The Stewardess is Flying the Plane!

So I've realized recently that I have a big-time affinity for 1970s movies. And not just for the camp zeal of some of them. After having seen A Decade Under the Influence, I realized what appeals to me about them is the very stark and gritty realism of most of them, a strange transition between the movies from decades prior and movies nowadays. I also find the realism to be... um... a lot more realistic than the realism of current movies. Don't ask me why as I've not quite pinpointed them yet--perhaps because even independent movies nowadays seem a lot more slick and seamlessly put together, whereas movies of the 70s had a bit more of a rough edge, including acting, dialogue, cinematography, etc.

But I ramble.

Reason being, yesterday I stumbled across a book in the Recent Acquisitions part of the library called The Stewardess is Flying the Plane!: American Films of the 1970s and got geeked up spending some of my evening flipping through it.


It's arranged by genre, so you have all your disaster movies, all your westerns, and (be still my heart) all your horror flicks in their own chapters. There's flashy pictures to gawk at, and although the text isn't anything fantastic (it tries to be so all-inclusive that sometimes nothing more than a sentence will be devoted to explaining a movie), it does offer up some entertaining tidbits about the movies listed (i.e. the little boy who plays Damien in The Omen got the part after punching someone in the balls at the casting call). Definitely an entertaining book for anyone remotely interested in films from the 70s.

My only point of contention: A Clockwork Orange, a horror movie? REALLY?!?!

List of 1970s flicks that I now want to see:

• Badlands


• Network


• Klute


• The Towering Inferno


• Chinatown


• Three Days of the Condor


• All the President's Men


• Marathon Man


• The Fury


• The Missouri Breaks


• The Sting


• Sleuth


• Caged Heat (tee hee)


• Thieves Like Us


• Midnight Express


• The Panic in Needle Park


• Lenny


• The Devils


• Carnal Knowledge


• Kramer vs. Kramer


• Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore


• Shampoo


• Last Tango in Paris


• The Last Picture Show


• American Graffiti


• Pink Flamingos


• Manhattan

Obligatory 1970s Horror Flicks:

• The Brood


• Rabid


• Shivers


• Eaten Alive


• Mephisto Waltz


• Amityville Horror


• Martin


• Magic


• Damien: Omen II


• Coma


• Legend of Hell House


• Burnt Offerings


• Eraserhead


• The Sentinel


• Black Christmas


• When a Stranger Calls


• It's Alive


• Blood Sucking Freaks

Personal Favs:

• Jaws


• Taxi Driver


• Apocalypse Now


• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest


• A Clockwork Orange


• Annie Hall


• The Conversation


• Dog Day Afternoon


• Serpico


• The Exorcist


• Halloween


• The Omen


• The Muppet Movie

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