25 From 73: My Favorite Films of 1973

 Boy.....



.... remember back when stop-motion was the sh#t?



  Okay, okay,
maybe the first entry on this list isn't on too many "Best of the 70's" lists, but as the title of this thread states, these are my favorite films of the year 1973, not the best of 1973. And my favorites don't necessarily always coincide with the best.
  Some of the movies featured on my lists are also listed in my "Favorite Guilty Pleasures" list.
  Luckily (for you, the reader), most of these guilty pleasures aren't numbered very high.
  So if you wanna read about the so-called "good" ones, just skip this entry, and move on to another one that doesn't make you wince. As much.

Now here's a flick for those of you who like your movies like you like your coffee and your women;
black and bitter.
Or better yet, with an extra couple of lumps of brown sugar.
See, that's the thing about blaxploitation films,
the more bad puns, the better.



Pam Greer stars in this one as a foxy lady who carries around a small caffeine-themed name and a big ass ghetto-blastin' gun... aimed right straight at your percolator.
Stickin' it to the man with a hefty load of camp and a medivel shot to the groin.

Before there was Beatrice Kiddo, the Bride, waking up after her supposed death and staining the snow with blood in Kill Bill vol. 1*,
there was Yuki Kashima, aka Lady Snowblood, doing the same exact thing. But unlike the Bride, who did it as a homage to the Pinky Violence genre, Lady S did it as the originator of these kinds of story themes and was an early entry into the field of female film bad-assery.



* (For any fans of the Kill Bill films, the battle scene where Kiddo goes Hanzo sword to Hanzo sword with O-Ren Isgii was inspired by this movie.)

After the accidental death of their daughter, a grieving American couple move to Venice for professional reasons.
However, after they arrive, they begin to experience a few strange occurrences that hint that maybe, their little girl is trying to "message" them from beyond.
Sophisticated drama meets art-house spookiness meets innovative storytelling with a little bit of graphic-for-its-time lovemaking thrown in for good measure.
Don't look now, but I think that all may add up to a modern classic in the film genre known as supernatural thriller.

 English police sergeant Neil Howie travels to a small Scottish village to investigate the disappearance of a little girl.
 Once there, he finds clues of some mysterious and very strange happenings,
strange even by normal Scottish standards.
 Which eventually lead Howie unto some pretty morbid pagan rituals.
 I mean, y'know....
m orbid even by normal Scottish standards.

Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, in the height of both of their careers, star as two wandering souls who agree to strike up a partnership, and after hitting the road with it's fair share of bumps and curves, end up forming a friendship.
Scarecrow comes off as bit formulaic in it's plot and does reach the level of of quality either lead actor's best films (which they were both producing at the time),
but the combined quality of their thespian talents along with the chemistry that they fill up the screen with is enough to give Scarecrow the label of "a forgotten minor gem".

Even though I'm a big fan of Jack Nicholson (I have a list of my fave J-Nick flicks that I put up on this site), particularly his work from this decade, The Last Detail is one of those movies that I'd been meaning to see for years, but just never got around to it up until last year.



After I watched it, I had conflicting feelings about. It's reputation for being realistically funny along with it's over-frequent use of profanity, I think I expected the film to be a bit more sharp than I found it to be. However that could be because I've become somewhat desensitized by humor that used and abused F-words in movies that followed after this one and some which not only rose to but even exceeded the bar that was raised by films like Detail.
Whatever the reason, there's still no denying the incredible acting of everyone involved here, forefronted by Nicholson's, who's portrayal still has the humanistic persona that he would eventually evolve out of in the 80's and beyond (starting with the Shining).
I haven't yet decided what I completely think of this movie, so for now, it's position on this list has been randomly selected. I'll have to give The Last Detail another watch or two before I can truly settle my feelings on how I rate this movie.

While most people today remember Elliot Gould as Ross and Monica's dad on the uber-popular TV show Friends, the truth is, back during the early half of the 70's decade, he had developed a pretty heavy reputation as an incredibly intelligent and sharp performer.
With the Robert Altman directed neo-noir The Long Goodbye, the laid back Mr. Gould attempts a foray into the arena of cinema "badassery", but with a subtlety in his portrayal of P.I. Phillip Marlowe that doesn't compromise the smart half of his repertoire.



Besides an edgy role for Gould, The Long Goodbye also stars Henry Gibson from TV's Laugh-In and features a very early and very small role for a balloon-muscled Arnold Schwarzenegger as a gangster's henchman.

