Category: 1970s

Not being a huge fan of slasher films, I have been apprehensive about this particular title despite its Christmastime setting. Luckily, for me at least, the majority of the slashes are mostly concentrated in one chunk of the film. Right before Christmas break, a sorority house has been receiving obscene phone calls. Simultaneously and unbeknownst to the residents, a killer has snuck into their attic. The killer’s identity is kept secret from the other characters and from the viewers to great effect. The Christmas break setting adds good tension as the viewer witnesses murders where the other women assume the victim has just left for the holidays. The ending and killer’s motivations are left creepily ambiguous, perfect to fill in with your own imagination or allowing for sequels even if they don’t come.    

Hayley Mills stars as an American heiress who, despite the disapproval of her family, suddenly marries Hywel Bennett, a working class photographer and chauffeur with dreams of upward mobility. When the young Hayley dies unexpectedly, Hywel is of course a prime suspect. I watched this solely to see Mills in a post-Disney role and she is indeed beautiful and charming in the role. After the death of her character, the film takes a sudden whiplash turn and becomes much more surreal with a mix of psychological and mystical elements. Although overall it’s a strange affair, I enjoyed the 1970s feel, particularly in the design of the couple’s dream home, and the small supporting cast with George Sanders as Hayley’s family attorney and Britt Eklund as her doppelganger companion. 

There is a lot of fun to be had with this film about a ginormous grizzly bear who terrorizes a National Forest after developing a taste for human flesh. Since it’s a 1970s horror film, the first victims of course fit into a category with sexy coeds. Inexplicably the first scenes with the bear don’t show the creature at all beyond a giant (fake) paw swiping off body parts hither and yon. Eventually the bear is shown, but only after there are so many deaths that we’ve lost track of victims and drunken hunters are deputized to help find the monster. The ending climaxes in a way that can only be seen to be believed. It’s quite wonderful.   

I’ve had a copy of this (as part of a set with The House Without a Christmas Tree) for many years, but it wasn’t until buying the other two films in the series that I felt the push to put this one in. In all of the films, Lisa Lucas is a young girl living in 1940s Nebraska with her widowed father Jason Robards and her grandmother Mildred Natwick. In this one, Lisa, inspired by a school lesson on the first Thanksgiving, secretly reaches out and befriends a local misanthrope, despite her father’s feud with the man. Though they are relatively low budget made for television specials, the cast is appealing, especially Lucas in the lead. There are so few good Thanksgiving themed movies that I’ll probably be visiting this one again regularly in future years.

There is almost nothing to recommend this film. Arnold Schwarzenegger is Hercules, an arrogant demigod who berates his father into sending him to Earth. It is a better fish out of water story than Crocodile Dundee where Hercules is completely baffled by human activities, but still manages to befriend a geeky little man named Pretzie and become a successful professional wrestler. It’s Schwarzenegger’s debut film and it’s obvious. Luckily the role doesn’t expect him to do much more than taking off his shirt and flexing his muscles. Arnold Stang’s Pretzie is the best part of the film as he plays up the sidekick tropes with aplomb.

For no good reason, I often get the title of this (and its remake) confused with The Taking of Pelham 123 and its remakes. Because of this, I had pushed watching this up in my queue after seeing the two versions of the latter. When six members of a street gang are killed in a police ambush, their leaders pledge a blood oath to enact revenge on the LAPD and the city at large. It’s like if the gangs in The Warriors went after everyone else in the city instead of terrorizing the Warriors and it’s wonderful. One of their first murders establishes very quickly that they’re not messing around and it only gets bloodier as they lay siege to the decommissioned precinct. I don’t remember a lot about the remake. Even though I’m sure it doesn’t hold a candle to the original, I’m going to try to get my hands on a copy. As an added note, I don’t have a lot of experience with his films to know if it’s standard Carpenter flair, but the intro music and credits seemed excellently imitated in Stranger Things.

It’s at this point that I might have to come to the conclusion that I’m not the audience for Sergio Leone’s films. Despite it’s length, I did enjoy Once Upon a Time in the West, but the combining two genres (gritty 1970s realism and Westerns) that I’m not a big fan of just isn’t a way to win my interest. In the early 1900s, Rod Steiger is a Mexican bandit who coerces Irish Revolutionary explosives expert James Coburn to join his gang, along the way he accidentally becomes a hero of the Revolution. The performances are strong and the two leads have good chemistry, but at its core it is dark and violent and a horribly cynical view of revolutions.