20 From 70. My Favorite Films From The Year 1970

  As a kid, I was a huge fan of the Planet of The Apes series.
 I even attended a movie marathon at one of the local theaters that showed 5 of the movies, all in a roll. That was, by far, the longest amount of time I've ever spent in a movie theater. What can I say? I was a kid who lived in a midwestern suburb. What else did I have to do with all the time I had?
 But as I started to grow up into manhood, and as my tastes in cinema became more "distinguished", I could feel my love for the Ape flix begin to dwindle. Down to the point that now, I can only really give the first one any real credit.
The other films I just hold 'em in my memory bank with the sentimentality that comes from fond childhood memories.
 So, why then do, I include this flick here on this list?
Well, to be truthful, of all the films that I've watched from 1970 up to this point, if I don't include BtPotA, then there would only be nineteen movies listed here.
Being somewhat of a completist, the only way that I could get this list to be at an even twenty, I had to choose between putting this movie here or putting in the only other film I remember watching from this particular year, and that was the super soppy romance dreadnought known as Love Story.
And, TBH, I don't want to have to apologize to you, my fellow Listophiles, for putting that movie here.
  I love you guys too much for that.
 And as many of you all know by now, love means never having to say you're sorry.
So, until I get around to viewing another movie from the year 1970, one with enough quality to occupy the number twentieth spot of this list, for now, all you're getting for this entry is a mediocre monkey movie.

  The fact that, when they are lumped together, Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy are collectively known as the Universal Monsters is an indication of just how popular and iconic this fearsome foursome had become under the banner of Universal Studios. During the late 1930’s and throughout the most of the 40’s, the films of these respective creatures made the studio lots of money. Not just from ticket sales but also from merchandise. However, as it is widely known by now, this was a popularity that had pretty much burned itself out by 50’s. 

  Luckily for Drac, Frank, Wolfy and Mums, a small indie film production company from across the pond called Hammer Studios took a stab at these guys, and established a series of reboots that shot these canonical creatures back up again to major star status. But, in the typical manner that motion picture trends tend to be cyclical, after going through all of the 60's as popular fixtures in the horror film genre, by the time that the 1970’s rolled in, once again, gruesome Gothic films were shambling around with one foot in the grave. With the horrormeisters at Hammer struggling with what to do with these guys, hardcore fans were treated only on the rare occasion with a screen scare fare that was fronted with the fright -infested faces of standbys such as Christopher Lee donning the cape of the corpuscle craving count. And even though it was still cool to catch a momentary glimpse or two of the visceral visage of the vampire, by this point in time, the scars of diminishment were beginning to show.   

        Okay, I'm gonna hafta confess, I was never much of a fan of Disney and the way that their formulaic brand of animation dominated family friendly movie entertainment. Not that i have anything against entertainment that's geared towards the whole family. It was just, for my particular tastes, after decades of cranking out their brand of what they constituted as "family friendly", I saw as being a bit too...milquetoasty". And even then, I wouldn't have minded it it so much if it wasn't for the fact that Disney's product of escapism choke out so much of any the competition that was struggling to give movie goers an alternative to watch at the cinema venues. This was particularly true during the time frame when they were entering into the 70's (and especially once they moved into the 80's). But as is with most things, there are a few exceptions. And for me, The Aristocrats is one of those exceptions. I will admit that it is one of the rare Disney animated flicks from this period that I can say I liked watching.
  Mostly because this is an animated "tail" that features kitties.
  And truth be told, who doesn't like kitties?

  There was a period of time, from the 40's through the 70's, in which film noir was a major staple to the roster of films that appeared in movie theaters. Popular pulp fiction investigators such as Phillip Marlowe and Sam Spade had gone through various onscreen incarnations during this time and these characters even made (or at least, enhanced) the careers of certain actors, such as screen icons Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum.   One particular noir character that made the leap from page to film was Travis McGee, who had more than twenty popular novels depicting the kind of dark mysteries that he had to weave through and that made this brand of noir so popular with readers.  However, despite having a respectable amount of gumshoe style adventures in novel form, McGhee, wasn’t so much a private investigator as he was a self-described "salvage consultant", he only got one chance to make an appearance on the big screen with this 1970 crime thriller, Darker Than Amber (based on the character's seventh book of the same name). 
  Not considered as a very big picture when compared to other major releases at the time, it starred Rod Taylor (who I remember mostly from The Birds, The Time Machine and from his last film appearance in Inglourious Basterds as Winston Churchill) and, despite it relatively small stature, was still surprisingly very much lauded by critics. It is a film that's not really all that well remembered much these days because of its in-print rarity and it features a fight scene that, up to that point in film history, was rated as one of the most violent ever depicted in cinema (one of the main reasons for that was because, reportedly, the two actors engaged in the scene actually ended up fighting each other for real as the camera kept on rolling).

