Chewers' 100 Scariest Films of the 70's - Page 2

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Originally Posted by Fat Elvis 

Brilliant choices so far. You guys are awesome!

 

20. Looking For Mr. Goodbar (1977) d. Richard Brooks

 

Talk about lookin' for love in all the wrong places!

 

Seriously this is a brilliant, disturbing film about the darkside of New York City nightlife, featuring Diane Keaton's best performance, And what a heartbreaking performance it is! She's a sweet woman - a teacher for deaf kids/ Roman Catholic-, looking for excitement, and some kind of a connection. (the contrast of her day and nighttime lives is handled deftly by the film - we are sympathetic in her search for sexual freedom, acceptance and idenity) What she unfortunately finds is a nightmare.

 

Berenger is the ultimate monster of the film, but it's Gere's character/ performance that really fascinates, frightens and unnerves. He's obsessive and possessive; the very representative of an out-of-control, dangerous relationship.

 

Classic 70's, the ending will shock you, horrify you, and stick with you forever.

 

 

 

 

Great pick and great film.   People talk about brave performances by actresses but it certainly applies here.   Keaton holds nothing back here and she's a revelation.   And that final scene?   Straight from a nightmare.   The way it's shot and edited is frightening to behold.   Just brutal.

39. The Blood On Satan's Claw (1971)

Something is not quite right in the lovely 17th century English countryside. After what appears to be the remains of The Devil himself are unearthed in a field, the town's young folks have turned to some disturbing practices including devil worship and witchcraft, along with some perverse sexual rituals. Eerie and oozing with atmosphere. Plus it features the sexy Linda Hayden:

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Originally Posted by Fat Elvis 

33. Who Can Kill A Child? (1976)

 

The most unsettling "killer child" movie of all time.

Great movie but it has some 1970s competition in that dept. The Other, directed by Robert Mulligan (To Kill A Mockingbird). A beautifully disturbing story about two young brothers in idyllic rural Connecticut. Niles is the very portrait of wide eyed innocence. Holland loves getting up to mischief.

If you haven't seen the film, don't read up on it until after.

41.

Not a horror film per se but it's vision of an over populated future where industrialized cannibalism has (unknowingly) been instituted as the primary means of feeding the impoverished masses is an idea that keeps me up at night. Soylent Green is one hell of a depressing, subtly horrifying viewing experience.

43. a movie that has one of the best trailers ever:

Because really, is there anything more meaningfully scary than a man losing his mind? Add one of the most brilliant actors that ever lived, and a creepy as fuck ventriloquist's dummy, and you've got a winner.

God DAMN you, Disciple!   One of the biggest scars on my psyche is from that ad.

Having said that, the movie itself is distinctly UNfrightening.  But, man, that commercial . . . 

44. Salo:120 Days of Sodom (1975)

One of the most disturbing films I've ever seen, truly shows the depths of human depravity and greed. 

45. The Night Stalker (dir. John Llewellyn Moxey, 1972)

Before An American Werewolf in London, Fright Night, and Buffy was this blast of self aware horror, which certainly made an impression on a whole generation. Certainly it's hard to imagine the X-Files without this existing first. And Darren McGavin is flat out fantastic.

Good one on the Kolchak. That close up on the vampire's eyes, holy shit. SO much great TV stuff from the 70s, to ignore it in a thread like this would be foolish.

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Originally Posted by Ratty 

Having said that, the movie itself is distinctly UNfrightening. 

I know it's not exactly the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but considering some of the other strange choices in this thread, I'm not going to lose sleep over mentioning a psychological horror film where Anthony Hopkins is tormented by an inanimate dummy.

46.  Conversely, she called this one "the biggest middle finger to the Catholic Church since Ken Russell's The Devils" (lol just kidding, I made that up):

Creepy, stylish, it's the best American giallo ever made.

47. Zombie aka Zombi 2 (1979)

Tons of atmosphere, truly epic gore, atrocious dubbing, and a zombie vs. a shark.  Fulci's finest hour where he firmly established that if you need to rip off a film you better get an Italian to do it.

I'd argue THE BEYOND is his finest, but it doesn't qualify for this thread.

