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

[knives]

The Rookie is pretty fun in how stupid and crazy it is though.

[domino harvey]

A Labor of Love (Robert Flaxman and Daniel Goldman 1976) Fascinating cinema-verite doc capturing what happens when an aspiring indie filmmaker is instructed to add explicit sexual content to his film the Last Affair as a condition of financial backing. A cast of non-professionals who've never acted before, much less done porn, under the guidance of a director equal parts pretentious and clueless results in scene after scene of cringe-inducing folly. This is a sexually explicit film, but anyone who finds anything here remotely erotic needs their head examined, and it's a sobering look at what no doubt many other similar films of this era looked like behind the scenes. In a final irony, the card at the end of the film informs us that the filmmakers eventually cut all of the X-rated material out of the Last Affair. I haven't seen it, but Ebert's review is hilarious

One moment from A Labor of Love will be burned into my memory for some time. It's a sequence that borders on unwatchable-- the inexperienced director initially decides that he'll film the sex scenes like a documentary, so he lets his cast make up the dialog and figure things out for themselves. The result is an old man who identifies as the young starlet's father telling his daughter about how sexually appealing she is while groping her, disrobing her, and performing oral sex on her. The actor goes into a dark headspace over the course of just a couple minutes, and his dialog and the resulting paw fest tested my ability to sit through such unchecked perversity. Eventually the director finally yells at him, "Stop talking!" but where was he five minutes earlier?!

the California Kid (Richard T Heffron 1974) TV movie capitalizing on Martin Sheen's Badlands persona to further a stilted revenge plot of sorts against Vic Morrow's speed trap loving sheriff. Nick Nolte and Michelle Phillips are also on hand, and I guess having four relevant names in a TV movie was enough to get this a Blu-ray release. The pacing's slow, even for 70s TV, and the story's barely there and yet… there's something about this one I kinda liked. Something about the spaces in-between everything and the relative simplicity of the narrative made it work

Death Race 2000 (Paul Bartel 1975) This ham-fisted satire on sports and bloodlust from producer Roger Corman doesn't always utilize Bartel's greatest talents, but the director's droll archness does permeate enough to make it worth a watch. Essentially a bloody Wacky Racers, this one features a menagerie of Corman players depicting larger-than-life racers with suitably silly personas-- my favorite was the blonde-haired blue-eyed Nazi girl if just for how the film dances around any attempts to use this character for social commentary and relegates her to dopey "Heil" jokes, but there's something to be said for Sylvester Stallone's gangster driver, who's ensemble comes complete with pinstripes on his helmet. Neither tasteless enough or proper enough to justify its excesses, the film is left with not-quite fulfilled ambitions and little more

Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck 1973) Stylish but hollow horror film in the spirit of Let's Scare Jessica to Death, with the symbolic treatment of clashing cultures manifesting itself in an entire townspeople feeding off any unlucky interlopers like ravenous ghouls. This one was written/produced/directed by the screenwriters of American Graffiti but there's none of that film's well-observed humanism on display here. The film does feature some good mood set pieces and one wholly effective sequence at a movie theatre, but otherwise this wasn't worth the $$$ I invested in the Code Red release (the only place to get the film in its proper 'Scope format)

the Redeemer: Son of Satan! (AKA Class Reunion Massacre) (Constantine S Gochis 1978) Pre-Halloween proto-slasher that proves of little value except in how it is only distinguishable from later slashers due to a reliance on guns and other, non-slicey weapons and a lack of a surviving victim. These are, however, the only points of interest, and even then it's negligible. The same basic plot was recycled for Slaughter High, one of the worst of the 80s slashers-- and that's a competitive category!