Although the idea of the teen-ager started around the middle of the war-torn 40's, it was a concept that really didn't start to take to full effect until the 1950's. For the first time ever, young people in their teens were rebelling against their elders en masse. Boys did this by greasing up their hair, wearing leather jackets and riding motorcycles, while the girls began by smoking cigarettes, listening to rock'n'roll music and dating "bad boys" behind their parents back.



Badlands is a story that takes place during this authority-questioning decade. In it, a cuter-than-hell Sissy Spacek and James Dean look-alike Martin Sheen play Kit and Holly, two based-on-real-life teens who decide to kick it up a notch. Their form of rebellion expresses itself first, in the murder of her father, and then, by setting the two new lovebirds on a cross country killing spree through the badlands.
That'll teach the grown-ups to stop being so square.

The year is 1940, and a traveling movie theatre has just shown the film version of "Frankenstein" to a small village in Spain (which has just started recovering from it's recent civil war). Transformed by what she sees on the screen, young Ana, along with her sister Isabel, becomes determined to search out this "spirit-monster".



This is the type of arthouse film that I think can easily get pushed into the category of those other films that are so abstract, that they tend to get parodied or spoofed as vague un-understandable cinematic claptrap.
While I agree that Spirit Of The Beehive's visual presentation likes to include alot of open spaces for it viewers to interpret, I think that there's enough (more than enough, actually) in it's story to keep these interpretations reeled in. Or, at least, from straying too far off it's rails.

Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid is an early 70's western noted more for its behind the scenes conflict between director Sam Peckinpah and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the company responsible for producing the film.
MGM thought it had the last laugh by taking the project away from Peckinpah after it was finished and re-editing it substantially.
The end result was a film that was largely unsuccessful and criticized by the actors involved.
However, time has avenged the director's vision by the release of Peckinpah's original version, thus creating a re-evaluated critique of the film in which it is now generally regarded as one the director's last great films.

  Harry Callahan may be a cop who's often referred to as "Dirty", but he's still a cop who strongly believes that, when it comes to taking the law into your own hands, a man has got to know his limitations. So when a "magnum force" of renegade officers begin a reign a rogue vigilantism, naturally, the only one who could stop 'em is a good cop with a bad attitude. With his trusty Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum by his side, it's up to Dirty Harry to clean up the streets of dirty traffic officers who tend to deal with violations with more than just a citation.

You know what goes really well with Solyent Green? Fava beans and a nice bottle of chianti.



Charlton Heston, Chuck Connors and Edward G. Robinson (in his last film role) star in this solemn dystopian story that provides yet another chapter into the science fiction world's most famous and ultimate cookbook, "How To Serve Man".

Some men were just not meant to chained. Particularly, when those chains are a result of a frame-up, which then leads to a life sentence on what is considered the french version of Alcatraz.
Cool 60's icon Steve McQueen teams up with new generation 70's actor Dustin Hoffman in this based-on-true-story of perseverance that challenges the strength of the will for freedom against the impervious odds of the infamous and inescapable Devil's Island.

Assassinating the leader of a nation is always a tricky and complicated business. But trying to do it after several failed attempts makes if even harder for whoever the next guy is that is in line for the job.
That is, unless that guy is the man known simply as The Jackal.
Concisely conniving and classically clever, he is a cur who is out to prove that when it comes to taking care of business, with enough careful planning and cunning preparation, any dog can have his day.

Yet another flick featuring Clint Eastwood riding into town looking to unload a pair of six-shooters and then some.



  This time around, he's coming in from the high plains as a drifter. And in typical Clint style, he's a man with no name.
  Now obviously, while not all of Eastwood's westerns were great, IMO, none of 'em were really bad either. He's done enough of them pretty good that the roughly cut visage of his face under a gunslinger's hat is one of those iconic images that, in my mind, will always be a fundamental part of the genre (probably second only to John Wayne).
   For my money, the 70's wouldn't be the 70's without a good ol' cowboy Clint shoot 'em up or a Harry Callahan shoot 'em down. And for the year of 1977, he's got one of each, both of 'em a solid entry into their respective genres. 
  Whether it be on the tough streets of San Francisco or the high plains of the Wild West, while most guns spelled trouble, only CE's were big enough to spell "vengeance".

A tale of friendship in which we learn that the connection between friends isn't so friendly when those friends are, well....."connected".
The moral of this story is one we've heard many times before:
"With friends like these...."



BTW, I'm assuming those of you reading this are smart enough to be able to finish that quote.
And if you're not, don't worry about it. There is an advantage that comes with not being a very intelligent person.
And I'd know what that advantage was if only my brain worked gooder.