48. AND SOON THE DARKNESS (1970) dir. Richard Fuest

Two friends bicycling through rural France are briefly separated, and one goes missing. The other friend starts looking for her but she doesn't really speak the language and is unfamiliar the area.  The locals are odd and unhelpful, and this isn't the city where there's a policeman on every corner or an embassy you could go to for help. Then she learns that another young girl was recently murdered nearby, and it is still unsolved. Now she doesn't know who to trust. Imagine being in that situation, frustration giving way to mounting panic and dread; the film captures that beautifully, transforming the picturesque (and, for the film's entire running time, sunlit) French countryside into a landscape of menace.

Sorry to be a useless fuck but I just wanted to say right on with the inclusion of The Other.

49. Frenzy (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1972)

The master still had something left in the tank with his return to England. There are two significant murders in the film, and both are handled in radically different ways. The first has the camera look on unflinchingly. The second has the camera pull away leaving the act to the imagination. Both are effective and the latter probably doesn't work without the former, but I find the pulling away adds a layer. The camera pulls all the way back, down the stairs, and into traffic while people go about their daily business. It implies that there is great evil, mere yards away from us, that we're oblivious to in our daily existence. Chilling stuff.

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Originally Posted by Rockatansky 

47. Zombie aka Zombi 2 (1979)

 

Tons of atmosphere, truly epic gore, atrocious dubbing, and a zombie vs. a shark.  Fulci's finest hour where he firmly established that if you need to rip off a film you better get an Italian to do it.

I was waiting for this to show up. I haven't seen it yet, but I've scheduled a Halloween party around Black Sunday, Suspiria, and Zombie this year.

51. Race with the Devil (Starrett, 1975)

If you're going to race with the devil, you've got to be as fast as Hell!

The original Drive Angry, a grindhouse classic that seamlessly blends horror and action without the two bleeding into each other. Fonda and Oates at their swaggiest, a killer climactic car chase and a cynical, dark 70's ending that you can rarely pull off today.

52. Buio Omega AKA Beyond the Darkness (1979) d. Joe D'Amato

A prime example of Euro-sleaze at it's best (worst)! This film is gory, suspenseful, and filled with some extremely disturbing moments. Plus a score by Goblin. Not for the squeamish by any means.

53. The Abominable Dr. Phibes (dir. Robert Fuerst, 1971)

Foreshadowing Se7en in several ways, but at heart its just a creepy revenge thriller with several ingenious deaths. Plus Vincent Price fits the part so well.

54. Vengeance is Mine (1979) – d. Shoehi Imamura

This is directed by Shohei Imamura and whilst it’s not a horror movie, at all, there’s something deeply unnerving about the entire film. Essentially the film tells the story of a Japanese serial-killer named Iwao Enokizu (based on real life killer Akira Nishiguchi). Shot with a dispassionate, almost documentary like, style the film accentuates the relative mundanity of Enokizu, even depicting his murders with a kind of cold lack of regard. The movie is an observer on the life of Enokizu and it helps to create this growing feeling of unrest and unease as he stalks his away across Japan.

It’s a brilliantly told, brutal, film which gets under the skin like a proto-Henry: Portrait of the Serial Killer. It’s got a touch of Fincher’s ZODIAC and a little of MAN BITES DOG and it’s just kind of genuinely unsettling.

And to toot my own horn here is my CHUD Review of the Region 2 DVD from 2008. http://www.chud.com/13679/dvd-review-vengeance-is-mine-region-2/

55. Hausu (dir. Nobuhiko Ohbayashi, 1977)

I know, bad form to jump in so soon after my last pick, but my pick is worth it. It's not only batshit insane, it's creepy and scary too.

56. Raw Meat (Death Line), Gary Sherman, 1972.

"MIND THE DOORS!"

For a movie about a cannibal freak who stalks the London subway tunnels for prey, it's surprisingly funny. Donald Pleasence's goofy detective is the film's secret ingredient.

Edit: With these lists, there's a certain cadence of favorites you expect to see at the top, but I was pleased and surprised to find Looking for Mr. Goodbar up there. I wish it were still up on NF Instant.

Since the gates have been thrown open for TV movies:

57.  Salem's Lot (1979)

Undeniably cheesy in many places and reeking of "late 70's television", this is still a creepy adaptation and shockingly scary for its era.  No way some of these scenes would pass on network TV now.  Case in point:  the lame-ass Rob Lowe version from a few years ago.

Welcome back to some grade-school nightmares!