[Tommaso]

For all those who are interested in the European and Japanese arthouse cinema of the decade, I would recommend that you also check out again the discussion for Vol.2 of this Lists Project, which has a lot of interesting posts in this respect. I'd just like to quote from one of them, on Shuji Terayama's Pastoral:To Die In The Country, which is the start of fine discussion on the film there:

Pastoral is officialy unavailable but can be found on bootlegs at various places (including supperhappyfun and allcluesnosolution) or online. It's in my opinion easily the best Japanese film of the decade, although I haven't seen the other three major contenders: Yoshida's Eros Plus Massacre and Oshima's The Ceremony, and from the sounds of it, The Man Who Left His Will On Film. It's a great example of the film as exorcism, with Terayama directly confronting his adolescence, and the film is an absolute masterpiece. It's pure Magical Realism, with a little bit of Brecht and Surrealism thrown in for good measure.

I watched this film last night, and have to say that I found it far less exciting or at least less original than I assumed I would. Of course the photography is astonishing, and I did like the disjointed, non-linear narrative, but it all seemed a little bit too 'clever' for me. The colour manipulations may indicate the 'colouring' of the memories the protagonist has of his childhood, but it was a device I began to tire of rather quickly. And then when in the middle of the film it seems to break down and we see the bits of empty film which bring us to the present I thought: "well, obviously the director has seen 'Persona', okay, yawn", and this feeling continued later on with the meeting of the protagonist's 'present' and 'youthful' self. Quite similar to, but far less engaging than what Yoshida did in "Eros + Massacre" five years earlier, and then of course the circus bits which have more than just a nod to Fellini. It all works reasonably well, but this feeling of 'We've seen that before' together with the artificiality - that didn't seem to go anywhere in particular - left me slightly frustrated. It may be visually striking, but "the best Japanese film of the decade"? I guess Cold Bishop has now seen the other three films he mentioned in that post from six years ago; each of them has indeed far more right to claim that title.

[Cold Bishop]

I indeed have. And you're right: those films will probably rank higher. I've cooled a bit on Terayama, although I'm still fond of him; I'd probably rate the short and succinct Grass Labyrinth higher (which is now a 70s film, thank you IMDb), which disregards the more Brechtian elements you seem to find tiring, and focuses straight on the poetic (although I find it even more Fellini-esque, as written in the above discussion). Considering the way my 60s list went, it may likely be the only one... if not miss the grade completely.

BTW: I can't be the only one who cringes when something I posted in the past is dug up. They always read like the ramblings of a naive, obnoxious blowhard (although the 80s list got the brunt of it... I did a little better by the Noir project).

[Tommaso]

Sorry, I didn't mean to embarass you, and I often feel the same way when I read such very old posts of mine. But I read the other thread and saw this as the beginning of a very nice discussion on Terayama there. I just couldn't share the big enthusiasm for this film (haven't seen anything else by the director yet).

[Cold Bishop]

Don't worry, man. That's my bag. A lot of effusive gushing, not enough words of substance. I should take it as a challenge to dig up those films, and to try writing something decent. Still haven't seen Throw Away Your Books..., and that may very well be the movie to beat.

[bamwc2]

I couldn't disagree with you more about Pastoral: To Die in the Country. I saw it for the first and only time about a year and a half ago and still consider it to be one of the most hauntingly poetic and visually dynamic films that I have ever seen. It's going to rank very high in my list, almost certainly in the top five. I'll need to rewatch it before I can give it a full throated defense. Unfortunately, I'm falling behind in my book with prepping my impending move/condo sale, so it may be awhile before I can get to that.

[zedz]

Everyone is going to talk about Battles Without Honor or Humanity, which kind of fizzles out as a series, but I feel his one-shots are probably his best work.

I agree with that: the films become more and more like episodes in a really nihilistic TV show as they progress, but I still think the first film, with its insane narrative compression and explosive near-incoherence, is brilliant. You feel like an animated diagram explaining the plot from moment to moment would be just as crazily kinetic as the actual film.

[Mr Sausage]

Anyone who followed the Horror Genre Project likely noticed that I compiled a uselessly large Giallo rundown. Anyway, in the interest of curiosity (and brevity), here is my list of the best non-Argento/Bava giallos from this decade. My thoughts on them can be found in the aforementioned Horror thread. I hope you guys'll check these films out. A star (*) denotes a particular favourite of mine.