   1970 was a year of two performances that were both a beginning and an ending for Rolling Stoner Mick Jagger. It was the beginning of the internationally known rockstar's career in acting with his performance in this film, Performance. It was also an ending, of sorts, in the musical rockumentary Gimme Shelter, which we'll come to later, but is about the swan song of the flower power movement of the 1960's.
  In this movie, Chas (played by English movie star James Fox, not Jagger), is a vicious and volatile collector for a powerful criminal organization from the Eastern side of London. After a series of unfortunate events place him on the bad side of organization's gang leader, Chas is forced to go on the run from his own outfit. Making his way eventually to a secluded flat of a former rock'n'roll singer Turner (obviously played by Mick) in which to hide out. As time goes by, Chas begins to sink into singer and his girlfriend's psychedelic ways and soon finds himself transforming into something he never thought possible for a gun-toting hard-boiled gangster such as he thought he was. 



 Even though I implied at the start of this entry that Performance is a film that was released in 1970, the truth is that it was actually filmed two years earlier, in 1968. The movie company that had produced it however was reluctant to release it after they saw how sexually and graphically violent the finished product was.  As a result, it took two years' worth of cutting and editing before the company finally decided to distribute it. But the delay did very little in preventing the wild-storm of controversy that followed the film when Performance ultimate hit theaters. At the time, this may have been a stain on the reputation of the film company itself, but for Mick jagger, it only helped to serve his longstanding notoriety as the hedonistic heretic who just can't get no satisfaction.

         Y'know, I was going to start this entry by getting into what Woodstock was and its contribution to the history of rock music, but the way I figure it, shouldn't we all be familiar with that event by know? And if any of you kids out there don't know what this iconic festival is, then here's some old man advice that you've probably heard before but I'm going to say to you again...
   It might be a good idea for you to stop listening to all that Beiberesque pop sludge oozing outta the Spotify and turn off all the Miley-like twerking trash that passes off as music videos these days and watch this film.
 Not that there's any guarantee that you'll like any of the music for grown-ups that's featured here, but at least watch it just for the sake being able to know that Woodstock isn't just the name of Snoopy's little bird sidekick from the Peanuts comic strip (and I swear ta god, if any of young people out there are wondering what the heck the Peanuts are, you better just get offa this site right now and go make a Tik-Tok video about just how ignorant you are as the result of the overload  of social media content that has taken away your generation's attention from anything that came before you were born!).
  Okay,
now that I got that old man rant out of my system, where was I...?
  Oh yeah, Woodstock. The godfather of all musical festivals. However, as great as it was, this documentary film can only capture a small part of what the experience was, and only an even smaller part of what this event meant to rock'n'roll and a whole generation. But as small as that part is, it's still a start. 
Here we see what is was like to create music that wasn't just empty content that could be created with a laptop and a mike. Here is music that moves the soul, that has something to say, that changed history and that will last forever. 
I know that this all sounds like platitudes, but seriously, this is the stuff that built a foundation of human beings being able to express themselves by putting their talent and the equipment on the line, on a stage that the world was watching, even though they didn't know it. This is the stuff that a generation spoke through the lyrics of long-haired emotion, through the dance in a muddy field, through the screaming shrill of a guitar. 
  In short, the stuff you witness being performed in this film is the stuff of legend.

  The 7 Plus series is a series of documentaries that started in the sixties and has a new installment that is released every seven years after. And yes, you've read that correctly, I said every seven years. Which means that, since the series started in 1964, the second installment should've been released in 1971, not 1970. But for some reason that has never been explained, it came out in '70 (look it up for verification).
Anyways, despite the producers' inability for simple mathematics, I found this decades long project to be quite a unique, smart and intriguing idea for a documentary. It is one that, as I kept up with overs the years, has become one of my favorite documentaries of all time.
  One of the main reasons is because it demonstrates how delving into the standard progressions that is this journey of life that we all share in, the end result of such an ambitious project is a group of story-lines of real lives that cause within us the kind of deep reflection and introspection than can only come from being a spectator of those human lives that are not our own. Leading to a kind of healthy perspective that drives us to look at own lives as though we were looking at it with someone else's eyes and thus giving us a view that isn't weighed down by our own inner judgements that have been twisted by our accumulated one-sided experiences.
  And when a film can do that, then that film is meeting the full potential of what is possible to with that medium.

What Jaws did for "going into the water", this movie did for going into the air.
After watching this archetypical star-studded 70's disaster flick, you'll never be able to catch a flight without thinking to yourself about who's bright idea was it to use the word "terminal" to describe the area you have to go through before you enter an air-defying craft that weighs several tons and is full of a shitload of easily combustible jet fuel.

