Tag Archives: 1970s

Sweet Movie (1974) Dusan Makavejev, Carole Laure, Pierre Clémenti, Anna Prucnal, Comedy, Drama, Mystery

Sweet Movie (1974)
The intercut story of two women: a nearly-mute beauty queen who descends into withdrawal and madness, and another who captains a ship laden with candy and sugar, luring men and boys aboard for sex, death, and revolutionary talk. The beauty queen passes from a wealthy husband whose honeymoon delight is to urinate on her, to a muscular keeper who punches her, stows her in a suitcase, and ships her to Paris, to a lip-synching rock idol with whom she has a love spasm, to an Austrian commune complete with a banquet of vomit, urine, feces, chopped dildos, and wet nurses. By then she’s in a fetal position, until everyone’s rescued by reminders that “it’s just a movie.”
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The Omega Man (1971) Boris Sagal, Charlton Heston, Anthony Zerbe, Rosalind Cash, Action, Sci-Fi

The Omega Man (1971)
Due to an experimental vaccine, Dr. Robert Neville is the only survivor of an apocalyptic war waged with biological weapons. The plague caused by the war has killed everyone else except for a few hundred deformed, nocturnal people calling themselves “The Family”. The plague has caused them to become sensitive to light, as well as homicidally psychotic. They believe science and technology to be the cause of the war and their punishment, and Neville, as the last symbol of science, the old world, and a “user of the wheel”, must die. Neville, using electricity, machinery, and science attempts to hold them at bay.
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The Human Tornado (1976) Cliff Roquemore, Rudy Ray Moore, Lady Reed, Jimmy Lynch, Action, Comedy, Drama

The Human Tornado (1976)
Dolemite (Rudy Ray Moore) is back and badder than ever in THE HUMAN TORNADO! After being run out of town by a racist sheriff, Dolemite returns to LA only to discover that Queen Bee’s (Lady Reed) club has been taken over by the mafia. On top of that they have also kidnapped two of Queen Bee’s top girls! With the law hot on his tail, Dolemite rounds up the toughest Kung-Fu fighting badasses in Southern California to take on the mob, culminating in one of the craziest surprise endings in blaxploitation film history!
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Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes (1978) John De Bello, David Miller, George Wilson, Sharon Taylor, Adventure, Comedy, Horror, Musical

Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes (1978)
After a wave of reports of mysterious attacks involving people and pets being eaten by the traditionally docile fruit, a special government task force is set up to investigate the violent veggies and put a stop to their murderous spree. Included in this crack team are a lieutenant who never goes anywhere without his parachute, an underwater expert who’s never out of his scuba gear, and a master of disguise who conceals his appearance by dressing as a black Adolf Hitler.
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Cancel My Reservation (1972) Paul Bogart, Bob Hope, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Bellamy, Comedy, Mystery

Cancel My Reservation (1972)
The title of this Bob Hope vehicle Cancel My Reservation is a multiple pun, referring to elements in the story. The ever-youthful Hope plays Dan Bartlett, a late-night TV talk show host. Frazzled, he takes a much-needed vacation in Arizona. There, he stumbles upon a murder and a conspiracy by local rancher, John Ed (Ralph Bellamy) to defraud a local Native American group of part of its reservation. Dan is a suspect in the murder, and must investigate in order to clear his name. Though the story is rather light, celebrities of all sorts have either small parts or cameos in this film, and much of the film’s entertainment value comes from spotting them.
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La Facture (1975) Pierre Sabbagh, Viviane Gosset, Jean Barney, Jacqueline Maillan, Comedy

La Facture (1975)
Noëlle Alban est une femme à qui tout, depuis sa naissance, sourit. C’est une “chanceuse”, c’est une veinarde ; mais c’est une veinarde qui s’inquiète. Elle s’inquiète parce que, selon la “Théorie des Compensations” d’Azaïs, elle devra ensuite payer et supporter une égale période de malchance. Impressionnée par cette idée, Noëlle, pour se débarrasser de cette dette morale envers le destin, décide de se provoquer, à elle même, des ennuis. Mais elle échouera dans toutes ses tentatives et elle finira par se résigner au bonheur en pensant qu’elle le paiera, désormais, à chaque minute par peur de le perdre.
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Madhouse (1974) Jim Clark, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry, Crime, Horror, Mystery

