Category Archives: 70’s Movies

Pigs! (1973)

Posted on October 23, 2026 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Humans fed to pigs.

Lynn (Toni Lawrence) arrives at a remote roadside diner that is run by Zambrini (Marc Lawrence). No one knows her past and she’s highly evasive about it when asked. She gets a job there and sleeps in a back room unaware that the pigs that Zambrini keeps out back are into human meat and anyone that crosses him gets fed to them. Will Lynn be their next meal, or does she harbor a few dark plans of her own?

The film was a family project of noted character actor Marc Lawrence who had been acting in films in supporting roles since the early 1030’s.  He wrote the script along with his wife, Fanya Foss, and it was meant to help their daughter Toni break into the acting business by showcasing her talents. When no studio was willing to produce it, he took out a second mortgage on his home in order to get it financed and then directed it himself.

I remember first watching this way back when I was in college and it was shown on cable TV as a late Saturday night entry of a bad movie night where panned films would get broadcast that would otherwise have little or no interest. At the time it came off as having no plot just a lot of meandering scenes that went nowhere. Watching it now uncut via streaming it works a bit better, but only slightly. There’s still a lot of moments that have no connection to the main story.  One in particular has Marc entering a home lived in by two old ladies (Catherine Ross, Iris Korn) and talking to them in a creepy manner while wearing clown make-up, but nothing ever comes of it. They go on living there and he goes on caring of his pigs, so why was this moment even put in. Was it supposed to be a dream sequence and if so, what was the point of it?

I did like the remote location, which was filmed in Ventura County, California near the Los Padres National Forest. There’s just something about being in the middle of nowhere that helps accentuate the fear. These people have only themselves and their wits to count on, but then it also begs the question; if they are truly cut off where do these customers that frequent the diner come from?

The main problem is more with the script that gives too much away. I don’t know if the tension is really helped by us seeing an unnamed victim being fed to the pigs during the opening scene. Constantly alluding to Lynn’s mysterious past hurts it too. It becomes obvious that she’s not stable and thus no surprise later on when her dark side fully comes out where if this had been better disguised it could’ve been mor of a jolt.

The special effects are subpar. The blood looks like paste and whenever someone gets stabbed there’s never any rip in their clothing. A person can’t bleed unless there’s an actual cut in the skin for it to ooze out. The loud noise that the pigs make, which sounds more like a train horn, is annoying and overplayed.

I also found Jesse Vint, who plays the sheriff, to be too inept. With dumb cops like him where all the clues have to be spoon fed into him before he can figure it out, just makes the story weaker because there’s no true adversary for the bad guys who can freely get away with their crimes without much worry of being caught.

Spoiler Alert!

The ‘twist’ ending has an extra pig getting ‘created’ every time a victim is eaten, but how does this happen? Are these pigs’ demons from hell and does evil magic doing the ‘creating’? This needed to be better explained and leaving it wide-open is not much of a payoff.

End of Spoiler Alert!

I will give credit to Marc Lawrence as his acting is engaging. His character doesn’t have that much to do other than standing around looking old and paranoid. The fun though comes with his over-the-top reactions to anyone who gets near his precious pigs and his extreme nervousness which he makes no attempt to cover up. On the flip side his character also becomes sexually attracted to Lynn and there are shots of him gazing at her longingly, which when you factor in that he was her real-life father is kind of creepy and in fact the creepiness thing about the whole movie.

Alternate Title: Daddy’s Deadly Darling

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 23, 1973

Runtime: 1 Hour 20 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Marc Lawrence

Studio: Ursus Productions

Available: DVD (Out-of-Print), Amazon Video, Screambox, Fawesome, Philo, YouTube

 

 

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting

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Scream Bloody Murder (1973)

Posted on October 20, 2026 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Child kills his parents.

As a young boy Matthew (Fred Holbert) kills his father by running him over with a tractor, but also losses his arm in the process. He gets sent to a Mental Hospital until he’s 18 when he gets released and with a metal hook replacing the arm he lost moves back in with his mother who has now remarried. He becomes upset at this due to having unhealthy feelings for his mom, so he kills her new husband as well as her. He then hithes a ride with a young couple and kills them before coming upon a woman artist named Vera (Leigh Mitchell). While she does paintings in her spare time she also works as a prostitute in order to pay the bills. Matthew does not approve of this and kidnaps her and holds her hostage inside a mansion, whose owners he has already killed, in an attempt to get her to change her ways.

This film, which was written by Marc B Ray and Larry Alexander, who also penned The Severed Arm that also dealt with a one-armed killer, could easily be considered the very first precursor to the slasher film genre. There are other more famous ones, but this one, shot in the spring of 1971, was the earliest to be filmed and it’s a surprise it isn’t better known, or achieved cult status. The color is faded and the film stock grainy as its never gotten a quality remaster, but in a lot of ways that works to the film’s advantage. Makes it seem more of an ‘underground’ flick and helps accentuate the grimy, seedy nature of the story.

The killings are effective and explicit for its time period; one segment even has him cutting the head off of a pet dog and the pace is good too. Most horror films from the 70’s suffered from too much talk and not adequate buildup, but this one jumps into the murders quickly and also frames them through a fish-eye lens, which helps add to the creepiness. It’s unusual that the psycho is the main character as most films like to revolve around the victim, but it manages to be compelling despite this and Holbert, who never appeared in any other movie, does a good job as he walks the line of being both scary and vulnerable.

