Tag Archives: 1970s

The Premonition (1976) Robert Allen Schnitzer, Sharon Farrell, Edward Bell, Danielle Brisebois, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

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This Thriller/horror movie tells the tale of a young girl who is terrified that her insane mother will take her away from her beloved foster mother. One day, the crazed real mother attempts to contact the girl at school, but her foster mother has a premonition and gets there in time to protect the girl. Eventually though, the real mother and her boy friend, a carnival clown, succeed and takes her away, leaving the bereaved foster parents to enlist the assistance of a parapsychologist to help them interpret the foster mother’s terrifying dreams and psychic connection to the girl and find her before it is too late.
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Bananas (1971) Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Carlos Montalbán, Comedy

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One of Woody Allen’s earlier, more slapstick-oriented efforts, Bananas tells the story of Fielding Mellish (Allen), a neurotic New Yorker who follows the object of his affections, Nancy (Louise Lasser), to the fictional Central American country of San Marcos, where she is involved in a revolution. Nancy wants nothing to do with Fielding, but he soon becomes a guest of the country’s dictator (Carlos Montalban), before accidentally becoming the leader of San Marcos himself. Fielding is eventually shipped back to the US and tried as a subversive, but being that this is a comedy, and an especially light one at that, everything works out in the end. A far cry from Allen’s later, more somber films, Bananas still works as an often hilarious amalgam of sight gags, one-liners, and bizarre asides.
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Fleisch / Spare Parts (1979) Rainer Erler, Jutta Speidel, Wolf Roth, Herbert Herrmann, Horror, Thriller

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A honeymooning couple (Jutta Speidel and Wolf Roth) are hunted down by mysterious kidnappers in cahoots with the evil landlady who runs a hotel. The woman manages to escape, but the man is whisked away by two medics in an ambulance. The bride enlists the help of a truck driver with a CB radio and uncovers a fiendish international plot to provide black-market organs. The ghouls take parts from the bodies of healthy young and extremely unwilling human victims.
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Daichi no komoriuta / Lullaby of the Earth (1976) Yasuzô Masumura, Mieko Harada, Natsuko Kahara, Meiko Kaji, Drama

daichi-no-komoriuta-aka-lullaby-of-the-earth-1976
The story of an orphan girl, brought up in naive, rustic innocence by an elderly relative, who is suddenly exposed to the brutality, greed and deceptiveness of the outside world, when her grandmother dies. Notwithstanding her healthy distrust of all strangers, which her upbringing instilled in her, it is not long before a cunning racketeer finds her weak point, that temptation which she cannot resist, that weakness, different as it may be, that each of us has, and brings her into his power.
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Angst vor der Angst / Fear of Fear (1975) Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margit Carstensen, Ulrich Faulhaber, Brigitte Mira, Drama

angst-vor-der-angst-aka-fear-of-fear-1975
Margot, who lives in a comfortable middle class apartment, fears that she is losing her mind after having had her second child. Her husband Kurt, who is busy studying for an exam, does not understand her situation. Her mother-in-law and sister-in-law Lore are openly hostile to her. She resorts to valium and drink, and looks for sympathy, but to no avail.
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Nenè (1978) Salvatore Samperi, Leonora Fani, Tino Schirinzi, Paola Senatore, Drama

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It’s the late 1940s in Italy. WWII is over, but society the world over still bears its scars. In a remote countryside, one family of four occupies a big villa: a young boy, his older sister and their parents. Ju (Sven Valsecchi) is a cute and innocent boy – curious like most kids his age about such things as love, kisses, women’s breasts and generally the difference between sexes. When his cousin, a 14-year-old orphaned girl, moves in with the family, Ju discovers an opportunity to satisfy his increasing curiosity about the female sex. But it all comes at a price…
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Manhattan (1979) Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Comedy, Drama, Romance

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On the heels of Annie Hall, the Oscar-winning romantic comedy that rocketed Woody Allen to the front ranks of American filmmakers, Manhattan continued Allen’s romantic obsessions in a slightly darker, more pessimistic vein. Allen stars as Isaac Davis, a TV comedy writer sick of the pap he is forced to churn out and harboring dreams of being the great American novelist.
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