All the Colours of the Dark (Sergio Martino, 1972)*
Autopsy (Armando Crispino, 1975)*
Death Walks at Midnight (Luciano Ercoli, 1972)
The Fifth Cord (Luigi Bazzoni, 1971)*
The Killer Must Kill Again (Luigi Cozzi, 1975)
Lizard in a Woman's Skin (Lucio Fulci, 1971)*
My Dear Killer (Tonino Valerii, 1972)*
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (Emilio Miraglia, 1971)
Le Orme aka Footprints (Luigi Bazzoni, 1975)*
The Perfume of the Lady in Black (Francesco Barilli, 1974)*
The Pyjama Girl Case (Flavio Mogherini, 1977)
Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye (Antonio Margheriti, 1973)
A Short Night of Glass Dolls (Aldo Lado, 1971)
Watch Me When I Kill (Antonio Bido, 1977)
Who Saw Her Die? (Aldo Lado, 1972)*

[bamwc2]

Mr. Sausage, thanks for recommendations. I've only seen three on that list (all for this project) including The Perfume of the Lady in Black just last night. I'll have a brief write up on it tomorrow.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (Francesco Barilli, 1974): Like Mr. Sausage said about the horror genre project, I'm having a great time discovering Giallos for this vote. Though incomplete, my knowledge of Argento and Bava is fairly strong so I've been focusing on some of the lesser known works of the period. So far my favorite is the suspenseful and terrifying Who Can Kill a Child?, but Barilli's The Perfume of the Lady in Black worked fairly well for me as well. This film centers on a trope familiar to the genre; a woman (played by Mimsy Farmer) begins experiencing violent and disturbing visions and the audience is left wondering if these are the hallucinations of a warped mind or something far more sinister. Although the film appeared to give a definitive answer to the question, the final scene casts everything into doubt. Despite the well tread nature of the film's plot, watching it is a fairly rewarding experience. Farmer does a great job in the lead and the psycho-sexual elements of her madness were reminiscent of the best parts of Hitchcock's Marnie. It's no masterpiece, but still a highly effective thriller.

Space is the Place (John Coney, 1974): Speaking of warped minds and descents into madness... Freestyle jazz musician Sun Ra co-wrote and starred as himself in this in this Afrocentric sci-fi musical. Although I'd heard of Sun Ra prior to this, I had not listened to any of his music before viewing the movie. The songs are great and the plot bizarrely charming (though it does have some problematic elements that I'll get to soon enough) with Sun Ra returning to Earth several years after disappearing from a European tour. He's here to liberate all African-Americans from the yoke of white repression by taking them to start their own civilization on another planet (and destroy the Earth and all those that don't come with him in the process). His plan is complicated by the evil Overseer, a black man who exploits his race through pimping and other immoral activities. This was a very enjoyable movie, though some of the reverse racism (an extremely common theme in blacksploitation of its day) was a bit troubling. Even worse, the film was deeply misogynistic in its treatment of women. The female cast members with the highest visibility were frequently nude and unnamed prostitutes that worked for The Overseer. However, their sexual exploitation can be read as another element of the The Overseer's sins against his own race (despite the fact that they're a multiracial bunch), so too with the vicious beating that the white NASA agents give the prostitutes. It's nasty and hard to watch, but the rest of the film is fairly charming. Seeing the eccentric Sun Ra dispense strange koans while dressed as an Egyptian god is worth the price of admission alone. I also couldn't help but wonder how much of this was an act and how much he really believed. After looking over his Wikipedia page, it seems that Sun Ra took his Egyptian/outer space theme very seriously. Can anyone here shed some light on it?

