70's Flicks ~ Remember?...

[Retrohal]

Burnt Offerings

and

Trilogy of Terror!!! That voodoo doll at the end! Aiyyiyiiyi!!!

[Pumpkin_Man]

Off the top of my head, this is what I could come up with. The problem is, that in the 70s, I was still pretty much a kid until 1977 when I reached my 17th bday and was finaly old enough to be admitted to an "R" rated movie. anyway, here is what I remember:

"Asylum"
"Trilogy of Terror"
"The Exorcist"
"The Omen"
"Race With the Devil"
"The Car"
"Halloween"
"The Texas Chain Saw Massechre"
"The Amityville Horror"
"Black Christmas"
"Don't Go in the Basement"

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

Strangely, I don't think I saw any horror films in the '70s. Disaster films, yes, but not horror films. I did see Rosemary's Baby in the late '60s, when I was 13. That was before the movie ratings came into being. A few months later, the ratings system was in place, and Rosemary's Baby was rated R, but I had seen it before it got a rating. I was such an innocent that I didn't really understand what was happening in the rape scene, which was shown in a surreal way. I just knew something very unpleasant and scary was going on, and that the devil was involved in it, and that Mia Farrow was shown naked from the waist up.

I remember seeing a movie called Magic in the late '70s, which starred Anthony Hopkins as a psychotic killer who thought he was getting directions from his ventriloquist's dummy. I am not sure if the dummy was really supposed to be supernatural, or if the audience just started seeing it from the madman's POV.

Nowadays I have both The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror in my private collection, but I never saw either when they were first released. I didn't even see Halloween when it first came out, though I love it now.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Murf, through out most of the 70s, I was too young to attend "R" rated movies, and my parents, my mother in particular, was dead set against me going out to see horror movies at the theatres. They didn't particularly like me watching them om tv either, but they tolerated it, but NO WAY JOSE was I ever allowed to go out to a horror movie. I couldn't even go and see "House of Dark Shadows" when it opened at the Marquette Theatre back in the Spring of 1970. Finaly, when I was about 15, my father took me to see "Jaws" at the Ford City Cinema. That was a Birthday present for my 15th Birthda, and the very first time ever I went and saw a horror movie in the theatre. The very second horror movie I went out to see was "Race With the Devil," which was at the Marquette Theatre. I snuck to see that one. I was a freshman in high school, but I still was not allowed to just hop on a bus and go places as we lived in Chicago. I also snuck to see "Earth Quake" when it was playing at Ford City. A buddy of mine and I took the CTA Bus there. My parents got smart to it, and I was in a heap of trouble.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

Oh, I'd forgotten about Jaws. Yes, I saw that one when it was new.

I was 17 in 1972, so I was "legal" to see R-rated films throughout most of that decade. However, when I was a teenager I seldom went to them, because R-rated movies were perceived as "not nice" among my circle of (female) friends. Later on in the decade, I saw many of them, of course, because at that time all adult-oriented movies were R-rated. Seriously, filmmakers would work to include just one line of dialogue, or one flash of nudity, to get the R rating, because movies without it were perceived as "kiddie" films and didn't make money. Happily, I don't think that is true anymore, but it was back then.

[Pumpkin_Man]

I was 12 in 1972, so it was a while before I could just walk into an R rated movie. Mosies typicaly were given an "R" rating, because of violence, as they were for nudity or adult theme. "The Passion of the Christ" was rated "R" and there was all because of the violence.

The "X" rating was used primarily to denote pornagraphic films. Those films were also only shown in certain adult theatres, too, and in my neck of the woods, you have to be 21 or older to see an "X" rated movie.

Mike

[NeverMore]

That doll still gives me the hee-bees!!

I was all about the Hammer films in the early 70s. If a Hammer monster film came on I had to see it. Some other movies I remember seeing for the first time back then were Exorcist, Carrie, Omen, Dawn of the Dead, Texas Chainsaw, Halloween, and Jaws, (duh!). Some other, more obscure ones I specifically remember were the Dr Phibes movies, Susperia, Willard, the original Crazies, Creeping Flesh, probably a lot more if I thought harder. Was Phantasm in the late 70s? I seem to remember around 1980. That movie creeped me when it first came out. Still does. The Tall Man is coming to get you!