The defect comes more with the unexplained motives of the character. Why would a young child want to kill his dad? Was his dad abusive? The story teases the subject of the son having an incestuous feeling towards his mother, but what brought that on? Was she coming on to him? There needs to be some starting point to what created the child’s thoughts for him to commit such a drastic act, and the film fails to show this.

Why was he sent away to the mental hospital? How did the authorities ascertain what happened? Was it considered an accident and the kid put there for having witnessed such a traumatic event, or was it deemed intentional and thus committed there for being a danger to society? Why is the mother so open to having him move back in with her? Shouldn’t she be a bit concerned and afraid? None of these questions even get touched on, but for the movie and characters to be fully effective and understandable these things really needed to be answered.

The actions of the supporting cast are equally confusing. Why would a young couple ever want to invite a strange kid into their car? I know it was the early 70’s, and people were a little naiver to things, but this guy should be sending out bad vibes to anyone with an ounce of common sense. Plus, since he’s 18 and reasonably good looking, he could make a potential play for the girlfriend, and no guy is ever going to invite someone into his car who could be competition.

The prostitute/artist lady is even more confounding. This guy behaves menacingly towards her right from the start, but she blows past the red flags like they aren’t even there. However, if a woman is in the habit of inviting strangers into her home to have sex with then for own protection, she should have a heightened sense of awareness and tap into every little troubling sign she sees and thus have this guy pegged as a bad apple almost immediately. Virtually anyone could see this guy was troubled, so the fact that he’s able to ‘fool her’ and she lets down her guard until it’s too late, is so preposterous it’s laughable.

Watching her try to escape and find help as she hops through the home with both her arms and legs tied up is moderately compelling. This film’s ending, in which he runs into a church and has the ghostly images of his victims attack him isn’t bad either. I also really enjoyed Angus Scrimm, billed as Rory Guy, who is better known for playing the Tall Man in the Phantasm film series. He’s terrific here in one of his early roles, most viewers probably won’t even recognize him, as a doctor who comes to the mansion to see the owner, whom Matthew has killed. The part is not significant, but he uses a wonderful inflection that makes the role, as small as it is, quite fun to watch and thus helps the film considerably.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: December 28, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 26 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Marc B. Ray

Studio: Indepix Releasing

Available: Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Fawesome, Plex, Tubi

 

 

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Kidnapping Movies, Low Budget, Slasher/Gore

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Thirst (1979)

Posted on October 19, 2026 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Kidnapped by vampire cult.

Kate (Chantal Contouri) is an unmarried career woman living in Melbourne, Australia who gets kidnapped by a group calling themselves ‘The Brotherhood’. They take her to their isolated retreat where they try to brainwash her into becoming a bloodsucking vampire like them. She resists their pressure tactics forcing them to use even stronger psychological methods. Dr. Fraser (David Hemmings) is against this feeling it has have gone too far, which puts him at odds with Mrs. Barker (Shirley Cameron) who’s obsessed with trying any technique she can to break poor Kate down.

Shot on location in Montsalvat, which is a scenic artists community located in Eltham, this marks one of the first vampire movie to come out of Australia and for the most part it’s quite unique. The part that impressed me is the psychological angle that gets inside the head of the protagonist using her home as a motif and showing how the walls cracking during one of her hallucinations helps to symbolize the breaking down of her personality. So many other vampire films have a character transforming, but never the changing thoughts and attitudes inside their head that has to come with it.

This is also one of the first vampire films I know that has a sound connected to the bloodsucking. Most other movies emphasize solely the visual act, but here there’s a loud slurping noise, which is kind of gross, but also effective as it makes the act that much more vivid and thus more horrifying. My only complaint, which was a defect with a lot of films from that era, is the color of the blood, which here is bright red though in reality it’s much darker. It appears almost like Kool-Aid and probably was and there should’ve been more of it around her mouth when she sucks or drinks it and not just on her bottom lip.

The tone is a bit unstructured. At points it seems to want to aim for satire as it turns the vampire locale into a factory where is produces blood and packages it into cartons like a dairy does with milk. It even gives tours of the facility to the public, which is funny, but also perplexing. What are the people thinking when they see victims strapped to walls while big machines suck the blood out of them? Wouldn’t someone in the tour become alarmed by this and go to the police?

The same goes for Kate’s attempted escape, which comes off as too easy. There’s only one guard and the fence gate is wide open allowing her to simply walk out. Mrs. Barker and her gang do ultimately catch-up with her but why allow someone to roam the countryside so freely? What are the perimeters? Are they on some sort of island? It seemed to make more sense that there would be an electrical fence of some kind and armed guards standing outside, which would’ve made her escape more perilous and exciting.

Spoiler Alert!

There are some really cool deaths with the best being Henry Silva’s where he grabs onto a helicopter as it goes high into the air only to fall-off and get electrocuted on some power lines. Mrs. Barker’s demise, in which she falls into a vat of blood, comes as a close second. The Dr. Fraser character though kind of ruins things as his placement seems a bit too convenient. It’s his efforts that allow Kate to breakout, but it’s supposed to be her movie and therefore she should be driving the action and not allowing some supporting member to do it for her.

