A screaming came across the sky...When are ya gonna come down, when are ya gonna land...I am the motherfucking shore patrol...I can almost remember their funny faces...When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional...She's the Godmother of them all...The power of Christ compels you...and everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.
January- Nixon is inaugrated for a second term as president.
Roe v. Wade: The Supreme Court overturns state bans on abortion.
Schoolhouse Rock debuts.
Nixon announces a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam.
Watergate burglars G. Gordon Liddy and James McCord were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and placing illegal recording devices in the DNC Headquarters.
February- Members of the American Indian Movement begin a 71 day occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Around 200 people participated in protest of the US government's failure to honor tribal treaties.
March- Pink Floyd release Dark Side of the Moon and begin a 736 week occupation of the Billboard 200.
Eight members of the Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September took control of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Sudan, taking 10 diplomats hostage. In exchange for the hostages, the terrorists demanded the release of several Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons.
Marlon Brando boycotts the Oscars.
April- The World Trade Center opens in New York City
Influential avant garde artist Pablo Picasso dies
July- Legendary actor and martial artist Bruce Lee dies at the age of 32
September- In Chile, a group of military officers led by Augusto Pinochet, seized power in a coup d'etat overthrow of democratic socialist Salvador Allende.
October- Elton John releases what is considered to be his best work, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
The Sydney Opera House opens.
The price of oil increases by 200% due to the Yom Kippur War and Arab nations restricting oil from nations supporting Israel.
December 26- The Exorcist opens in theaters.
New Hollywood was burning bright. The directors of the movement had a love for Classic Hollywood films as they were reacting to it. Just look at The Long Goodbye's Philip Marlowe and compare it to The Big Sleep's Philip Marlow. Film noirs of the 40s had a moral code. Bleak, yes, but there were rules. You'd be hard pressed to find morals in Altman's version of Marlowe.
The crime film may have hit its peak this year. With it, came a flood of bleak images. The shocking aftermath of gang rape in Serpico. The violent criminals of Mean Streets. If you think you can escape the urban spaces, think again. Terence Malick's Badlands tells of a killing spree playing out in South Dakota. In Depression-era Chicago, two grifters seek the big con in The Sting. The crime film during this time was populated with the lonely, friendless small timers, pool hall junkies, ordinary people taking matters into their own hands. But that wasn't all the year had to offer.
When you go through this year, an emerging pattern of quality and diversity kept itself present. Comedies like Sleeper nestle alongside experiments like F For Fake. Grindhouse classics like Coffy play on 42nd Street. If you go up a few blocks to a more refined theater where you don't have to fear for you life, you can treat yourself to American Graffiti.
If you turned on CBS on a Satuday night, this was the programming:
8:00 All In the Family
8:30 MASH
9:00 The Mary Tyler Moore Show
9:30 Bob Newhart
10:00 Carol Burnett
In addition to the amount of high quality movies we got, this year might also be my favorite for music. Progressive rock bands were firing on all cylinders. The Glam scene was still going strong. Classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin and The Who were pumping out some of their best works.
I might as well leave a list here:
1. Pink Floyd- Dark Side of the Moon
2. Elton John- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
3. Genesis- Selling England By the Pound
4. Paul McCartney and Wings- Band On the Run
5. Led Zeppelin- Houses of the Holy
6. Frank Zappa- Over-nite Sensation
7. King Crimson- Larks Tongues In Aspic
8. The Who- Quadrophenia
9. Iggy Pop and the Stooges- Raw Power
10. Yes- Tales From Topographic Oceans
11. David Bowie- Aladdin Sane
12. Tom Waits- Closing Time
13. Roxy Music- For Your Pleasure
14. Budgie- Never Turn Your Back On A Friend
15. Black Sabbath- Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
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Then you had the books. Thomas Pynchon released his biggest and most complex work to date with Gravity's Rainbow, JG Ballard unleashed his masterpiece of auto erotica Crash, Hunter S. Thompson produced a more than worthy follow up to Fear and Loathing with Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail '72, Kurt Vonnegut went all out with his biting American satire Breakfast of Champions. The amount of high quality art in every medium coming out was just insane.
So we arrive at a set of questions: why was 1973 more productive in high quality art than the current year? Why is 1973 considered a better year in film than the current year?
Let's look at two charts.