During the late 1960's, vast outdoor concerts and musical festivals based on the counter-culture movement and featuring a whole bunch of rock acts of the day, were becoming the all the rage. Culminating into the legendary Woodstock festival that was famously held in upstate New York, organizers were hoping that the Altamont Free Concert would be an equally successful West Coast equivalent.
This original intention of this music documentary was for the film to follow one of the bands of living legends that were slated to perform at Altamont, the Rolling Stones, as they embarked on their 1969 American tour, eventually stopping at Altamont for the final show. However, plans for the purpose of the film changed due to the aftermath of what ended up actually occurring throughout the duration of the day that festival took place. Hired to provide security at the event were the infamous biker organization known as Hell's Angels. However, since these hoggers were not really qualified or experienced in the ways of providing security on a professional basis, in the efforts to uphold order during the performances, gang members ending up getting into fist fights with various attendees in the audience. It didn't help that because the whole thing was so poorly organized, the logistics were set up so bad, that the crowds who had gathered to enjoy the music were becoming highly agitated and antagonistic as the day wore on.  While all "Hell" didn't completely break loose, the violence was steadily consistent enough that it resulted in one death, and many, mostly unaccounted for injuries. 
 When all was said and done, the Free Concert was forever tagged with the word infamous to it and Gimme Shelter the movie ended up being a "documented" recording of the swan song of the 60's era and its movement's flowered message of "peace and love".

  Tora! Tora! Tora!



 is the first example on this list that the year 1970 was a good one when it comes to war pictures, because it the fourth one in this list. Fifth, if one can count The Conformist, which isn't exactly a "war film", but it's based on the events and consequences of the second world war. 

When it comes to it's social identity, was there ever a decade that was as turbulent for the U.S. than the 1960's?
One it's most defining moments was the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr..
Shown only once in actual movie theaters, it's chock full of speech footage and interviews that are sequentially strung together in an order that follows the non-violence leader in the last period of his life, from his participation in the bus boycott in Montgomery Alabama to his final days before he was gunned down on a motel balcony in Memphis Tennessee. It is a documentation that is presented in a manner that is narration-free and with plenty of it's footage in gritty black and white, it all adds up to some pretty powerful stuff in the telling of a man who truly believed that no-violence was the answer and who had a dream that all men are created equal.

Just like this movie, I never sang for my father either. Basically for two main reasons....
One, because my voice sounds horrible when I sing, except of course, when I'm in the shower. And I'm lucky enough to be one of those individuals who's never have had to suffer through some kind of pathological event where I ended up in the shower with my dad. Thank God.
And two, because my father, being one of those old skool man's man, would have probably thought of any kid who sang to his dad as being a Nancy-boy. Therefore, if I ever did tried to sing to him, he most likely would've responded by locking me down in the basement with a box full of cigars and wouldn't have let me out until I smoked every single one.

  Five Easy Pieces marked the beginning of a type of movie that was to spring forth more readily from the decade that was the 70's. A movie that was difficult to explain and driven more by the behaviors and reactions of the character than it was by the fictionalized circumstances that the character was placed in. Trapped in a life situation so personal, that it's not the usual standard plotline that we're used to seeing being churned out by the Hollywood machine, even back then.
This is a work that recognizes that modern human beings, particularly in this society, each lead a life whose story meanders thru a string of events that isn't easy to categorize into some kind of linear plot.
And just like the lead character in this film, it can lead to an existence without structure or direction. Jack Nicholson, already a name in cinema by this point, but not so big that he was "Jack" yet, portrays Bobby Dupea, a man so lost within his lack of ambition and emotional awareness, yet silently clasping desperately for some way to have feel them. His reactions are diligently somber, peppered with outbursts of exasperated frustration. His inability to understand coupled with his ability to actually know better, trudges him thru an experience that offers no clues to any answer. So, in the end, in his mind, sometimes the easiest thing to do to just run away and start over.
Considering the time it was released, Five Easy Pieces is a film that is much more unique that its standard premise make it first appear to be on the surface.

Most of us dream to fly. In our careers, in our relationships, heck even just in our extra-curricular activities. But there are a rare few dreamers who aspire to fly in a much more literal fashion. The modern day's answer to Prometheus, Brewster McCloud is on a mission to spread his wings take flight. And no matter how "domed" his "arena" may be, he will not stop until he's soaring high.
Really high.
Which, BTW, considering director Robert Altman's whimsical approach to this bit of surreality, is a good way to watch this film.