The final twist doesn’t work as it has Fraser, her supposed ‘savior’, taking her to an isolated cabin only to then turn on her, which I had already predicted was coming. Would’ve been more of a surprise if Kate had through her own fortitude found a way out and comes back to civilization and then seen in her home with a friend making it seem that everything was back to normal only to then have Kate’s sudden urge for blood consume her and she attacks her friend. This scene does come, but it’s much earlier and then she for whatever reason returns to the vampire place when it really should’ve been put in as the final twist.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: September 28, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Rod Hardy

Studio: New South Wales Film Corporation

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Tubi

 

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies from Australia, Vampire Movies

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The Severed Arm (1973)

Posted on October 15, 2026 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: A one-armed killer.

Five men (David G. Cannon, John Crawford, Marvin Kaplan, Paul Carr, Ray Dannis) go cave exploring only to find themselves trapped during an unexpected cave-in. After 7 days and with no other food around, they begin to discuss cannibalism. No one is keen on the idea, but realize that if they want to survive, they have no other choice. They decide to draw straws, and Ted picks the longest one meaning his arm gets cut-off by the others, who will then eat it. However, once this is done and much to their surprise, they’re immediately rescued. Ted is still alive and taken to the hospital. The other men come up with the alibi that Ted’s arm was already injured during the cave-in, and they amputated it in order to save his life and the authorities believe them. Now 5 years later some mysterious stalker is attacking these same men one-by-one and cutting-off one of their arms.

This compact horror film, that was a pre-cursor to the slasher flicks that became popular in the 80’s, is surprisingly effective with an original music score and dark, shadowy lighting that helps to keep things murky and intense. The beginning though looks almost like someone’s home movie. The faded color and grainy stock are one thing, but the scene inside a morgue where the arm of a cadaver is cut-off and falls to the ground looks like it came directly off a mannequin and is tacky. It also ruins the suspense as you see the faceless assailant packaging it into a box and then mailing it. Instead, it would’ve been more suspenseful had the viewer not known the contents and then shared the same shock as the victim when he opens it.

The scenes inside the cave could’ve been improved too by having close-ups of the men’s faces with sweat glistening down their foreheads as they nervously draw the straws versus the mid shots which aren’t as emotionally impactful. The idea that a man could have his entire arm cut-off and not go into shock or suffer severe blood loss that would kill him is hard to believe but for the story to be intriguing I get why it was important that he survive so I was willing to overlook that issue.

The killings, which take up the bulk of the film, is what really sets it apart. While not gory they still have a riveting effect. Crawford’s death in which he collapses towards the camera is probably the best. I did like Kaplan’s too, which is shot inside a radio studio and features the killer smashing through a plate of glass in slow motion. My only caveat was the size of the ax which is small and appears almost like a toy. For proper visual affect it should’ve been a large one even bigger than normal.

The acting is good. Walley, who gained fame in the 60’s for playing sweet, all-American types like Gidget, is given an interesting change of pace. She’s a bit sterile at first but comes on strong later. I did though have reservations with David G. Cannon as the lead who also served the co-producer and apparently used that leverage to give himself a plum role, but his delivery and inflection are weak, and the part better suited to a more experienced professional.

Spoiler Alert!

The surprise ending succeeds even though I had started to guess that the daughter and son were the actual culprits and not the father who turns out to be stuck in a wheelchair. While I liked that they trap Cannon, the last of the men whose arm they have yet to cut-off, inside a make-shift prison there is unfortunately no sufficient conclusion. They give him a choice; either severe his arm or starve to death but then it cuts to the closing credits.

In retrospect I think after going so many days without food that he’d be too weak to cut off his arm even if he had wanted to. It would’ve been better had the sister offered him food if the brother, with ax in hand, was allowed to do the chopping. The final shot could’ve had him being tricked by begrudgingly allowing the brother to hack off his limb only to then be told that the ‘food’ would be the arm itself.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: November 18, 1973

Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tom Alderman

Studio: Media Cinema Group

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video. Fawesome, Plex, Tubi, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Low Budget

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The Last House on the Left (1972)

Posted on October 3, 2026 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Road leads to nowhere.

Mari (Sandra Peabody) decides to go out to a rock concert with her friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) to celebrate her 17th birthday. On the way they decide to pick-up some dope and find a young man named Junior (Marc Sheffler) standing outside on the porch of a New York townhome. Phyllis asks him if he has any marijuana to sell and he invites them inside where they meet Sadie (Jeramie Rain), Weasel (Fred Lincoln), and Junior’s father Krug (David Hess). Unbeknownst to the girls these four have all escaped from prison and are dangerous killers. The ‘family’ soon overpowers the girls and takes them hostage into their car where they drive them to a remote forest in Connecticut. It is there that Krug forces them to play humiliating and sadistic games before eventually raping Mari and then killing them both. The four then change outfits and seek refuge in a nearby home, which to their surprise resides Mari’s parents (Richard Towers, Eleanor Shaw). Initially the parents invite the four in believing their story that their car broke down and simply looking for a place to sleep. However, during the night the parents become aware that these people have murdered their daughter, and they plan a violent revenge.