[Pumpkin_Man]

I remember seeing the trailors for :Suspira" when it came out to theatres, but my situation was that we couldn't afford it, so I waited until just a couple of years ago and screened it when I got it from Netflix. It was an okay 'pop corn' flick, but hardly a horror "classic" imho. I did like Joanne Bennet (Elizabeth Collins Stoddard) from "Dark Shadows" was in it.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

Oh, I don't think I saw any of those movies when they first came out, not even Carrie, though I heard about it. And Willard--wasn't that the one about rats? I never saw that one, either.

I loved Hammer films on TV when I was a kid. I was probably watching them more in the late '60s, though.

Yes, R ratings are often given for violence, even today. Passion of the Christ earned its R rating, I think.

[Boogeyman]

I love Hammer horror now. LOL I own several on DVD.

[Pumpkin_Man]

I saw the original "Willard" on tv years ago, and there was a power failure about half way through it, so I missed it, and in those days they didn't repeat one movie 3 or 4 times a day. As it turned out, "Willard" didn't make great ratings on tv. It was edited for television, and it was also butchered up to fit in comercials, so a lot of people blew it off, so it was never on again that I know of. I am going to screen it tonight from my DVd quey on Netflix.

Tv is pretty much how I watched most movies before I was old enough to know how to sneak off to movies, and was still pretty much a main stay for movies before I was old enough to drive a car. In face, as 'namby pamby' as this may sound, I really didn't start going out to see a lot of movies until I was a Junior in high school.

Mike

[VanHelsingStandIn]

1976. Burnt Offerings with Karen Black and Oliver Reed. Check it out. You'll get a jump, I promise.

1971. Blood on Satans Claw with Linda Hayden and Patrick Wymark. I was only 11 but I fell in love with Linda when she walked around in her birthday suit! OH!! And the scary parts were good too!

[Li H'Sen Chang]

Don't forget Zombie from 1979 and also Phantasm is indeed from 1979.

Some other 70s horror

Prophecy
Zombie Holocaust
Alien
Wizard of Gore
Killdozer
Madhouse
Thje Wicker Man
Carrie
Eaten Alive
Jaws 2
Dawn of the Dead
Kingdom of the Spider

[Kolchak]

The Wicker Man was a great movie with Edward Woodward. Much better than the remake with Nick Cage.

Don't forget some made for TV movies too. Not super scary, but good nonetheless...

The two best TV scary movies ever, were The Night Stalker in 1972 and The Night Strangler in 1973. Darren McGavin was the man!

You also had...

Scream of the Wolf with Peter Graves and Clint Walker.
Its from 1974, and Jo Ann Pflug is in it too, but she is waaay ahead of the curve, because she plays a barista. She owns and runs her own pre Starbucks!

Another Clint Walker TV movie from 1974 is Killdozer. Weird but good.

Gargoyles from 1972 with Cornel Wilde as a scientist, and Bernie Casey as the Gargoyle. This was before Bernie started helping wimpy kids like he did in the movie, Nerds, or training reluctant spies like Dan Akroyd and Chevy Chase, in Spies Like Us.

A TV version and film version of The Car with James Brolin came out in 1977. Instead of posessing a little girl, this time some demon takes over a car...and mayhem ensues in the desert.

All good flicks.

[Murfreesboro]

I bought The Wicker Man with Woodward on VHS, because Edward Woodward was a favorite of mine. However, the movie is not a favorite of mine. First off, the nudity etc. seems dated to me now, because it comes so much out of that era when people were still ga-ga that they could show naked actors and openly address topics like that in the movies.

Mainly, though, I have issues with the story itself. The Woodward character is a bit of a prude, but he is sincerely concerned for the safety of the child, and his genuine heroism is used to trick him. The movie leaves me with a terrible feeling, because a genuinely good man is ridiculed and tricked into his death. IOW, the bad guys win. I don't like it.