearby brothel.
2. Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Had I the wherewithal, I'd compose a black metal album based on this movie. The last song would be called "Witch in the Sky," and it would be HEAVY AS FUCK.
I got myself pretty drunk while watching this Disney "classic." Angela "Murder, She Wrote" Lansbury stars as an apprentice witch, with a trio of Disney-mandated British street urchins under her wing. It's Mary Poppins, in other words, but not nearly as good.
The plot is also pretty random. Lansbury needs the words to a spell, and the words to the spell are in a book, or they might be on an island ruled by animals, or they might be in another book entirely. However we get there stuff ends up getting animated by sinister powers ("Asteroth" I think not, "Azathoth" it be...) and then the animated (as in the Latin animus) stuff kicks a bunch of Nazis the fuck off British soul. Rule Brittania, says I.
Or something. I'm not sure. Again, I was drunk.
Fun Fact 1: Angela Lansbury is STILL ALIVE. Really. At the time of writing she's 97 years old.
Fun Fact 2: This movie was shot using yellowscreen, not bluescreen. The yellowscreen process, also known as the sodium vapor process, involves the use of sodium vapor lights against a white background. The sodium vapor lights narrow the color spectrum to the point where the special effects can be added to the live action shots.
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