This film is considered by many to be a landmark as no film before this had ever been so violent or graphic, and it set a whole new bar for horror films that followed. At the time though most critics deemed it exploitive and gave it bad reviews with the exception for Roger Ebert who lauded it for its intensity and realism. Today it remains controversial with some deeming it a classic while others like horror novelist Stephan King calling it a ‘crapfest’. This also includes several cast members, like Rain, Lincoln, and Peabody, who have regretted their involvement and openly labeled it ‘the worse movie ever made’ The film though does have some good points, but is greatly affected by being directed by a young Wes Craven, who at the time was a novice behind the camera having only worked as a film editor on a soft core porn flick before this, and thus he approaches things in an extremely heavy-handed manner where the film’s tone shifts wildly from being brutal one minute and comical the next.

I remember watching this for the first time when I was 18 and being highly disturbed by the scenes shot inside the forest to the extent that I was affected by it for several days afterwards as it made me feel like I witnessed an actual murder, which no other horror movie had ever done before or since. A lot of the reason for this is that it gets highly drawn out. Most scare flicks have the killings occur in quick fashion where one stab of the knife is enough for the victim to go down easily, or the gore is presented in such an over-the-top way that it becomes cartoonish and thus entertaining. Here though it’s played up in a more realistic fashion where the victim’s make an effort to fight back and even try to escape but are eventually overpowered. When they’re stabbed, they don’t immediately die but instead suffer in pain for quite a while. The cutaways showing Mari’s dog barking loudly on a leash as she is killed hits home that these are like real people with real lives and families that care for them and not just the generic character types that make up the usual horror film and for this reason alone the film deserves credit for going deeper into the dark ugliness of violence and how it truly is ending someone’s life.

On the negative end the ‘comic relief’ scenes involving the bumbling sheriff (Marshal Anker) and his deputy (Martin Kove) was ill-advised and takes away from the grittiness. The soundtrack, composed by Hess, runs hot and cold. The opening song done over the credits, ‘The Road Leads to Nowhere’ has a haunting quality and is effective, but the up-tempo bluegrass music hurts the building tension and should’ve been excised. The news report that the girls listen to while driving in the car where it describes Krug and company having escaped from jail and him killing a couple of nuns and how Sadie is ‘animal-like’ comes-off more as unintentionally funny and I don’t feel was needed. The situation could’ve just been a drug deal gone wrong, which happens all the time, and having to incorporate a backstory to the villains doesn’t enhance the story, or plot.

The third act, which features the bad guys getting invited into the parent’s house is quite awkward as well. For one thing just because their car has broken down shouldn’t mean that they must spend the night. Why not just give them access to their phone so they can call for a tow truck? Allowing them to sleep in Mari’s bedroom didn’t make sense either. At this point they still didn’t know their daughter had been killed and for all they knew could be showing up at any second and she wouldn’t be too happy about finding these grubby strangers in her bed.

Why didn’t the parents call the police when they realized that they had murderers in their home as that would be the normal response of most people? Granted the cops were buffoons so maybe that made them believe they would have to take matters into their own hands in order to get things ‘done right’, but there should’ve at least been a conversation regarding this before deciding to immediately go ahead with the blood bath.

I also didn’t get why Krug and his ‘family’ needed to pretend to be civilized anyways. They certainly made no attempt to hide their evil instincts from the girls, so why not be the same way with parents? They could’ve easily broken into the home with their guns drawn and tied up the couple and then while ransacking the place they’d come upon pictures of Mari and realized that it was the home of her parents. Krug could’ve even taunted them about this. Then the enraged parents could’ve figured out a way to free themselves and set the process in motion for the revenge.

Spoiler Alert!

Having the mother feel the need to perform fellatio on Weasel as way to get back at him was pretty ridiculous too. How many middle-aged, surbanite mothers out there would be willing to put a stranger’s dick in their mouth that’s been lord knows where, she doesn’t even make him wash it first, when stabbing him with a sharp kitchen knife would’ve been so much more convenient?

End of Spoiler Alert!

With all this said the film still has enough working for it and broke enough ground that it deserves its place in movie history. Sure, it’s lost a lot of its edge, and jaded horror fans of today may even wonder what the fuss is about but for its time it was definitely shocking and paramount in helping to usher in the modern horror elements we know today.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: August 30, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 24 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Wes Craven

Studio: American International Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Pluto TV, Tubi, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Horror, Slasher/Gore, Remakes, Movies with Nudity, Rape/Revenge

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The Nickel Ride (1974)

Posted on September 27, 2026 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: No one to trust.

Cooper (Jason Miller) is a member of a Southern California crime family and harbors a large set of keys to local warehouses that are used to store stolen goods. Things though haven’t been good recently as he’s starting to feel that his crime ‘friends’ are turning on him. It all starts when Paulie (Lou Frizzel) whom he is close to, is unable to fix a fight, and then turns up dead. Feeling the pressure after a few close calls he takes himself and his girlfriend Sarah (Linda Haynes) out of the city and to a country cabin hoping the distance will protect them, but there’s soon signs that they’re being watched and the cabin even gets broken into while they’re away. Will Cooper be able to stave off those that want him killed, or become their next victim?