Ulzana's Raid (Robert Aldrich, 1972): Despite having a strong reputation, Ulzana's Raid struck me as a thoroughly mediocre effort from Aldrich. A very young Bruce Davidson (who loses top billing to Burt Lancaster) stars as a lieutenant in the US Army cavalry who must lead a small band of frontiersmen to stop a war party lead by the Apache Ulzana that is wreaking havoc in the southwest. While the film had all of the elements of a great western, it never really gelled for me. Long stretches of the film felt boring and unnecessary. I couldn't help but feel like there's probably a great 80 minute version of the film that could be culled from this 108 minute director approved edition. It's not a bad film, but also not a particularly good one either.

An Unfinished Piece for the Player Piano (Nikita Mikhalkov, 1977): Based on the play Platonov by Anton Chekhov, this Mosfilm production tells the story of a love affair between Sofia and the recently married Misha amidst a gathering at a family member's estate. The two had formerly been lovers, but lost touch for some time. Although the two had a deeply passionate experience together, Misha has since resigned himself to an unfulfilling life. Although I had never read the play by Chekhov or seen it performed, I think that I may have been able to identify the source as his had I not known it going in since it touches on many of his themes including family discord and unhappiness. The film itself is decent enough if not spectacular. I does drag on in parts but is not ever dull. I'd give it a marginal recommendation.

(Emoticons added by my son who is staying home sick from preschool today)

[domino harvey]

I don't quite get the Ulzana's Raid praise-fest either (You can read my thoughts on the film from the Westerns List Project here)-- it even finished in the top third of our cumulative list if memory serves!

[Forrest Taft]

After looking for it for more than a decade, I finally managed to track down The Gravy Train (aka The Dion Brothers, 1974). Jack Starrett directed it, from a script co-written by Terrence Malick. From what I understand, Malick was supposed to direct this, but at some point he was replaced by Starrett, and proceeded to take his name of the picture (he's credited as David Whitney). Quentin Tarantino owns a print of this, and has described it as his favorite Malick picture. I have to disagree.

It's a heist movie about two brothers in search for quick cash they're going to use to start a seafood restaurant. Stacy Keach and Frederick Forrest play of each other pretty well, and most of the pleasures in this come from their performances. The sense of humor is of a piece with the other comedies Malick wrote around the same time, but as a whole this is more successful than both Pocket Money and Deadhead Miles. We find the same oddball characters and offbeat humor, but I find Pocket Money and Deadhead Miles to be structurally too loose to keep my interest. The Gravy Train has a more defined narrative, and benefits from it a great deal. But this is still pretty minor stuff, with only the occasional scene that truly stands out. I thoroughly enjoyed the two brothers dining at a restaurant, talking about their future plans, while the entire staff are waiting for them to finish, and there's a great moment where they threaten a guy in a bathtub with a live lobster. The movie climaxes with a pretty tough action scene, and Frederick Forrest's final line made me laugh out loud. Not many movies are as dedicated to seafood as this one, but beyond that I can think of few things that make it stand out.

For this project I also finally broke my Jodorowsky cherry with The Holy Mountain. I won't be voting for this, but it was something all right. I was never bored by it, and there are some images that I'll never forget, but I didn't connect in any way with the spiritual aspect of the film. I imagine this was also a satirical take on religious cults, but I was too busy scratching my head to really get it.

[knives]

I doubt The Holy Mountain is satirical given Jodorowsky's own weird relationship with this stuff. It's more a very earnest look into what tarot means to him.

[Tommaso]

Very definitely, and while Jodorowsky may use a lot of provocation and some repulsive images occasionally, there's a very serious spiritual agenda at work in The Holy Mountain and in Jodorowsky's work in general, but especially it seems in his later real life work as a kind of psychotherapist. I guess these 'spiritual people' (wrong term if you don't believe there's insight to be found here) often use disconcerting means in order to break up the safe and established thinking of their intended audience. I'd say the same for Crowley, who was a bit more than the purely evil guy or joker as which he's commonly regarded (I only mention him because the subject of tarot came up).