The top grossing films of 1973:
The Exorcist
The Sting
American Graffiti
Papillon
The Way We Were
Magnum Force
Live and Let Die
Robin Hood
Paper Moon
Serpico
The top grossing films of 2023 (Domestic):
Barbie
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Spider-Man: Across the Universe
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Oppenheimer
The Little Mermaid
Avatar: The Way of Water
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
John Wick: Chapter 4
Sound of Freedom
The giant outlier in this observation, if you don't count right wing propaganda like Sound of Freedom, being Oppenheimer. A film that dominated the summer with another fantasy film, Barbie.
Things are worse now than they were in 1973. Only this time, it's not being reflected through art. There are caveats of course. A24, indie and foreign films. But we're looking at the broader picture here. Instead, escapism has taken center stage. Superhero movies and fantasy worlds dominate the multiplexes. Corporations have gotten smarter. Who needs a revolution when they can sell you a watered down version of one? Public Enemy was right about the revolution not being televised. Today, it won't even go viral on YouTube. But let's go back to the subject at hand: 1973.
In three years, the US would have a new president and some sense of direction. We were still carrying the collective PTSD of the late 60s. Nixon was still in office and the fallout from the Watergate break- in had captured national attention. Tune in to find out what happens with this development next year. For now, I leave you with the best of a year littered with films that will make countless best-of lists. Whether the one coming for you is a one-eyed hell raiser with a shotgun or the Godmother of 'Em All. You're gonna find something to your liking.
Because there is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark.
1. The Exorcist
William Peter Blatty originally went to bat for William Friedkin to direct. The studio refused to consider him. Meanwhile, the studio approached Arthur Penn to adapt, who ignored the project because he didn't want to make another violent film like Bonnie and Clyde. Stanley Kubrick passed. As did Mike Nichols, who didn't want to attempt a film that hinged on a child's performance. Friedkin's rejection from Warner Bros. turned into major consideration after The French Connection took off.
The book still terrifies to this day. Starting with medical tests, then turning into a bit of a crime narrative with the murder of Dennings and the investigation by Kinderman, then going into clinical detail about the history and procedure of an exorcism. Comparing speech patterns, getting permission from the church, etc.
This is why Friedkin was the perfect choice to take this story on. His first picture was a documentary, the People Vs. Paul Crump. He brings a documentary like aesthetic to the film.
Having said this, the documentary aspect grounds us for the beating heart of the story: Father Karras' journey. It's a story of sacrificial love against despair.
"And yet I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it is us...the observers...every person in the house. And I think- I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien; to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps: in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love: of accepting the possibility that God could ever love us."
Both Friedkin and Blatty struck gold because the story tackles uncertainty. People of all religions feel scared when they feel their strongly held beliefs are being threatened.
It is why, when the studio pumped out a sequel four years later, it missed the mark entirely. It is also why the latest installment, Exorcist: Believer, has been received so poorly by critics and audiences alike. It neither titallates or entices. As Mark Kermode put it, "It was made by people who've seen the original but haven't seen the the original." The only installment to come close is one Blatty directed himself: The Exorcist III. Based off his own book, Legion. As for the rest, they are unworthy.
The movie has stood as king of the mountain when it comes to what I consider favorite horror films. This can be a mainstream "oh everyone thinks that" type of response when someone asks me what is the film that scares me the most. But I can't deny the realism in which Friedkin grounds this story in. It's why French Connection continues to make my jaw drop. Why Sorcerer makes my heart thump like a jackhammer. He has since gone on to say he doesn't consider it a horror movie and how he would never make a movie the way he did in the 70's.
2. The Wicker Man
It's never scary. Instead, it is filled with a specific unease and dread. It's in broad daylight and there is a jovial, sex infused atmosphere with a wicked undercurrent. All of this grows larger and larger until it bursts in a blaze of blazing hellfire and cheerful singing. The way this film creates its world of disarming disconnects, moments where you feel unsettled but can't put your finger on why, and when you do find out, it's too late, is a testament to the script, Robin Hardy's direction and the hypnotic soundtrack by Paul Giovanni.