This film is best known as being the first screenplay written by Eric Roth, he wrote The Strangers in 7A in 1972, but that was a teleplay, and who later went on to win the Academy Award for writing Forrest Gump. While the script does start out with some good conversational dialogue where it shows criminals more as people than caricatures the element that really makes this film interesting is the cinematography by Jordan Cronenweth especially with the way it captures Los Angeles. So many other films focus on the glitzy side of the city, but here we’re treated only to its working-class neighborhoods filled with grimy old buildings and factories until it almost seems like it was shot in some rust belt city in the Midwest. The yellowish tint gives it a faded look and helps to symbolize, at least for me, Cooper’s fading out of favor with the syndicate.

The film also has stellar performances with Bo Hopkins being a stand-out. He plays this Joe Buck type of character. A self-styled cowboy who seems more performative than anything and who Cooper initially discards as a non-threat only to have him slyly start to tease that line. Haynes, looking at her most beautiful, is also excellent as a country girl with a hick accent, who quietly catches onto things quicker than Cooper expects, and who has a physical altercation with him, which is quite startling. The movie also features Victor French, who later found fame on the TV-Shows of ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and ‘Carter Country’, but here he doesn’t have a mustache and I didn’t recognize him until almost the very end.

Casting Miller in the lead is the most interesting aspect. Initially I thought he was given the part due to his breakout role as Father Karris in The Exorcist, but this movie was shot in the fall of 1973 well before the release of the other one, which didn’t come out until December of that year, so why the producers would take a chance on someone who was relatively unknown at the time I don’t know. His presence though works for the most part. The supporting cast do a better job at acting, but the stiffness that he displays helps accentuate his character being out-of-the-loop and essentially lost in his own movie. My only criticism with him comes when Hopkins enters his office and Miller displays a fearful look. Most people would be scared at that point as they’d have no idea if Hopkins, a rogue, quick trigger, is going to kill them, but when you’ve been in the criminal underworld environment, you’d know not to display such a vulnerable emotion to your would-be advisory.

The movies downfall, and the most likely reason why it did poorly at the box office, is that it’s way too talky. People are expecting action with these types of movies and for the first hour there’s very little. Things improve slightly during the second part when the couple moves to the cabin, but even here there’s some head-scratching moments like Cooper deciding to store his handgun in a drawer of a table that’s right next to the front door. If a bad guy breaks in, which would most likely be through the front door, he’d have no way to get to his gun as the intruder would be blocking his access to the drawer. Why even store the gun at all? Since he had no idea when they might be attacked why not keep the gun on him at all times?

Spoiler Alert!

The most annoying thing is when Hopkins steals away Miller’s rifle and then shoots Haynes dead. Cooper is then forced to try and run through the forest surrounding the cabin in an attempt at evading Hopkins. However, this all turn out to be a dream, which is a cop-out. Then about 8-minutes later, Hopkins again comes after Miller and shoots him with a rifle and this is not a dream, but why even have the dream aspect at all if the showdown between Hopkins and Miler is going to be inevitable anyways?

I did like the way Miller strangles Hopkins as it’s more delayed than in other movies where you’re made to believe you can successfully strangle a person in only a few seconds, but in reality, it takes much longer. Miller even makes grunting noises while he’s doing it in order to emphasize the amount of strength and pressure that would be required, which is great. However, when Hopkins does finally die, his neck does not display any abrasions or red marks even though it should’ve.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 17, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Robert Mulligan

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD (2 Disc)

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Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

Posted on September 18, 2026 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Record producer exploits songwriter.

Winslow Leach (William Finley) is a talented, but unknown songwriter whose written a cantata based on the Faust legend. Famous record producer Swan (Paul Williams) overhears Winslow singing it and decides he’d like to use if for the grand opening of his new concert hall. Swan speaks with Winslow about the piece leading Winslow to believe he’s finally found his ‘big break’ but then doesn’t hear back from him for another month. Winslow then goes to Swan’s office but is kicked out when Swan refuses to see him. He then makes several other attempts to meet with him before Swan has him arrested on trumped up drug charges and sent to prison. It is there that Winslow realizes that Swan had his cantata stolen and now plans on using it to stage his own production while not giving Winslow any credit for having written it. This so enrages Winslow that he manages to escape from prison and storms the production headquarters only to accidentally fall into a record press machine that severely disfigures him. Now, while wearing a mask, Winslow continues to terrorize the place as ‘The Phantom’, which causes Swan to decide to make a deal with him. He asks Winslow to rewrite the cantata with beautiful new singer Phoenix (Jessica Harper) in mind to sing it. Since Winslow is secretly in love with her and also admires her immense talents, he agrees, but then Swan forces him to sign a contract in blood that has some very unusual clauses.

This was writer/director Brian De Palma’s attempt to mix horror with the irreverent quicky comedy of some of his earlier films from the late 60’s. The result is a mishmash of ideas with some of it mostly working. I really liked the visual style that has to be seen on the big screen, which I was fortunate enough to do at the Alamo Drafthouse recently, to fully appreciate it. I loved the over-the-top set pieces like Swan sitting in the center of his desk that’s made to look like a giant record. The outrageous costumes, garish music, quick edits, and his trademark split screens all help to make it highly entertaining on a visual scale.

