72

"Those who fail to learn from the brutal stompings visited to them in the past are doomed to be brutally stomped in the future." 

  -Hunter S. Thomspon, Christmas Eve 1972

"Kill everyone now. Condone first degree murder. Advocate cannibalism. Eat shit." 

   -Divine on her political beliefs, Pink Flamingos

Four more years. Those three dreaded words. A second term for a dreaded presidential figure. It's not 1984. It's 1972. We are still in the Vietnam War. It was the year 5 White House operatives were arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee. The US and the Soviet Union sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. NASA's space shuttle program is launched. And a little movie adapted from a Mario Puzo novel is released. 

It's another banger of a year for film. Once again exemplifying the bounty that this decade had to offer. Action, comedy, blaxpoitation, samurai, heavy drama, thriller, psychological thriller, zombie flick, character study, and so forth. Many of which are rough around the edges. 

TOP 30 OF 1972

1. Aguirre: Wrath of God

Ants conquering a hill and calling themselves gods. A raft overtaken by monkeys. Opening and closing shots that tower among just about anything put to celluloid. A precursor to the indifference of nature we will see in movies like Sorcerer and Apocalypse Now. 

2. The Godfather

I was around 12 years old. It was a Friday night which meant I was going to my grandma's house. A place where I would retreat to the back bedroom and gorge myself on the SciFi channel. Back when it wasn't known for Asylum Pictures and instead for Twilight Zones and Mystery Science Theater 3000. In the room there was this dresser where upon I discovered a book. It was a yellow pulpy paperback. The title read 'The Godfather'. I flipped through it knowing that it was a prestigous movie. Before I took up reading as a hobby outside of school, this was a book that would never be assigned in class. "How cool!" 

I would eventually see the movie and, like everyone else who sees it, fall in love. My love reached far and deep. I soon had to know everything about the Corleone Family. I would print out a family tree and timeline of events in the Corelone Family Saga. The family member who I would come to find the most fascinating was the consigliere Tom Hagen. I still do to this day. Say all you want about Sofia Coppola in The Godfather Part III, the biggest missing piece of the puzzle to that movie was no Tom. 

Watching it again for it's 50th anniversary, I found Walter Murch's editing and specifically the use of scenes fading out/fading in over Carmine Coppola's score to give this haunting weight. There's the fadeout/fade in of Paulie's demise in the car over Michael sitting alone in the courtyard. The fade out/fade in of Sonny's corpse by the tollbooth over Tom Hagen sitting down in the office, waiting to break the tragic news to Vito. 

3. Deliverance

'It does for the woods what Jaws did for the beach'. This was before Jaws, but the sentiment is felt. Movies set in the woods or the jungle have an elemental pull for me. This may have been the one that kicked that off. The sequence this film is most well known for has etched it's false teeth into my nightmares.

4. Solaris

Tarkovsky made three masterpieces in the the 70s. This was the first of them. It's also the movie I would point anyone new to this master to. 

Solaris is a prime example of using the form to dive into our innermost selves so effectively and transformatively. Emotions and memories are culled to the surface. Like hs other work, I feel the film has yet to reveal its secrets to me. Which keeps me coming back to it. 

5. Play It Again, Sam

The best Allen film of the 70's was one he didn't even direct. The art gallery scene is canon for me. 

6. Pink Flamingos

True outsider cinema. When people say John Waters, the image that seems synonymous with him is Divine eating dogshit.  

7. Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion

The movie that made Meiko Kaji a star and a grindhouse icon. The Female Prisoner movies are all good but this is the best place to start. It's a pop art blood soaked nightmare that is loud, chaotic, and bleak yet offers opulent visual stylization to keep you entranced. 

8. The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

Scott Walker's In My Room always comes to mind when I think of this movie. The staging of characters in a room that Fassbinder pulls off here is masterful. Looming paintings, twisted mannequins, confining spaces.  

9. Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart At the River Styx/Baby Cart In Peril

The second in the Lone Wolf and Cub series picks up where Sword of Vengeance left off and ups the ante on just about everything. The villains are cooler, Daigoro (and his cart) actually get involed(!!!), and the arterial spray is even messier. The original badass father-son duo.  

The fourth installment is the first one not directed by Kenji Misumi. The action moves further away from villages and into wide open landscapes. The baby cart is basically turned into a military tank in this one. 

10. Images

Want to learn the importance of sound design? This should be on the shortlist for your syllabus. Right next to one of the great female performances of the decade in Susannah York. One of the thinghs I loved about Altman's run in the 70's was the stylistic diversity. We saw him tackle the mosaic film (Nashville), a western (McCabe and Mrs. Miller), neo-noir (The Long Goodbye), comedy (MASH). Here he tackles the psychological thriller and as per usual, succeeds. 