Madhouse (1974)
The career of horror icon Paul Toombes (Vincent Price) ends in scandal when his fiancée dies under mysterious circumstances. Freed from the mental hospital where he had been committed, the recovered Toombes and screenwriter Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing) intend to revive his most popular character, Dr. Death, for a television series. But the dead bodies start piling up – all of them killed in ways that mimic the victims in Toombes’ films – and to clear his name he must find the real killer.
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Eyes of Laura Mars / Les Yeux de Laura Mars (1978) Irvin Kershner, Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Dourif, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Les Yeux de Laura Mars (1978)
Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway) is a fashion photographer who specializes in stylized violence. In her luxurious Manhattan apartment, she has a nightmare that Doris Spencer (Meg Mundy) is viciously murdered with an ice pick, her eyeballs stabbed. Laura wakes up and looks through a soon-to-be-published coffee table book of her photos, titled The Eyes of Mars, which Doris had edited. In it, there is a picture of Doris…identical to an image she had in the dream. Laura calls Doris but she gets no answer. That evening, she attends a reception at the Elaine Cassell Gallery in SoHo for an exhibit of her work. A controversial figure, she is besieged by questions from reporters about whether her photos glorify violence and are demeaning to women. A handsome stranger (Tommy Lee Jones) questions the work as well. The success of the exhibit is disrupted by the news that Doris has been found dead, in the same manner that she was murdered in Laura’s dream…
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The WIZ / Le Magicien d’Oz (1978) Sidney Lumet, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Adventure, Family, Fantasy

Le Magicien d’Oz (1978)
A Thanksgiving dinner brings a host of family together in a Harlem apartment, where a 24-year-old schoolteacher named Dorothy Gale lives with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry . Extremely introverted, she has, as Aunt Em teases her, “never been south of 125th Street”, and refuses to move out and on with her life. While Dorothy cleans up after the meal, her dog Toto runs out the open kitchen door into a violent snowstorm. She succeeds in retrieving him, but finds herself trapped in the storm…
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Série noire (1979) Alain Corneau, Patrick Dewaere, Myriam Boyer, Marie Trintignant, Bernard Blier, Crime, Drama

Serie noire (1979)
Franck Poupart is a slightly neurotic door-to-door salesman in a sinister part of Paris’ suburbs. He meets Mona, a teenager, who’s been made a prostitute by her own aunt. Franck would like to change his life and also save Mona from her aunt. Murder is the only solution he finds to achieve his goal… A very gloomy movie, exuding dispair and uneasiness, with pathetic characters.
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The Tenant / Le locataire (1976) Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Thriller, Drama

The Tenant (1976)
In Paris, the shy bureaucrat Trelkovsky rents an old apartment without bathroom where the previous tenant, the Egyptologist Simone Choule, committed suicide. The unfriendly concierge (Shelley Winters) and the tough landlord Mr. Zy establish stringent rules of behavior and Trelkovsky feels ridden by his neighbors. Meanwhile he visits Simone in the hospital and befriends her girlfriend Stella. After the death of Simone, Trelkovsky feels obsessed for her and believes his landlord and neighbors are plotting a scheme to force him to also commit suicide.
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Tomorrow (1972) Joseph Anthony, Robert Duvall, Olga Bellin, Sudie Bond, Drama

Tomorrow (1972)
In 1930s Mississippi, lonely Jackson Fentry (Robert Duvall) lives by himself as the sole caretaker of a sawmill. One day, close to the property, he discovers a young woman, Sarah Eubanks (Olga Bellin), who is three months pregnant. Since she was abandoned by both her husband and her family, Jackson takes her in. The two fall in love and get married just before her death. Jackson raises the child as his own, until the boy’s uncles arrive to demand he be returned to the family.
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Landscape after Battle / Krajobraz po bitwie (1970) Andrzej Wajda, Daniel Olbrychski, Stanislawa Celinska, Aleksander Bardini, Drama, Romance

Landscape after Battle (1970)
Film opens with the mad rush of haphazard freedom as the concentration camps are liberated. Men are trying to grab food, change clothes, bury their tormentors they find alive. Then they are herded into other camps as the Allies try to devise policy to control the situation. A young poet who cannot quite find himself in this new situation, meets a headstrong Jewish young girl who wants him to run off with her, to the West. He cannot cope with her growing demands for affection, while still harboring the hatred for the Germans and disdain for his fellow men who quickly revert to petty enmities.
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