Where it starts to have problems is with the humor. Like with De Palma’s earlier experimental films it has an engaging, offbeat quality that I liked and even found funny, but it gets a bit overboard and it ruins the tension. A good example of this is when Winslow goes to Swan’s office and gets kicked out, but in a very silly way that comes complete with cartoonish sound effects. This would’ve worked better had there been more of an attempt to make it a legitimate horror with only a little dark humor sneaked in versus an all-out camp feast that unfortunately hurts the story’s darker moments.

The acting though is quite engaging and does help save it even during its goofier moments. When I first saw this, years ago I felt Finley was miscast as the protagonist. With his thick glasses, bulging eyes, crooked teeth, and hair trigger temper, he actually comes off as scarier when he’s still looking ‘normal’ than after he gets disfigured, but in retrospect this helps create a more three-dimensional protagonist. A lot of people that are very talented in one area can also be quite dense in others, so the way Swan is able to con him so easily made sense. Also, if they spend a lot of time alone writing songs it would seem logical that they would be awkward socially, so his sometimes cringey behavior was a logical fit and thus the bespectled Finley, who would never be deemed a good-looking hunk like the conventional hero, was an astute casting choice.

Williams was another one that initially came off as wrong for the role. Originally De Palms wanted him to the play the part of Winslow especially since he is a real-life songwriter who wrote the entire soundtrack for this, but he wasn’t right physically for it, so asked if he could play the bad guy instead. Seeing such a short guy playing such an intimidating figure does come off as ironic, and Williams shows some surprising confidence in the role both with his terse delivery and facial expressions, but it would’ve been better had we not seen him right away. Instead, he could’ve been this voice we hear through the shadows and only had the big reveal occur during the second or third act, which then would’ve heightened the irony of his small stature even more.

Harper is fantastic in support. This gets labeled as being her official film debut and her angelic face, beautiful singing voice, and great dancing ability, solidify making her a joy to watch every time she’s on the screen. Gerrit Graham is hilarious as the bulky shock rocker Beef, who behind-the-scenes is quite effeminate, and the very rotund George Memmoli is great too as Swan’s no-nonsense henchman.

Spoiler Alert!

The way Swan makes a pact with the devil didn’t make sense and needed better elaboration. He apparently meets him while sitting in the bathtub contemplating suicide as he didn’t want to ever get old. The only question is why would the devil suddenly show up just because of that? There’re many people who contemplate killing themselves and some even do, but there’s no devil jumping in trying to make a deal with them, so why does he come into play here? A better idea would’ve had Swan, in an attempt to maintain his youthfulness, start dabbling in witchcraft and through this he would inadvertently summon the devil.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Release: October 31, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Brian De Palma

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Musical, Offbeat

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M*A*S*H (1970)

Posted on September 7, 2026 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rebellious surgeons break rules.

In 1951 during the Korean War Frank Pierce (Donald Sutherland), who goes by the nickname Hawkeye, arrives at the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital as their new surgeon. He gets placed in a tent with Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), but the two don’t get along due to Frank’s religious zealotry, so he gets transferred to another tent. Hawkeye then gets placed with another new surgeon nicknamed Trapper John (Elliot Gould) and the two, with their irreverent sense of humor and non-conforming ways, immediately become best friends. Not only do they break most of the rules, but they also routinely play pranks on others with their biggest ones being on Frank who falls for Margaret (Sally Kellerman) who is a head nurse.

The film, which is based on the 1968 novel ‘MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors” by Richard Hooker, which in turn was based on his experiences as an Army doctor during the Korean War, gets largely overshadowed by the TV-Series, which ran for 11 seasons and has become a huge cult hit. In retrospect I actually like the movie better. Robert Altman’s direction where conversations and actions overlap helps to give the setting a realistic kinetic feel where nothing seems staged. While I could’ve done without his patent whistling I still liked the portrayal of the Hawkeye character better here. In the series Alan Alda played him as a very talkative, loud, and opinionated person that dominated every scene he was in while here the character is more like just one of the guys that occasionally pushes-the-envelope, but only because he, like everyone else there, is a victim of the bleak circumstances that they’re in. This also has a much better balance between the humor and drama. The show had a tendency to get preachy but the movie manages to make the occasional serious point, but still overall remains consistently funny.

On the negative side it’s highly anachronistic with the characters behaving too much like it’s the late 60’s instead of the early 50’s almost like they’re a bunch of stoned, ‘free love’ hippies who found a time machine and decided to go back 20 years. While the sexual escapades are amusing it does tend to get one dimensional. Everyone is portrayed as being a sex maniac with no inhibition or restraint. Having some not engage, either because they just weren’t that into it, or wanting to remain faithful to their spouses/ romantic partners back home, would’ve given it a better balance and certainly been more realistic for the period.

Having Hawkeye immediately mock Frank when he wants to pray seemed off too. Granted there were atheists and non-religious people back then, but they tended to be in-the-closet as religion was still the dominant cultural force. If Hawkeye and crew got annoyed later on when Frank attempted to let’s say ‘convert’ them then it would be understandable, but upfront I’d think he’d not be so aggressive with his disdain and might even politely play along a bit, especially since he had just arrived there and wouldn’t know who else he’d be offending with his off-handed comments.

