One thing that makes the 70s special is that regardless of depth for the year, there’s an all timer at the top of the list. 1978 is pretty weak as a movie year in general, but the top 2, oh man: we’re talking a Mt. Rushmore level comedy AND horror movie. You might already know which films I’m talking about, but to find out my order you’ll have to read on.
It’s utterly pointless, but Roy Scheider’s mere presence keeps this film fun, and the kills are at least knowingly funny or outrageous. Once I see one of the honorable mentions, this will probably drop out. But minor congrats to my shark stans!
Sometimes one joke can sustain an entire movie. Cheech and Chong built their whole aura around smoking pot as we know, But the minute they wrote “marijuana van” into the script, this movie practically wrote itself into comedy lore, mining all the possible jokes about getting high and the stereotypes involved you can think of.
You slowly realize watching this trailer that it is an animated film that is NOT meant for kids. The UK adapted the beloved Richard Adams novel into an adult animated film about rabbits searching for a new home, encountering all sorts of civilizations and danger along the way.
The best picture winner is a delight of nonsense. Warren Beatty stars as a man who’s brought to heaven too early, returning in a different body of a man murdered by his wife. This movie gets points for taking a dumb premise and somehow making it really sweet, with Beatty’s affable charm stitching together all the implausible stuff going on in the movie.
All a great musical needs to be a fun time is catchy songs. Well Grease has them in droves, all time numbers that are sung to this day. Plus Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta are totally adorbs as the young pair hoping to fall in love.
This might be my favorite sci fi premise ever: pod like aliens take over your body and copy you if you fall asleep. The 1978 remake modernizes the story’s themes to be about dehumanization from Vietnam and paranoia in the Cold War Era, retaining the depth the 1956 classic brought to the viewing audience, with a little more conspiracy to mess with your head.
Early signs superhero movies were gonna be a big deal start with Richard Donner’s feature film about the Man of Steel: an alien sent to Earth with incredible power. Donner also showed how the villain was going to be the much more interesting character, as Gene Hackman has a blast playing ruthless power hungry Lex Luthor.
I wish Michael Cimino found a way to cut a large chunk of its first hour out of the movie. Because what follows is one of the greatest war movie arcs I’ve ever watched, as Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro enlist to fight in Vietnam….and deal with the ramifications of PTSD from going to war.
There’s no other way to say it: this is one of the great horror films of any lifetime. John Carpenter’s simple story terrifies us from the horrors of the first person perspective, shocks us with who’s behind the mask, then uses that masked man (Michael Myers) to terrify Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and other innocent teenage girls on Halloween night. The music, the scares, the acting. It’s just: perfect. And scary as hell.
Double secret probation. Toga Parties. Fraternity Hazing. Sororities. Pranks. Douglas Kenney and Harold Ramis penned the movie every college bound student watches. The joys of Kenney and Ramis’s script is how it laughs as the people who’ve become drunk on power, like the mayor or dean, refusing to do what they want in favor of (in one of the all time great endings in movie history) a futile, stupid gesture. It’s crass. It’s boundary pushing. It’s also the funniest film of the 70s, and maybe of all time.