3. Don't Look Now
So many novelists play with time and past and future tenses. This only begs the question: why are we not doing this in film? Sure there's Nolan. But I think the two directors who really nail this are Lynch and Roeg. In trying to duplicate how the mind and memory work, Roeg is able to break free from linear filmmaking. No more is this apparent in Don't Look Now. Specifically, two scenes: the opening and the Sutherland/Christie sex scene.
4. The Long Goodbye
One of the calmest thrillers out there. So when the ending comes, it arrives like a thunder clap on a quiet evening. Yes, there's the cat. But there's also Henry Gibson slapping Sterling Hayden, a mute Arnold Schwarznegger playing the lackey of a mobster, a dreamy double exposure-like shot of a mirror reflecting Marlowe on the beach while Hayden is talking to Nina van Pallandt, the shocking coke bottle scene. Top 3 Altman. Hoo-ray for Hollywood.
5. Messiah of Evil
Every time I watch this movie, it rises higher and higher.
William Huyck and Gloria Katz wrote the script in 6 weeks inspired by their love of Lovecraft. It exists in the middle of a venn diagram of stuff I love: seaside horror, cosmic horror, mood/atmosphere over plot. I've had multiple dreams where I am in an urban space and zombie like creatures attack. This film nails that feeling. When I think of the list of unsung horror masterpieces to come out of the 70's, this is right at the top.
6. Coffy
One of the best female performances in cinema history belongs to Pam Grier in this movie.
I always thought of Jack Hill as the Howard Hawks of exploitation. He dabbled in so many subgenres: horror, the cheerleader pic, blaxpoitation, women in prison, the race car picture. Out of all of them, Coffy is the one I get the most mileage out of. On the list of movies I desperately want to see on the big screen with a big audience.
7. F For Fake
Orson started his career on radio and smoothly transitioned into film, where his love for the narrative essay blossomed with his first two pictures, Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. It is a natural evolution to where he ends up with his final film (released during his lifetime) in 1973.
I've yet to see a movie where Welles is having more fun. At this point in his career, can anyone blame him? The visual essay has been done to death on youtube. It can all be traced back to this story of forgery.
And now, with your permission, a bit of verse by Kipling. "When first the flush of a newborn sun fell on the green and gold, our father Adam, sat under the tree and scratched with a stick in mold. The first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his might heart. Till a devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty. But is it art?""
8. The Spook Who Sat By the Door
Let's get one thing out of the way. There is a difference between Blaxpoitation and films celebrating black power and fighting back against white supremacy. An example of the former can be found in films like Shaft and Superfly. This film can be classified in the latter category.
A lot of movies claim to be 'edgy and dangerous'. This film actually is one. The print was confiscated by the FBI after being screened. It's not hard to understand why when you watch it. A toast to ACAB.
I'd go on but a favorite podcast of mine is more eloquent: https://cinepunx.com/twitch-of-the-death-nerve-episode-26-the-spook-who-sat-by-the-door
9. The Last Detail
Simple, character-driven storytelling. The kind Hal Ashby and writer Robert Towne excelled at. It's those dissolves. It's the profane Nicholson. The shy Quaid. The unsung Young. Ya know what I mean?
10. Thriller: A Cruel Picture
Christina Lindberg as One Eye is an iconic figure in the realm of exploitation. I was fortunate enough to meet her at a convention. This movie is a punch to the jaw that doesn't stop pummeling you until it's over. Seek out the full uncut version.
11. Paper Moon
Peter Bogdonavich's films are love letters to the movies of yesteryear. Yes he's a snob. Yes he has as jagged a career as Ridley Scott. After three hits in a row, he wouldn't attain this stature for the rest of his career. A career being rife with adequate comebacks (Saint Jack, They All Laughed) and roiled in controversy with Polly Platt, who is production designer on this film.
The movie manages to be heartwarming without falling into corniness. Watching Tatum and Ryan outmatch and outwit each other is like a tennis match.
Verna Fields was an editor on this film. The same Verna Fields who cut Jaws. It explains the perfect pacing of the film.
12. American Graffiti
A movie whose soundtrack I've worn out from listening to it so often in my car. Before there was The Wonder Years and Dazed and Confused, this was the jukebox of a generation. A loosey goosey hang out picture harkening back to a time and a place.
13. World On A Wire
A two part science fiction paranoia epic from a world class auteur in Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Unfortunately it slows down a bit in its second part but the overall look and feel of the project is enough to warrant a high spot on this list. It's philosophical sci-fi before it became cool. Before it made the protagonist go "Whoa."
