“Drive, He Said”—but I have a penchant for works that conjoin athletics and revolution.
I’ve got to second Francisco on PHASE 4.
Okay, I’ll play too. Mike Hodges’ The Terminal Man and Pulp.
Moderated
Moderated
My standard list of 1970s films that far too many people I meet have not seen. Under rated? I can’t say. But my anecdotal evidence suggests they are underseen:
Smile
The Seven Ups
Charley Varrick
11 Harrowhouse
The Other
White Lightning
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea
Murder by Decree
The Wanderers
Semi Tough
Lady Caroline Lamb
Save the Tiger
The Cowboys
The Last of Shelia
Junior Bonner
Winter Kills
Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (yes, it is steampunk, and a lot more)
Assault on Precinct 13
The Kremlin Letter
Film Portrait
Dusty and Sweets McGee
Savages
Play It As It Lays
Mandingo
Thundercrack!
Mikey and Nicky
A Boy and His Dog
Opening Night
Valse Triste
Carriage Trade
L.A. Plays Itself
Bad Company (Robert Benton)
^ Dillinger, The Seven Ups- yes!
Across the110TH Street
Ulzana’s Raid
2 by John Frankenheimer-
I Walk The Line
Black Sunday
The Landlord [Ashby]
The Hired Hand [Fonda]
Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing [Pakula]
Junior Bonner [Peckinpah]
The Mack, one of the essential blaxploitation films and also a film with a lot of depth to it.
Cannonball! (Paul Bartel) before Burt Reynolds did Cannonball Run, this was the film, but sadly when I bring this film up people think I’m talking about Cannonball Run.
Altman’s Brewster McCloud a great little known gem from his career, perfectly blending fantasy and reality in a comedic way.
Detroit 9000 an interesting film about race relations.
Charley Varrick
oh, The Warriors – I just realized that’s a 70s film.
also, Larry Cohen’s The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover.
Rancho Deluxe
Slap Shot
Prince of the City
Prince of the City was ’81.
my top 10…
Figures in a Landscape
TR Baskin
Cisco Pike
Child’s Play (Lumet)
Leo the Last
Let’s Do it Again
The Wild Child
The Nightcomers
Up the Sandbox
The Fifth Cord
Woody Allen’s Bananas, not great Woody Allen but pretty damn entertaining.
Race With the Devil with Peter Fonda and Warren Oates.
The Losers (Jack Starrett) an interesting concept of bikers in Vietnam on a rescue mission.
Jack Hill’s Switchblade Sisters
Dirty Mary Crazy Larry and Vanishing Point, real car movies not like The Fast and Furious shit they’re putting out now. No those movies had more substance and heart to them and you felt like you were actually there in the car with these people.
“what about Wise Blood? what’s that film’s status now? I’m guessing the Criterion release helped?”
Yeah, I think the Criterion release automatically overrules any claim to “underratedness.”
A treasure trove of underrated gems…
Michael Ritchie’s ‘Prime Cut’
Brian DePalma’s ‘Hi, Mom!’
Robert Altman’s ‘Thieves Like Us’
Robert Altman’s ‘The Long Goodbye’
Sam Peckinpah’s ‘The Ballad of Cable Hogue’
Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid’ (Peckinpah’s greatest)
Carl Reiner’s ’Where’s Poppa’
Lindsay Anderson’s ‘O, Lucky Man!’
James William Guerico’s ‘Electra Glide in Blue’
Robert Benton’s ‘Bad Company’
Arthur Penn’s ‘The Missouri Breaks’
Don Siegel’s ‘The Beguiled’
Sydney Pollack’s ‘The Yakuza’
Philip Kaufman’s ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’
Martin Scorsese’s ‘New York, New York’
Ivan Dixon’s ‘Trouble Man’
John Carpenter’s ‘Dark Star’
Paul Schrader’s ‘Blue Collar’
Michael Schultz’s ‘Cooley High’
Walter Hill’s ‘Hard Times’
“Walter Hill’s ‘Hard Times’”
X2
NIGHT MOVES (1975) Arthur Penn
SLAP SHOT (1977) George Roy Hill
THE LATE SHOW (1977) Robert Benton
THE FRONT (1976) Martin Ritt
SMILE (1975) Michael Ritchie
Benji
The Doberman Gang
Won Ton Ton- The Dog That Saved Hollywood
The Shaggy DA
A Boy And His Dog
1. Bananas (1971)
2. Sleeper (1973)
3. Love and Death (1975)
4. Oh, God! (1977)
5. The Driver (1978)
6. Going in Style (1979)
Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends FTW!
The Hard Way – Le Samourai in Ireland. But American, kind of.
Silent Running – Tree hugging in space. But by an American.
They Might Be Giants – Sherlock Holmesy. But American. Definitely.
Wise Blood – Brad Dourif, Ned Beatty, Harry Dean Stanton… IN THE SAME FILM.
The White Buffalo with Charles Bronson, a deeply intimate western about two of the biggest legends of the West, Wild Bill Hickok and Crazy Horse, both chasing after the demon that keeps haunting them, the White Buffalo.
Caged Heat, by Jonathan Demme. Sort of like the French New Wave of women in prison movies.
Robert Altman’s Images a psychological thriller about one of the most complex mechanisms, the mind.
Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory, great direction and a great performance from David Carradine as folk singer icon Woody Guthrie. A very beautiful film.
Hardcore (79)
John G. Avildsen: Joe (1970)
JJ JENKINS
The Plot Against Harry