It’s all very disappointing the way Frank gets written out halfway through. I really liked the way Duvall played the role. On the TV-series the Frank character was a benign snobby dimwit that was constantly the butt of all the jokes and couldn’t do much about it, but here Duvall plays the part with an aggressive, even menacing edge that would’ve made him a great nemesis that should’ve allowed him to stay all the way through. Also, it’s a bit ridiculous that he gets put into a strait jacket after he has a confrontation with Hawkeye. Many people can and do get into fights and are not immediately deemed ‘insane’ because of it. If anything, he should’ve been handcuffed along with Hawkeye since it was Hawkeye who goaded him into it.

The Hot Lips character is another disappointment. Initially I thought she was great as her haughty ways helped give the proceedings some conflict, but then halfway through she does a complete Jekyll and Hyde. Initially she hates the place and just about everyone in it, even becomes a victim to a cruel prank, but then later during the big football game she’s seen on the side lines as a cheerleader aggressively rooting for them to win the game when logically you’d think she would be pulling for the other team.

Apparently, the movie’s logic is that since it gets revealed that she’s been having sex with Duke, played by Tom Skerrit, that this then ‘changed’ her. She’s now ‘liberated’ and no longer frigid/uptight, but it’s too drastic a switch that only further adds to the film’s overblown concept that sex can somehow ‘solve everything’.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: January 25, 1970

Runtime: 1 Hour 56 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Robert Altman

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

 

 

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Buddy Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity

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Rancho Deluxe (1975)

Posted on August 28, 2026 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Modern day cattle rustlers.

Jack and Cecil (Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterston) are two drifters who don’t work an actual job and instead rustle cattle and use the meat that they take from that to help pay for the basic things that they need. John (Clifton James) is the ranch owner who’s tired of seeing his cattle routinely mutilated and determined to find those who are responsible. Curt and Burt (Harry Dean Stanton, Richard Bright) are his ranch hands who John puts in charge to find the culprits, but they end up being of no effect despite them knowing that Jack and Cecil are behind it. After his prize bull gets kidnapped and he’s forced to pay a large ransom to get him back, he hires Henry (Slim Pickens) a legendary detective in cattle rustling to finally solve the case, but Henry proves, at least initially, to be just as inept and oblivious about the crimes as everyone else, which further frustrates John.

This was the first screenplay written by the prolific and irreverent writher Thomas McGuane, his second script 92 in the Shade, was also shot in 1974 during the fall of that year while this one was done in the spring and early summer. McGuance directed the other one himself while Frank Perry helmed this one and having an established Hollywood director behind the chair makes all the difference here particularly the cinematography by William A. Fraker that captures the majestic, mountains landscape of the big sky country, which was done on location in Livingston, Montanna becoming the first of many movies that would be shot there.

Like with McGuane’s other works it’s his offbeat, wry humor that keeps it entertaining and helps it stand out. There’re some truly original comical moments that had never been done before or since making this film even after being around 50 years still come off as fresh and inventive. Some of the best moments are when Bridges and Stanton play a game of Pong while having a discussion, which was apparently something they both did of lot of during breaks in shooting, so Perry decided to work it into the story. The shot of the bull inside a hotel is funny too though there’s no explanation for how they were able to get him in there without being detected, which could’ve heightened the comedy had it been shown. There’s also the scene where Bridges and Waterston have a sex orgy with their girlfriends and then the next morning get caught while still naked in bed by the girl’s elderly relatives, which I consider the best moment in the movie.

The dialogue has a wonderfully quirky quality working off non sequiturs and weird tangents like when out-of-the-blue Waterston asks Bridges if he believes in the tooth fairy, or when John’s wife, played by Elizabeth Ashley, asks him if he regrets selling their beauty parlor business while he busily frets about tracking down the rustlers. The best though is when Slim Pickens goes off on a rant involving a dream, he had as a slave in ancient Egypt while John tries giving him the latest updates on the case.

The characters and their goofy contradictions help compliment the absurdity. Bridges and Waterston are especially fun, some may even say this is a precursor to the character he played in The Big Lebowski, as a happy-go-lucky drifter with no direction in life, which they equate as being ‘free’. Even after they get put into the prison, they still have the same carefree mentality proving that state-of-mind is everything. James is also quite fun as the cantankerous rancher who’s always quite confident despite being wrong on everything. Stanton and Bright good too as dimwits who think they’re in on the game only to end up getting played badly. I also enjoyed Patti D’Arbanville who plays Bridges girlfriend Betty. She shows a very wild side with her sexual nature and drug use, but in reality, she’s most likely going to be spending the rest of her life in this small inconsequential town and working the same mundane job we see her doing at the beginning. Having her provocatively dance around while getting drunk and just before she partakes in the orgy is in a lot of ways her final act of rebellion before the clutches of the conventional life, whose claws I suspect she senses are already on her horizon, fully traps her in.

Unlike other movies the residents of this small town aren’t portrayed as being sheltered or cut-off but instead shown as being just as jaded as any urbanite if even more so. It also examines how the ways of the old world have been completely taken over by the attitudes and mores of the modern era where even the rural folk, at least the younger ones like the two sisters, compete to see whose ‘hipper’ and more with the times while wanting to avoid any association of the bygone era of their elders.

