70's Flicks ~ Remember?...

[Kolchak]

You nailed it on the head Ms Murph. I agree 100%

It seems just about every movie of that era that dealt with the good vs evil theme, showed evil to not be so bad and the good to not be so good.

IMHO, there seemed to be a time back then when with Vietnam, civil rights, Watergate and the other things we lived through, people were looking for answers and felt they couldn't find it through the conventions of the day and in their churches.

I think some film makers took advantage of the angst and anger and uncertainty of the future to say that morality was subjective at best and wrong because those who espoused it were liars and frauds.

It was better to party with the devil, than pray with Jesus. I think there was a catharsis involved for those in their 20s and early 30s that the deviance of the day gave them. I'm not saying its right, but I think it played into that generations fears and they fed off of it.

On a positive note I doubt if they stayed that way very long, and most returned to a stasis somewhere in the middle. I was pretty young at the time and recall when Rosemarys Baby came out, Look or Life Magazine had a big front page spread that asked if God was dead? My mother freaked when she saw it.

I think that pretty much sums up what a lot of those younger folks were thinking and feeling.

Like you I was a fan of the late Edward Woodward, mainly for his role as the Equalizer. BTW...That TV show and how it dealt with cold war espionage was much closer to reality than many viewers knew.


But getting back to Wicker, I'm not going to lie to you though, as a teenage boy with healthy urges, getting to see Britt Ekland and other very attractive young ladies prancing around in the all together was a treat too. lol!

You might want to check out a British movie called Hot Fuzz, it was a comedy cop show with a fair amount of British type humor. I was told it was Edward Woodwards last movie and he plays a bad guy. No gratuitous nudity but a little bit violent in parts. Still a funny show, kind of a cross between Mr Bean and Benny Hill.

[Murfreesboro]

Very thoughtful response, Kolchak. I was 15 in 1970, a little younger than the folks for whom most of those movies were made. And I came from a very conservative part of the country (Mississippi), where the up-ending of long-held social values was not received well.

I did see Rosemary's Baby when it first came out. I was 13, I think, and the movie rating system hadn't been invented yet. Shortly afterward, it was, and Rosemary's Baby was rated R. I was such an innocent at the time that most of what it had depicted (the R-rated stuff) went right over my head.

I used to love The Equalizer. I'd buy it if I were ever to see it on DVD, but I haven't. I think the first movie I ever saw Woodward in was Breaker Morant. Have you ever seen that one? It is terrific.

[Kolchak]

I'm a Southern kid too, so I can empathize with what you say. You know how we are in the South, all I wanted to do was hunt, fish, play football and chase girls when I got a little older.

I didn't start to ponder the eternal questions until I went to work for Uncle Sam and people started shooting at me or trying to blow me up. Mortality and morality became very real at that point.(sigh)

I was 10 in 1970 and was too much of a wimp to Watch Rosemarys baby. I had been told how scary it was, and when I finally saw it about 6 or 7 years later, I couldn't figure what all the hub-bub was about.

The Exorcist was much scarier.

Of course now with all that time gone by, when I think of Mia Farrow, I think of Woody Allen and Frank Sinatra. Go figure? LOL.

Breaker Morant was an excellent movie. And that reminds me.

I saw Breaker Morant one late night on cable. When it ended, Mad Max came on and it was the one released in Australia. No joke! You couldn't understand 80% of what Mel Gibson said! LOL!

Good thing he finally learned to speak American LOL!

Btw...They have the Equalizer on DVD now. Not cheap though, I saw it at Barnes & Noble and it was like $39.00 for 1 season.

[Boogeyman]

http://dvdpricesearch.com/cgi-bin/dvdsearch2

Just click on DVD price check and it opens another window showing available outlets and their prices.

[Murfreesboro]

Oh, thanks for the heads-up about The Equalizer! I'll have to ask my husband if he'd be interested in that. I bet he'd like to have it, too.

And thanks for the link to that site, Boogeyman!