In the previous move, it showed that down on the streets of San Francisco, Dirty Harry may have had to do deal with the fantasy created Magnum Force, but when it comes to a more realistic depiction of dirty cops, look no further than the streets of New York in Serpico.



Now matter which side of the coast is being referred to, there have been many a police department that ran on systems that were heavily poisoned with a corruption that went on for many decades with rarely any kind of exposure. This was mainly because it was considered a great (and maybe even mortal) sin against your "brother-in-arms" for any dirt covered cop to even think about coming clean.
That is, until Frank Serpico came along.
Melding his long hair with the long arm of the law, he risked his job and his life trying to uphold justice outside and within the walls of his precinct. And as his based-on-a-true story reveals, the aftermath of this hippie do-gooding badgewearer's interdepartmental investigations gave the rest of the world just a taste of what the consequences could be for any whistleblowing insiders.

While the majority of films are about belief-suspending escapism or explosive sensationalism, every once in a while, there comes director with an adult vision for films with adult themes for adult mindsets.
Ingmar Bergman is one of those types of directors and his 1974 Scenes From A Marriage is one of those types of movies. Using a series of episodic scenes along with some other distinctive storytelling devices, it examines a marriage through a lengthy period of time and it's disintegration over the years. Apparently responsible for a rise in divorce rates in it's home country of Sweden, it exemplifies the kind of analytical storytelling that made this time of film-making universally thought-provoking and so "gutsyly" unique.

Man,
forget all those stupid Chuck Norris internet memes that you see running ridiculously rampant all over the world wide web. The truth is, he's nuthin' but a milquetoast martial arts mockery whose so-called brass balls could never hope to stand up against Bruce Lee's raging fists of fury.
You really want to see what badd-ass 100% kickassery looks like in it's purest form?
Exit one Texas Ranger.
Enter The Dragon.

Before George Lucas was amassing an empire with tales that took place "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....",
he was telling this little ditty that wasn't that long ago in a town not too far from where you live.



It's the night before they begin the college life, and a group of post-booming teenage friends decide for some last minute cruising. Only to find themselves in various states of either car trouble or girl trouble.
And back in the early sixties, there really wasn't all that much difference between the two.

Attending the funeral of an ex-lover, super-slick, bible-peddling con-man Moses Pray (Ryan O'Neal) meets a 9-year old girl named Addie, who or may not be his daughter (played by Tatum O'Neal, who is definitely Ryan's daughter and the youngest winner of an Academy award for this role).
Thus begins a pairing of a father daughter grifting duo who's journey sometimes reaches saccharin levels of sweetness, but is offset by the sweeping but sparse Depression era black & white visuals, not to mention by the onscreen genetic chemistry of the two O'Neals.

I always felt that scripting a movie that focuses on a successful elaborate con-job really requires an exercising of creativity from the writer. Bringing in all the elements of the characters and acts to pull off a scheme that is both credible in it's enactment and at the same time fascinating in it's grand unfolding is a balancing act on a extremely narrow margin.
This was one of the first ones I watched as a kid. The chemistry between Newman and Robert Redford was evident even to me, as young as I was. They acted cool, they looked cool and participated in a scheme that, in my young mind, was about as cool as cool gets. This was the movie that began my affection for quality heist/confidence movies.

Even though he filmed two other movies before this one, this is practically Martin Scorcese's cinematic debut to the general public at large. At least, it's the first one that really started to get him noticed.
And appropriately enough, it's plot centers on the lower ranks of the mafia hierarchy. A ladder that his stories will continually climb as his career grows.
Mean Streets is also where Scorcese directs Robert Deniro and Harvey Keitel for the first time.
Yep, when it comes to MS's signature movie movies, this is where it all started.
And mob flicks, not to mention American cinema, will never be the same.

First of all, movies don't scare me all that easily. A few did when I was a kid, but not anymore now as an adult. Therefore I rarely watch "scary" movies with the idea that I'm going to get frightened in any way. These days, I just judge 'em based more on the quality of entertainment that I get from the story, art direction, acting, blah blah blah....
That said,
boy, when I think of the time that this movie was first released and watching it as a kid, I know now why there hasn't been a movie since that has been able to scare me. This one got it all out of my system all in one shot (my mentality is probably still scarred from this flick in a manner that I, even as an adult, have yet to realize). From here on end, all other horror flix are just a step down for my traumatized pimp-ass.
Even before I saw the movie, I remember catching a preview of this on T.V., as it depicted the scene of when the girl was on the bed, cryin for help as it shook on it's "own" volition. That night, I was scared as hell to go upstairs to my f#ckin' bedroom.



That f#ckin' movie.......