In this respect, bamwc2: I don't know much about Sun Ra, but I could well imagine that he really believed in this whole mythology he proposed in Space is the Place (which is a wonderful film, in spite of the points you mentioned and with which I agree). Another example would be composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who was an influence on Ra, and who really believed that he came from Sirius. But whatever you make of such stories, it's the music that counts, and Ra and Stockhausen were certainly the most astonishing composers of their day in their respective fields. So perhaps a little bit of a 'space mind' helps to create something really special here on Earth...

[Gregory]

I'm glad to see some discussion of Space is the Place, a really unique film.

... Sun Ra co-wrote and starred as himself in this in this Afrocentric sci-fi musical. Although I'd heard of Sun Ra prior to this, I had not listened to any of his music before viewing the movie. The songs are great and the plot bizarrely charming (though it does have some problematic elements that I'll get to soon enough) with Sun Ra returning to Earth several years after disappearing from a European tour. He's here to liberate all African-Americans from the yoke of white repression by taking them to start their own civilization on another planet (and destroy the Earth and all those that don't come with him in the process). His plan is complicated by the evil Overseer, a black man who exploits his race through pimping and other immoral activities. This was a very enjoyable movie, though some of the reverse racism (an extremely common theme in blacksploitation of its day) was a bit troubling. Even worse, the film was deeply misogynistic in its treatment of women. The female cast members with the highest visibility were frequently nude and unnamed prostitutes that worked for The Overseer. However, their sexual exploitation can be read as another element of the The Overseer's sins against his own race (despite the fact that they're a multiracial bunch), so too with the vicious beating that the white NASA agents give the prostitutes. It's nasty and hard to watch, but the rest of the film is fairly charming. Seeing the eccentric Sun Ra dispense strange koans while dressed as an Egyptian god is worth the price of admission alone. I also couldn't help but wonder how much of this was an act and how much he really believed. After looking over his Wikipedia page, it seems that Sun Ra took his Egyptian/outer space theme very seriously. Can anyone here shed some light on it?

Sun Ra was not a co-writer in the way that role is conventionally understood. There were lots of major revisions, and the original script was largely ignored. He was credited as a writer because he gave some input throughout the filmmaking process, some of which was used while a lot was also ignored. Many of his ideas were either impossible for the producer to understand or too elaborate to carry out. Some of his input that made it in is what makes the film so uniquely him, including the scene based on Sonny having been threatened by a mobster in a nightclub. The film ended up as a distorted and compromised picture of Sonny's ideas. As you say, the portrayal of the women as degraded beings was ostensibly meant to show the evil of the Overseer's exploitation of humanity, but it ended up being a source of titillation. Sonny was quite strict about things like casual sex, drugs, etc. and he deeply disapproved of these scenes and wanted them cut.
And yes, I think Sun Ra was sincere in all the philosophy and metaphysics that he espoused verbally and through his music, and his real hope was to reach people through this film and turn their heads around, but it wasn't to be. The creative forces involved were way too far afield.

Also, I may have to disagree with Tommaso that Sonny was influenced by Stockhausen. His musical and philosophical orientation was well established at the point in the '60s when Stockhausen became widely known in "avant-garde" circles (which Sonny wasn't necessarily familiar with), and I don't know of any basis to say the influence happened that way, though of course it may seem that way because they share so many qualities as space-oriented composers and mystics. They both read and were influenced by the Urantia Book which also accounts for some of the notable similarities between them.

[Tommaso]

You certainly know Ra much better than I do, but I vaguely remember to have heard that he admired Stock's pieces of intuitive music "From the Seven Days" (1968), and the little I heard of Ra's more experimental output distinctly reminded me of these in places, too. Perhaps not a straight influence, but rather some like-minded people, then? Stockhausen was of course very well known in the avantgarde circles already in the 50s, but he lost some of his street credibility there precisely when his music became 'spiritual' in the late 60s, with the "Seven Days" pieces or "Stimmung", and even more so when he openly began to speak about his 'space origins' in the 70s, most significantly in that amazing work for soloists and electronic music called "Sirius". Stockhausen being influenced by the Urantia book happened only in the 70s, so perhaps Ra was first here?