I didn't know that Mad Max had had a different version for Australians. Funny!

[Paul Melniczek]

I don't know if anyone mentioned it, but DONT'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK was one of the creepiest movies from that era, starring Kim Darby. NIGHT GALLERY also was steeped in weirdness. I have the first season on DVD. And although I believe it was in the 80s to early 90s, DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW is excellent, with a simplistic but effective musical score. Going backwards again, anyone remember THE DARK SECRET OF HARVEST HOME, and of course Disney's THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH? The good ole' days...

[Boogeyman]

For some reason, I can't forget watching the Manitou. It was a TV movie from 1978. It kinda scared me but I was nine. Of course the effects were terrible even then, but I remember it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077904/?ref_=sr_1

[NeverMore]

That little doll in 'Trilogy of Terror', with Karen Black. Still have nightmares about that booger.

[Murfreesboro]

I don't know if anyone mentioned it, but DONT'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK was one of the creepiest movies from that era, starring Kim Darby. NIGHT GALLERY also was steeped in weirdness. I have the first season on DVD. And although I believe it was in the 80s to early 90s, DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW is excellent, with a simplistic but effective musical score. Going backwards again, anyone remember THE DARK SECRET OF HARVEST HOME, and of course Disney's THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH? The good ole' days...

I waited a lifetime to get Scarecrow of Romney Marsh on DVD. Took them for freakin' ever because of some royalty squabble with the novelist who wrote the original story.

[Spookymufu]

That little doll in 'Trilogy of Terror', with Karen Black. Still have nightmares about that booger.

that one freaked me out as a kid.....

[Kolchak]

Seeing Karen Black squatting, with that knife and teeth at the end of Trilogy of Terror is still an all time great!!!

Seeing Tony Curtis in Manitou was a great flick! I had forgotten all about it! Looks like Jamie Lee, picked up something from her old man after all!.....Although I'm still happy she "developed" in other ways too! LOL!

[Pumpkin_Man]

AND, lest we forget:

"The Amityville Horros" Originaly out in 1979
"Harvest Home" Mid 1970s made for tv
"Grizzly" 1976 (That's another one I had to screen on VHS)
"House of Dark Shadows" 1970
"Night of Dark Shadows" 1971 (I think but I'm not sure)

Mike

[Kolchak]

Mike, Grizzly was filmed here in Georgia, and I remember talking it over with my friends if they wanted to go up to where they were filming and get jobs as extras. They had adds in all the papers wanting younger guys and adults to be in the movie. As usual we chickened out, but my folks probably would have said no anyway.

It was kind of a silly premise, considering that grizzly bears have never been found in this part of the country. All it was, was an attempt to climb on the Jaws bandwagon.

It seemed for awhile that every creature in the world was having a scary movie mad about it. Remember Night of the Lepus? It actually predates Jaws, but it was about giant killer rabbits. It was a serious movie too. Poor Stuart Whitman was in it. Hardly a legacy to motion picture making.

I never laughed so hard at anything.

They had these regular sized rabbits and put them into a toy town and then turned the camera on slow motion and had them "rampage" and knock the cardboard toy buildings down!

The new Dark Shadows is a real funny movie too, btw. Johnny Depp is rapidly becoming one of my favorite actors of all time.

[NeverMore]

Hey Kolchak, how far away are you from where they film Walking Dead? I saw a picture on Reddit the other day that someone took when they visited the town that serves as Woodbury.

[Kolchak]

They film it all over Atlanta, and out in the suburbs too. About 2 years ago I had to re-route an entire trip one Sunday because they had the flipping streets near Georgia Tech shut down.

While stuck in traffic I watched them film the same scene over, and over and over and over and over and over.....

The scene was a U-Haul going backwards for about two blocks. I never knew backing up was so *&^% important to a TV show!! LOL!

Zombieland was also filmed in downtown Atlanta and out in the suburbs where I live and work. I did security one night for the set they had up, and saw Woody Harrelson the next day before I left. He's not as tall as I thought.