Dips into simulated worlds designed not to prevent wars and other conflicts, but to predict consumer models.
14. The Holy Mountain
Endlessly appealing from a visual perspective. Just one jaw dropping scene after another. The first 45 minutes or so are good and all. But it's when they start abandoning the whole 'retelling of Christ' story to more free flowing narrative and going into weapons made to cater to one's religion, that is when it hits it's potential.
15. Lady Snowblood
The blood in this movie is red. Not just any kind of red, Herschell Gordon Lewis red. The color is as bold as Meiko Kaji's razor sharp precision of cuts with her blade.
Meiko Kaji made a name for herself with the Stray Cat Rock and Female Prisoner Scorpion series. A brief period of 1970 thru 1973 where she dominated the particular scene. The almost ballet-like choreography of violence had a major inspiration on Kill Bill.
16. Charley Varrick
Don Seigel is a good example of a workman director. Working in the crime picture since the 50's. In the Trailers From Hell review for this, one of the commentators ays he tries to teach his screenwriting students is you want to tell a story that going forward is continuously suprising and the going backwards seemed inevitable. Charley Varrick pulls it off with a perfect tempo. Could this be my favorite Matthau performance? It just might be.
17. The Hourglass Sanatorium
Adapted from Polish-Jewish born writer Bruno Schulz's book of short stories, Wojciech Has gives a phantasmagoric look at the collective trauma of the Holocaust. If you like Zulawski's films, Has is the next Polish director to seek out.
18. The Obscene Mirror/Female Vampire/Eugenie de Sade/A Virgin Among the Living Dead
1973 was an outstanding year for Jess Franco. He was still cranking out around 5 movies per year. A prolific streak of output only seen by directors during the studio days of the 30s and 40s.
David Lynch has seen The Obscene Mirror. I'm 100% sure of it. If you want a different flavor of Franco, one that deviates from his usual sexploitation fare, check this one out. It's his most psychologically complex and haunting work. It's also a case of defense against people who say Jess wasn't a serious director. Emma Cohen delivers delivers a hell of a performance.
Drenched in fog and desire, Female Vampire shows Franco's camera (with all of it's zooms) lapping up the beauty that is Romay. Sheer vampire ecstasy. There are two camps in the realm of Jess Franco: Soledad Miranda or Lina Romay. This film best exemplifies Romay.
Eugenie de Sade is the first of Jess Franco's film without the producer Harry Alan Towers. It's an excision of all the macabre filth of Franco put onto film. Though shot in 1970, it didn't get released until 1973. It was his first of a handful of pictures with the stunningly gorgeous Soledad Miranda.
Any legitimate list of great serial killer films should have this on it.
A Virgin Among the Living Dead is mainling Franco. Pure poetic incomprehensibility. Shot at a gorgeous Portugese castle with a Bruno Nicolai score. It's one his better realized dream state movies.
19. The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Adapted from the George V. Higgins crime classic of the same name, Peter Yates' film is as unsparing in sentiment as the book is in syntax. In addition to the harshness, Mitchum turns in a late career performance that ranks with some of his finest.
20. Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable
There's not a weak entry in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series. But if I were to rank them, #701 would be number one with this one not too far behind. It's not as hellish as the first two. Instead it slows down and takes on a more reflective, sadder vibe. Which is exactly what you want in a film series. To zig instead of zag. My favorite Meiko Kaji performance.
21. Mean Streets
After Boxcar Bertha, John Cassavetes told Scorsese "Marty, you've just spent a whole year of your life making a piece of shit. It's a good picture, but you're better than the people who make this kind of movie. Don't get hooked in the exploitation market, just try and do something different."
With this advice, Scorsese made his most personal work up to that point. According to Scorsese it's an attempt to put himself and the people he grew up with on the screen.
Scorsese's work in the 70's doesn't quite reach the stylistic highs of his 90's work or even his 80's work. He's still figuring his shit out. Ever since his first feature in 1967, his films have focused on religion, crime, saints and sinners. While Who's That Knocking can be considered the blueprint for these themes, Mean Streets was where he managed to perfect the synthesis of them moving forward.