I remember hearing on some film documentary that the reason that the actor who played "fat" Clemenza, Richard S. Castellano, did not appear in the 2nd Godfather film was because he had asked for too much money. Which I found a little bit disappointing because, despite the excellent job that Michael V. Gazzo did as Frank Pentangeli, the character created to replace the role, I really think that the sequel still would've been so much cooler having Clemenza as the driving force of that particular storyline conflict.
Which got me to thinking, why did the Castellano ask for so much money and thus lose such an important part of such a cinematic classic, especially since I had never seen the actor in anything else other that the first Godfather flick?
Then I came across this movie and saw that it featured the actor in a role that garnered him an Academy nomination. And well deservedly so.
But not so much that it should've cost him the role in G Part 2.
I think that if Castellano had been a little more reasonable and went through with the part, he, as an actor, could've had a career that would've been much bigger (pun unintentional).

A George is a George as Mr. C. Scott stars in his most famous and most defining role, that of General S. Patton.
This is a story that depicts the human flaws that made "Old Blood And Guts" (his nickname) mortal and, at the same time, the battlefield genius that made him appear to be immortal.

BTW, when I was making up my lists of favotite 70's flicks, I noticed that, particularly early in the decade, Patton is also just one war-themed film amongst several that will appear on this list (Kelly's Heroes, M.A.SH. and Tora!).
For some reason, when it comes to movies that reveal the twists of reality that lie behind military life during wartime, 1970 seemed to be quite a banner year.

  In order to join the underground Fascist movement that was sweeping most parts of Europe during the mid to early 1930's, a potential member and Italian socialite has to prove that he has the kind of moxy and the stone cold heart that drove the campaign at the time. And with a story set against the art and decor of the period, he goes about showing that when it comes to the demands and requirements of a secret organization associated with the movement, he can conform.
  A film by Bernardo Bertolucci at his best and shows why, starting at the beginning of the decade, the 70's was a good time for movies made for the more mature-minded.

A sort of western film that tells a folkish tale of epic proportions as we follow the life and times of a man from the time when he was little up until he was big.
Dustin Hoffman, at his "biggest" plays the little man known as Jack Crabb.
As an adopted Cheyenne son, doggy medicine salesman, lucky-ass husband, Custer Cavalry muleskinner, trapper, hermit and fastest gunslinger in the west, Crabb leads a life that shows that the history of the old Frontier wears many hats. And very few of 'em were white.

  As the final days of the Allies' war with Germany was winding down, rumors of the legendary Nazi gold were running rampant. When word reaches a band of misfit combat soldiers that a large cache of it is stored at a French bank just 30 miles from where they are stationed, they decide to go AWOL and "make a run for the gold".  
  Kelly's Heroes is one of those movies that, as a kid, I used to just absolutely love watching the few times that it ran on T.V.. With an ensemble cast that included Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, Teddy Salavas, and even Mr. Warmth himself, Don Rickles, I thought it had the coolest cast that anyone could put in a movie. My opinion, during the that point in my life where I hadn't my even reached high school years yet,was that this war-comedy that I knew was geared more towards adults, was a masterpiece. As I grew up,it stayed in my mind as a masterpiece, and I thought for sure that any other well knowledged cinephile held, if not the same opinion, but was close. 
 Decades later, after I reached adulthood, KH was one of the movies that I couldn't wait to discuss with other hardcore film fans when the onternet started filling up with movie discussion sites. 

  When the M.A.S.H. television series began airing, like most kids my age at the time, I had no interest in watching a program that was geared towards an adult audience. However, once I began to enter into my tweener years, when my tastes in entertainment were just beginning to experience their own particular brand of puberty, that’s when I finally started to give this show a view or two. And with its sharp and incisive humor set against the battle-scarred theme of a mobile army surgical hospital, the show started to gradually click with me.  That’s when I became aware that there wasn't much of this kind a TV viewing out there like this one. M.A.S.H. ran long enough that I was able to watch it all the way up to my first year in college. And by that time, I had become a hard-core fan. I was definitely one of the reasons that the final episode wound up being one of the most watched series finales in all of TV history. 
  Somewhere along the line I came upon the knowledge that this show had been "spinned off" from a movie which, as a fan, had gained my interest. The only thing is, I never got around to watching it until after the show had stopped running on the air. I think at the time, the only Robert Altman movies that I had ever really seen were Popeye and Mccabe and Mrs. Miller. And with his mercurial style of filmmaking, I had nowhere near of a grasp on what to expect from his movies. So, when I finally got around to watching this one, after it was over, I admit, I felt a little bit off balance. I wasn't prepared for much rawer, and not as "preachy" the anti-war message that was much prominent in its small screen counterpart. However, once my viewing senses began adjusting to more readily absorb the movie's integrity, it's brilliance of creativity, "war-time operating-room realism", not to mention its rapid fire off the cuff humor, it all became more apparent. M.A.S.H.'s ability to interweave these aspects with such a spontaneity and balance was not only a reminder of a director's (Robert Altman) prime, but also, why this movie is considered such a classic of the genre. Particularly when that genre is easily able to mix in its own brand of dark, satirical comedy.