“And I must ‘fess that I helped the industry out by getting my kit off in films like Vampire Lovers (1970) and The Wicker Man (1973).”

Hammer Studios’ Scream Queen has written a groovy little retrospective column on 1970′s cinema. It doesn’t go fully in-depth into it, but it’s a nice walk down Memory Lane, nonetheless.

You can find here, on the Den Of Geek blog. Enjoy!

Cooler in the 70s: Car Chase Movies

Thanks to the current fuel crisis and the tanking economy, I tend to feel a pang of guilt whenever I switch the channel and stop to watch motorsports. As a kid, I loved motorsports and two of my biggest heroes were Formula One driver James Hunt and Motorcycle Grand Prix rider Barry_Sheene . Now I have the choice of NASCAR, F1, IndyCar, Drag Racing, MotoCross, Rally driving, Dirtbiking, etc… And I always feel like they might want to tone it down a bit and save some of that gas for the rest of us to keep the costs down a bit. Maybe play some NASCAR Thunder on the Wii instead, something like that.

Sure, there was an oil crisis also going on in 1973, but that didn’t seem to stop anyone from making the kinds of movies where the main object of entertainment is ostensibly a 70 minute car chase across the northern California. Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is one such film, but you could add Vanishing Point, Duel, Smokey and the Bandit, Convoy, Gone in 60 Seconds and Death Race 2000 to that list. Anytime you have a simple first reel set-up and 70 minutes or more of cars chasing each other, you’ve got a 1970′s hit movie. Add some desert-road diners, a couple of gas station fights, and at least one middle-of-nowhere motel, and you have a blockbuster on your hands.

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is about a simple a set-up as it gets. Peter Fonda and Adam Roarke rob a supermarket, and discover their getaway vehicle has Susan George in it. Peter shagged Susan something rotten the night before, in a motel, but unbeknownst to him she’s a wily drifter who discovers what they’ve done and forces them to let her tag along. Cue 70 minutes of spectacular high-speed car chases and mindblowing car and helicopter stunts.

There are some interesting points that make DMCL stand out from more commercial fare like Smokey and The Bandit, however. For a start, there’s no musical score. There’s a song at the beginning, one at the end, and a couple of times where Susan turns on the radio, or you hear one in the background, but there is no composed incidental music anywhere in the movie. It’s a strange effect that brings you closer and closer to their world, as you hear nothing police radios and V8 engines as the soundtrack to their lives.

Another thing is that, despite knowing that these are criminals that just robbed a grocery store, their reasoning behind it (Fonda is a wannabe NASCAR driver and Roarke is his mechanic, but they couldn’t get a sponsor to afford a car fast enough to enter any races) allows the audience to forget what they’ve done. We almost instantly like them, and all we care about is that these guys, with their free-wheeling lifestyle and easy charm, get away with it. At times, you even want their many attempts to ditch Susan George to succeed, as she does come across at a tad annoying. She is, though, an interesting character – a chronic liar, pretending to be a dumb blond trailer-trash good-time chick, but sometimes little moments of education and street smarts shine through, relentlessly clinging to Larry almost as a father figure, needing of attention and some kind of thrill in her otherwise mundane drifting life. The script finally gives her a backstory, provided by the police no less, but she herself has lied so much about her past I can’t even believe what’s on her criminal record. Suffice to say, she has one, and the two store robbers have one, and that means only thing. A shocking, but appropriate ending.

DMCL is a classic cult car chase movie that makes you forget how much gas costs now, even with the knowledge that back then, at the height of the 73 oil crisis, it was only 53c a gallon. Sit back, switch off your brain, enjoy the speed, and don’t forget that this movie, when it came out in 74, was distributed almost exclusively to drive-in movie theaters.

Cooler in the 70s: Minor League Hockey

Slapshot is one of the unsung heroes of sport movies. Violent, witty, politically aware, and poignant. It barely has a soundtrack, its protagonists are almost devoid of morality, and in the beginning the movie looks like it’s devoid of plot and going nowhere. Yet still, in the end, you know you love the Charlestown Chiefs, and feel like a lifelong fan. Maybe it’s Paul Newman’s leather suits or the Hansen brothers’ toys that does it. Either way, I can’t believe my mum allowed me to watch this when I was 11.

Cooler in the 70s: The Early 60s

Yep, here’s something else that was cooler in the 70s. The Early 60s. George Lucas’ American Graffiti started it, and movies like The Wanderers carried the torch. Teens cruised for chicks, listened to hand-picked perfect soundtracks, and slicked their hair into DA’s with flick-combs while waiting patiently for the hippies to show up. It really wasn’t about being oppressed or treated like objects, or hoping war doesn’t kick off in Vietnam like movies of the 80s or 90s would us believe. It really was a time of wonder and innocent groping in the back seat of your dad’s ‘Vette.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

Watched a 1974 movie called “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” yesterday, and it inspired me to start this new blog. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot stars Clint Eastwood and a young Jeff Bridges as an ex-bank robber and an over-enthusiastic drifter who wants to help Eastwood do one last job.

I remember this movie as a funny, sexy tale of two guys getting together to rob a bank. Instead it was true 70′s movie: An amoral, misogynistic tale, which seethes with hatred for the law and authority, and unabashedly celebrates violent solutions fatalistic . Despite it being nothing like the movie I remembered, I still thought it was brilliant. No surprise that the writer/director Michael Cimino would go on after that to make The Deer Hunter.

Sometimes I think to myself that we simply don’t make movies like this anymore, but we do. Only now, it would barely make waves at Sundance these days.

Anyhoo, worth checking out for very early appearances from Gary Busey and Catherine “Daisy Duke” Bach, and the weird people they meet on their travels: an exhibitionist housewife, a biker chick with a hammer and an attitude, a guy with raccoon in his passenger seat and a trunk-full of white rabbits… It takes more odd turns than a CGI car commercial.

Yes, sir. Highly recommended for anyone looking to enter the strange wilderness of American 70′s cinema. If only the DVD had a commentary track. I’d love to know what was going through Cimino’s mind when he wrote the bunnies in the trunk scene.

Keep on Truckin.