[Gregory]

Yeah, I don't know for certain what Sun Ra knew of Stockhausen but my best knowledge (and guesswork) would be that any impression wasn't early or strong enough to really be an influence. The part about the Urantia Book I got from John Szwed's biography, and he made it sound like Sonny and Stockhausen started reading it around the same time (the period when the film was being made, which it seems to have influenced as far as Sonny's contribution).

[zedz]

I always understood Sun Ra's 'born on Saturn, stranded on Earth' back story as a metaphor for African-American slavery - and a great publicity hook.

And Sun Ra's sci-fi schtick and sublime artistry were well in place by the mid fifties, so being influenced by Stockhausen is pretty much impossible - I believe he was little more than a precocious student at that point.

[Michael Kerpan]

Looks like "Space is the Place" is O/P.

[bamwc2]

Looks like "Space is the Place" is O/P.

Please pardon my ignorance, Michael, but what does "O/P" mean? I tried looking it up, but I doubt that you meant Oral and Pharyngeal.

[Tommaso]

And Sun Ra's sci-fi schtick and sublime artistry were well in place by the mid fifties, so being influenced by Stockhausen is pretty much impossible - I believe he was little more than a precocious student at that point.

Stock a precocious student? Certainly not by the mid-50s. At that time, Stockhausen revolutionised the musical world with his electronic "Gesang der Jünglinge" in 1956 and subsequently with his orchestral "Gruppen" in 1957; a fully fledged composer at the time, though certainly without any similarity to what the early Sun Ra was doing, admittedly. But in any case, if there was a musical influence on Sun Ra, it would rather have been in the late 60s.

[zedz]

And Sun Ra's sci-fi schtick and sublime artistry were well in place by the mid fifties, so being influenced by Stockhausen is pretty much impossible - I believe he was little more than a precocious student at that point.

Stock a precocious student? Certainly not by the mid-50s. At that time, Stockhausen revolutionised the musical world with his electronic "Gesang der Jünglinge" in 1956 and subsequently with his orchestral "Gruppen" in 1957; a fully fledged composer at the time, though certainly without any similarity to what the early Sun Ra was doing, admittedly. But in any case, if there was a musical influence on Sun Ra, it would rather have been in the late 60s.

We're probably splitting hairs, but I'd call 1957 the late fifties, and Stockhausen was still a student (at Bonn) until 1956. Incredibly precocious, but still a student.

Anyway, my main point was that Sun Ra wasn't sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike. From his first El Saturn LP in '56 (Super-Sonic Jazz), he was a sui generis master and his self-mythology was already well underway.

(Boy, this is a weird discussion to be having in this thread!)

As for later influence, I can hear Stockhausen in early 70s Miles Davis, but Sun Ra's experimentation always seemed much more like a coherent development of his own thing (and various jazz trends that drifted through).

[Tommaso]

Okay, let's keep Ra and Stock as they are, then. But I think the discussion may not be that much off-topic for this thread. It started with the mentioning of Jodorowsky, and it's quite interesting to see that with the 70s there are at least a handful of filmmakers interested in creating their own private mythologies on film, or exploring old ones in an idiosyncratic way. One might mention Rivette's Duelle and Noroit here, but I also think of Greenaway's Water Wrackets or his invention of the Tulse Luper character, or of some of Jarman's early shorts like A Journey to Avebury or Art of Mirrors. Or, in Germany, the astonishing early films of Ulrike Ottinger, about which I'll post later in detail.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Re Sun Ra. This will either spark off a life-long addiction or kill it stone dead. In addition to the music there is lots of documentary comment. Only goes as far as 1959 so the more cosmic stuff is yet to come ......in Volume 2?
http://www.jazzloft.com/p-54447-eternal ... x-set.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;