My Life In Film: 1975

Update: Now part of an ongoing series of videos on Youtube, which will continue the years from this point onward…

Choosing my five films to watch from 1975 could be quite simple this month.  If you recall I try to pick three I enjoy but maybe haven’t watched in a while, or just want an excuse to revist, one I’ve never seen, and one I’ve seen and hated.  Well, take a look at the top five films for the year (US box office gross), and there you have all five, organised exactly as I described…

  • Jaws
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Showimages-11
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
  • Dog Day Afternoon
  • Shampoo
  • The Return of the Pink Panther
  • Funny Lady
  • The Apple Dumpling Gang
  • Aloha, Bobby and Rose
  • The Other Side of the Mountain

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However that would be too easy – after all, Jaws and Rocky Horror are regular watches here, so picking them both feels like a cheat.  In addition, it would make for a short article this month if I were to simply do this rather than trawling through the list of releases on 1975 for those that catch my eye.  So, on with the show…

1975 was an important year for me (and, indeed, for the industry) in film – not because of anything that I did then (I was 2 years old), but because it was the year that George Lucas formed Industrial Light and Magic, which means that a certain sci-fi adventure that impacted me 2 years hence was in production.  It was also the year that prominent film critics Siskel and Ebert got their break on a film review show called Sneak Previews, thrusting the art of the critic into the public conscience in a whole new way.  Plus there’s that small film about a  shark that defined the concept of a Summer Blockbuster, paving the way for many event films to come in the decades since, whilst also letting a small time director called Steven Spielberg get a shot at doing something great.  I wonder what happened to that guy?

Anyway, 1975 also contains a fair few films that I’ve never actually gotten around to watching, which I feel I really should have.  Take, for example, Barry Lyndon, regarded by many as Kubrick’s finest film, and a film which sits in my Kubrick collection, yet I’ve never gotten around to watching it.  How about the critically acclaimed Dog Day Afternoon, starring Al Pacino, and directed by Sidney Lumet?  Hard Times by Walter Hill, and starring Charles Bronson?  Or even The Man Who Would Be King?  Yup, there’s quite a few films of this year that I try to divert conversations away from whenever discussing related topics with like-minded film folk.

downloadHowever, there are many that I have seen from this year, and quite a few which see repeated viewings.  1975 was the year we were introduced to Tim Curry’s Sweet Transvestite in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  If any male had the ability to make anybody question their sexuality it was the pheromone-spewing Dr Frank-N-Furter, parading around in stillettos and stockings.  But the film is more than just cross-dressing antics, as it is a loving homage and parody of the classic B-movie era of film-making.  Adapted from the stage production by creator Richard O’Brien, the film is an immense pleasure from start to finish, and features an array of names from Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon as Brad and Janet, to Meat Loaf, Charles Gray, Patricia Quinn, and a variety of British thespians in assorted roles.  If you’ve never had the pleasure of watching it, then do so.  Elsewhere, another musical was causing a bit of a stir, as Ken Russell’s adaptation of the rock opera Tommy (by The Who) hit the screens.  With a cast including Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Elton John, Jack Nicholson, Tina Turner, and (of course) The Who themselves, the film received a good reception, and was a fine testament to the album that it was drawn from.

Jack Nicholson could also be seen that year in the absolute gem that is One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, which was released in November.  Considered one of the most important films of the 20th Century, it was directed by Milos Forman and starred Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy, an anti-authoritarian criminal serving a short sentence who is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation.  There he finds a ward controlled by the authoritarian Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher).  Setting himself up as the hero for the patients, McMurphy challenges Ratched’s regime at every opportunity.  The result is a battle for the minds and souls of the patients between the pair…and one which I will delve into a bit more after I watch the film again.

download-5Comedy fans had a lot to love this year, from another Woody Allen political satire in the form of Love and Death – the finest film of his early career by a long shot, the balance of farce to satire was perfectly played, and Diane Keaton really comes into her own in the film – and we also had those bastions of British humour, The Monty Python team, tackling the legend of King Arthur in their own zany way with Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  There was also The Return of the Pink Panther, which saw Peter Sellers return to the franchise about the clueless detective Inspector Clouseau.

The 15th film in the Godzilla series crashed onto screens this year, a direct sequel to the previous year’s Gidzilla vs Mechagodzilla, however Terror of Mechagodzilla would also go on to be the least successful film in the whole franchise.  It wasn’t, however, the only disappointing film about giant monsters as The Land That Time Forgot saw Doug McClure and a few others stranded on an island rich with vegetation, and populated by dinosaurs!  A film which was great to see as a child, the effects were poor even for the time, opting for puppets rather than stop-motion, and watching the film now is only recommended after a plethora of drinks so you can have fun mocking the utter dreadful nature of it all.

The future looked bleak, if theimages-17 sci-fi films of the time were anything to go by.  Sports would have to be deadly in order to satisfy audiences, and Death Race 2000 and Rollerball were the deadliest of them all.  Both films have a degree of social and political satire, and both proffered a future vision where national entertainment is provided by bloody sporting events.  Death Race received a lot of criticism at the time of release, with Ebert giving it zero stars, but over the decades it has been garnering critical acclaim, as people take a fresh perspective on the film.  Indeed, many now consider it the better of the two films that year, with Rollerball initially being highly regarded but now suffering.

As always, that’s only the tip of the film iceberg for the year, and there are a wealth of other films I’ve not mentioned, such as Funny Lady, French Connection II (a rare example of a damn good sequel), Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Stepford Wives, Three Days of the Condor….the list could go on.  Instead I direct you over to Wikipedia to see for yourself.

So we come to the choice of five films to feast on from 1975, and there are plenty I could have chose.  Narrowing down was tricky, but I think I’ve got them…

First up is One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, a film I haven’t rewatched for about a decade, and which is about ripe for a re-visit.  Dog Day Afternoon is the film that I need to watch that I’ve never gotten around to.  Jaws has to be included simply because…well…it’s Jaws.  For the final one of personal pleasure choice I’m going to throw in Shivers, an early Cronenberg film that I’ve not viewed since I was around 19.

Which just leaves a film choice from the ‘didn’t like it when I first watched it’ camp, for which I’m going to watch Rooster Cogburn, starring the overrated John Wayne (in my opinion).  You never know, I may change my stance….but don’t bet on it.

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