Violence can erupt at any moment and it does. In pool halls, bars, apartment hallways, and the streets. These violent flare ups die down as quickly as they start up. Yet there is a fatalism to them that hangs in the air. We're not quite at the moment of pulling out a gun at a card game and murdering someone after a rude remark. But we're close. Last I heard, Johnny Boy was on the roof, shooting into the air.
22. Badlands
Malick is a strange director for me. Around college I loved the philosophical and spiritual direction he was going in. Now I've gone more and more for his straightforward movies before he went into hiding. The spiritual stuff has been done better and with less whispering voiceover anyway.
23. High Plains Drifter
I'm not particularly fond of Clint as a director. His one shot method doesn't produce the same exciting spontaneity of say, a Soderbergh. It's more about getting to the next shot. Mystic River and this film are the exception and I can attribute this to the writing. They are the two examples of how he is a lot darker than people give him credit for.
24. The Spirit of the Beehive
This film feels like a Guillermo Del Toro movie before Del Toro. You can find a blueprint for all of his themes in this film: childhood set against harsh historical events, examining the meaning of death and loss, fantasy vs. reality.
25. The Day of the Jackal
I saw the Bruce Willis remake before this. Not a highlight in the career of Willis but there are some good parts here and there. Enough to make me track down the original.
While enjoyable, there's a cold and clinical logic to watching this criminal and his methodology in attempting to assassinate Charles De Gaulle. You can tell director Fred Zinneman studied his Pontecorvo and Costa Gravas and made an admirable effort at a political thriller.
26. The Candy Snatchers
Would be on the syllabus for anyone interested in wanting to know what 70's exploitation is all about. It can be fun on one hand (see: Coffy) or it can be relentlessly bleak. What makes this film work is how it starts out as a movie that appears to be silly only to turn into one where you care. Only by that time, it's got it's claws in so deep you can't look away. A far richer film than Wes Craven's exploitation efforts during this time. It's better made too, with an ending that is a gut punch.
27. Malatesta's Carnival of Blood
A movie made to be watched at midnight and no earlier. Would be perfect during a 24 horror marathon in the 2 am slot. When you are in a daze and running on coffee.
Regional horror in the 70's is so fascinating that a book could be written on it. In fact, one has! Stephen Thrower's Nightmare USA is the bible for these types of movies and where I first heard about this one. So when Arrow's American Horror Project box was announced and this was included, I jumped at it. Carnivals already offer boatloads of surrealism. Christopher Speth's solo directing credit foregoes all plot and plunges you into psychadelic moods. If you surrender to it, the rewards will be bountiful.
28. The Iron Rose
What? A Rollin film that doesn't feature vampires?!
If prowling through a cemetery is your thing, consider checking out this film. If fucking in a cemetery is your thing, go out, and buy this film now!
29. Ganja and Hess
Vampirism as addiction. What is so cool about the Dracula lore is how malleable it is to create such unique interpretations as Martin, Cronos, and this one. The way Bill Gunn shoots it makes it feel like it's on the threshold between a dream and a nightmare.
30. The Corruption of Chris Miller
Between 1970 and 1973, a cornucopia of giallos had been produced. It can make your head spin. After watching the essential Bava, Argento, Fulci, Martino and Lenzi ones, you can only dig deeper into Aldo Ray, Massimo Dallamino, Luigi Bazzoni and so forth. Deeper still, there is gold to be unearthed. Chris Miller lies at this point of excavation. Stylish atmosphere, memorable kills and a Charlie Chaplin mask (!) all contribute to this hidden gem.
31. Torso
Hard not to fall in love with Suzy Kendall in this. Sergio Martino's career was much longer that just 1971 thru 1973, yet he managed to release his best work in that time frame. Torso caps off the incredible run. It's all about the third act here. If you stick with it, you'll be rewarded.
32. Battles Against Honor and Humanity
Kenji Fukasaku's yakuza cycle of movies, Battles Against Honor of Humanity began with it's self titled entry.
There's a bunch of films I was unable to get to and remain on my watchlist:
Alabama's Ghost, Bell From Hell, Big Guns, Black Caesar, Candle For the Devil, Count Dracula's Great Love, Emperor of the North, Godmonster of Indian Flats, Gordon's War, High Rise, Lolly- Madonna XXX, The Laughing Policeman, The Mother and the Whore, The Offence, Story of A Cloistered Nun, Walking Tall