My only two complaints are the interior segments done inside John’s ranch home as the rooms came off as cramped and echoey. John was supposedly a rich man, so I wanted to see a house that exuded this with high cathedral ceilings and gaudy decor. Also, having Bridges and Waterston able to retrieve the $50,000 ransom money after kidnapping John’s bull, was too easy. I don’t feel John, or anybody else for that matter, would be willing to let go of their money quite so graciously especially to a couple of crooks. He should’ve either gotten the police involved to set a trap or done it himself by lying in wait at a careful distance with binoculars and waiting to see who comes to retrieve the briefcase full of money and then chasing them down when he spots them, which doesn’t occur, but logically should’ve.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: March 14, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Frank Perry

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, PlutoTV, Roku Channel, Tubi, YouTube

 

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Posted in 70's Movies, Buddy Movies, Cult, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Quirky

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Alex in Wonderland (1970)

Posted on August 21, 2026 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Director ponders next project.

Alex (D0nald Sutherland) is stuck in the classic struggle many young artists in Hollywood find. His first film that he directed was a big success both commercially and critically, so now he must carefully decide what to for his next project while trying to avoid the dreaded ‘sophomore jinx’. He aspires to do something that analyzes the political struggles of the time, but his agent and studio heads want him to avoid all that and just do something that will be a box office hit. While he longs director something that has impact and ‘makes a statement’ he still fears it not being a hit and thus crippling his career before its barely begun. He also must consider his wife (Ellen Burstyn) and family. He wants to move them into a bigger house in a better neighborhood, but to do so he must choose a project that is profitable. Can he manage to thread-the-needle by creating something that is both artistic and uncompromised, but still commercially appealing?

After the success of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice director Paul Mazursky found himself not knowing what movie that he should do next. Finding himself caught between doing something with mass appeal, but also artistic he finally decided on the ‘clever’ idea of making a movie about a director going through the same type of dilemma. On some level it does have it moments. I liked the segment showing a full-scale Vietnam-like war happening right in the streets of downtown Hollywood, which is surprisingly well mounted and both funny and vivid. The meeting that Alex has with a producer, played by Mazursky, is excellent too. Love how Mazursky uses flattery to try and ‘woo’ Alex into doing the type of project that he wants and tries to impress him with his expensive paintings hanging about to show him how he ‘must know what he’s doing in order to afford such stuff’ and how Alex dryly declines from getting committed to anything. Both men leave still on ‘friendly’ terms, but it’s clear that animosity runs underneath which for me is probably the most on target thing in the whole movie and something that should’ve been explored more instead of just dropped.

The rest of the film is not as engaging and meanders badly until it seems like there’s no pace to it at all. I loved how Mazursky casts his own daughter, Meg, as Sutherland’s kid, she looks just like her real-life dad, and how precocious she is, but her conversations with Sutherland seem endless and don’t help propel the story along and come off almost like someone’s home movie where the camera is turned on and whatever happens happens without any direction at all. The cameos appearances by Federic Fellini and Jeanne Moreau fall flat. In Fellini’s case he seems almost put-off and annoyed and spouts his lines like he just wants to get it over with. With Moreau Sutherland spots her while shopping like anyone can just bump into a legendary French actress while doing everyday activities and then the two break out into song, which is as tacky as it sounds. Not sure if this was meant to be a fantasy segment, or not, but it doesn’t work either way. Viewers of today will be turned-off by Alex’s friend Andre (Andre Philippe) who casually brags about sleeping with 16-year-old girls, which our protagonist almost seems to find amusing. Back in the wild 70’s this sort of thing might’ve been considered by the jaded set as ‘wink-wink’ but now is completely unacceptable.

Burstyn is as usual quite good but having the two argue about what house to buy, or what to purchase at the grocery store is quite generic and not compelling at all. On one hand I guess you could say it’s nice to see that Hollywood couples can have the same type of problems and squabbles as anyone else, but the movie needs something more to it. The attempts to mix the dramatic with the surreal doesn’t work and makes the film quite jarring. Had it been edited down and better structured then maybe, but it’s too wide open to the point that it gives the term cinema verité a bad name.

The most disappointing thing is that it doesn’t delve into the movie business enough. A viewer comes into a movie hoping to experience something that they can’t in real life, or at least appreciate some new viewpoint, but here it never gets going. It stays stalled the whole way with Alex unsure of what to do next. This should’ve ended after act one. In act two he could’ve gone through the process of casting and writing his next project and then in act three went ahead and began filming it. The quarrels and issues he has with his family could’ve been trimmed and intercut between the rest, so we still would’ve gotten a taste of his personal life, but not so much that it would get draggy while also giving us a good idea of how making a movie works from start to finish. Had it gone this route it might’ve been special, but because it doesn’t it ultimately becomes dull and pointless like a movie in desperate search of a script.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: December 17, 1970

Runtime: 1 Hour 51 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Paul Mazursky

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD-R (Warner Archive Collection), Amazon Video, YouTube

 

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Quirky, Surreal/Fantasy

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