11. Top of the Heap

One of the many fascinating things about Black Cinema during this period were the myriad paths it took. It wasn't just blaxpoitation flicks. Top of the Heap sees Christopher St. John (Shaft) take the directing reigns of a study on the socio-political conditions of a violent black cop who carries out the orders of the man. Only to have his brain broken by this contradictory position, leading him to retreat into fantasy. 

12. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

The trilogy of movies Luis Bunuel did in the 70's (this along with The Phantom of Liberty and That Obscure Object of Desire) is anarchic cinema at the height of its powers. Destroying class systems one surreal sequence at a time. 

13. Across 110th Street

Anytime Yaphet Kotto is in a movie, it is an indicator you are going to be watching something good. In it's 102 runtime, this thing packs a punch. The performances, writing, dialogue, soundtrack and New York city shots are all top notch here. The inner-department racism of the NYPD is as contemporary a headline as it was back in 1972. 

14. Don't Torture A Duckling

Fulci's poison pen hate letter to Catholicism. Soundtracked with a stellar Riz Ortolani score.

15. All the Colours of the Dark

A giallo that mingles with satanic blood orgies, hallucinations and stars the gorgeous Edwige Fenech. There's nothing not to love here.  

16. Sisters

DePalma's first use of split screen an it won't be his last. Mix Hitchcock, some Argento-esque giallo, and some of Polanski's apartment thriller paranoia and you get what DePalma was going for here. 

17. Fat City

John Huston does Leonard Gardner's gritty novel of down and out boxers justice with Jeff Bridges, Stacy Keach and Susan Tyrrell all giving knockout performances.  

18. Frenzy

Hitch's last good film always leaves a lingering aftertaste. What if he was his age in 50's that he was in the 70's? Would the studio limitations he was under then no longer shackler him in the 70's? What work would we have? The closest we have to an answer is Brian DePalma picking up where Hitchcock left off. 

19. Tombs of the Blind Dead

Coolest looking zombies ever? Amando de Ossorio's Knights of the Templar are certainly in the running. This is the second film that is a part of a series. The thicking rolling atmosphere, the abandoned temple ruins, slow motion zombies on horseback. This is the type of shit I salivate over. 

20. Cabaret

The way Fosse shows how Nazi propganda slowly takes over German culture is truly chilling. It's all about that ending.  

21. What's Up Doc?

The first Bogdonavich I saw which endeared him to me. Not much of a Streisand fan, but she nails her role here. One of the highlights of the piece is a San Francisco chase scene that clearly influenced the chase scenes in Wayne's World, Blues Brothers and The Sandlot. 

22. Bone

Larry Cohen's incendiary debut is another one of those "will never get made today" movies. He gives us a gift we always wanted: Yaphet Kotto in a lead role. Cohen's brand of satirical horror is on full display here even when it's not attached to genre. 

23. The Getaway

McQueen's last true star vehicle was this 1972 Peckinpah flick opposite Ali McGraw. It plays out in an almost proto-Michael Mann way. Add to that a Walter Hill penned screenplay with brutal twists and turn that reveal the complexities of the characters and you have a winning formula. 

Forget the Baldwin/Basinger remake and watch this one.  

24. What Have You Done to Solange?

More like What Have You Done to Fabio Testi's hair? One of the best looking giallos produced during the explosion of the subgenre. Another giallo that deals with Catholicism. 

25. Un Flic

The last film from Jean-Pierre Melville. Over any director from French cinema during the 50s and 60s, Melville always stood out to me as the most exciting. Plus, Alain Delon is just beautiful to look at. 

26. Tales From the Crypt

British horror at this time was divided into two studios: Hammer and Amicus. The latter saw a release of a number of anthology films. Most notably, Asylum and this one in the same year. There isn't a particularly weak story here, which is why it's my favorite Amicus production. Doesn't hurt that it's based off the very thing that got me into horror in the first place. 

27. Death Line

Gary Sherman's career is underrated to the point of tears. Raw Meat aka Death Line is his first good work. "Mind the doors, please."

28. The Night Stalker

In the pantheon of good TV-movies, The Night Stalker is a worthy feature from a TV Series I would catch on the Sci-Fi channel.

29. Prime Cut

Michael Ritchie was on a hot streak from 1969 to 1975, directing movies that included Downhill Racer, The Candidate, Smile, The Bad News Bears and this movie starring Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman, Sissy Spacek, and a chase sequence featuring one of the biggest pieces of farm equipment I've seen.

30. Horror Express

As Hammer was pumping out movie after movie, the studio stable actors Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing still found time to star in something like this together.