59.

dir. Donald Cammell, 1977

Nearly a decade after making the British classic Performance (co-directed with Nicholas Roeg) in 1968, eccentric genius filmmaker Donald Cammell needed cash. The resultant gig was Demon Seed, the story of a scientist who creates an AI program called Proteus to control every facet of his high-tech household. Naturally, the AI goes mad & decides to hold captive & "impregnate" the scientist's wife (played by Julie Christie) while killing off any hapless visitor who happens to pop over (one of which is a lab assistant played by Gerrit "Beef!" Graham). This film is ridiculously silly & achingly creepy in equal measure.

The Simpsons famously parodied this flick in one of the Halloween specials. The "AI house gone mad" in that episode was voiced by Pierce Brosnan.

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Originally Posted by Mister Falcon 

52. Buio Omega AKA Beyond the Darkness (1979) d. Joe D'Amato

 

A prime example of Euro-sleaze at it's best (worst)! This film is gory, suspenseful, and filled with some extremely disturbing moments. Plus a score by Goblin. Not for the squeamish by any means.

Joe D'Amato!  This is probably his most accomplished film (which admittedly is damning with very faint praise), and ranks up there with the best grindhouse from The Boot.

I give a slight edge to Antrhopophagus. Dude eats his own guts!

Leave it to Joltin' Joe D'Amato to comment (in a very arch and "meta" fashion) on the Italian cannibal genre with a gut-muncher who munches on his own guts.  But I digress......

60. The Medusa Touch (1978)

What if Prof X agreed with Magento, ...and hated southern England....

61. 10 Rillington Place (1971)

That fact that the miscarriage of justice depicted actullay happend is truely frightening...

63. The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)

This movie about a Bigfoot-like creature stalking the backwoods of southern Arkansas may be seen as pure camp by some, but it does contain a few truly frightening scenes and it scared the ever-lovin' crap outta me when I was a kid. It didn't help that at the time we lived in Montana where Bigfoot sightings were a semi-regular occurrence.

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Originally Posted by Trevor 

56. Raw Meat (Death Line), Gary Sherman, 1972.

 

"MIND THE DOORS!"

 

For a movie about a cannibal freak who stalks the London subway tunnels for prey, it's surprisingly funny. Donald Pleasence's goofy detective is the film's secret ingredient.

This is a great pick. Should be pointed out, awesome use of that 1970s horror director cool tool, the tracking shot. My fave depiction of the "Sawney Bean" legend after Craven's Hills.

65.

Larry Cohen is and always will be a grade A schlockmeister, and I love him for it, but this is the closest he ever came to making a genuinely unsettling film. The scenes where the Richard Lynch character is brought in are particularly freaky. Marketing tried to cash in on the "religious horror" heat of the time, but this movie leaves that behind and takes it into far out Ancient Astronaut territory. Fairly bonkers stuff, and definitely not a perfect film, nevertheless a must watch.

God Told Me To is unsettling stuff. Shaggy, yes, but so well done.

66. Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma, 1974)

The definitive horror-rock opera that mops the floor with the other one. Not as much scary as it is a peculiar, exciting experience, but a masterpiece and one of De Palma's best.

Kinda like the above pick: Scary? Not really. Unsettling? Hell yeah.

67.

dir. Ken Russell, 1975

Russell's kinetic, bad-acid, funhouse montage musical film of The Who's classic album. Like a Bosch painting laid thin stretched across celluloid, the film is a ghoulish parade of images that feature a hapless Roger Daltrey & other characters endure the pains of death, violence, sexual abuse, intravenous machina horror, disfigurement, & beans. My god, the beans! Tommy is a Hammer "Poe" film in bell-bottoms that also happens to be set to the best soundtrack ever.

68. Horror Express (dir. Eugenio Martin, 1972)

Often mistaken for a Hammer Film, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee actually get the chance to team up instead of opposing each other. There's a little bit of The Thing, some zombie type attacks, and some autopsy stuff going on. Along with a mad monk type character. Something thaws out of the ice on a trans-Siberian train and it can kill by just looking at you. It's fun, it has it's scares, and then it throws in Telly Savalas as a Cossack to top things off.

70.  Saturday Night Fever.

Travolta in his heart throb incarnation and Bee Gees all over the soundtrack?  Frightening...

So. the next pick will be #70, agreed? Great.

70. The Stepford Wives

Yes.

71. LEMORA: A CHILD'S TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL (1973) dir. Richard Blackburn (btw, AND SOON THE DARKNESS was by Robert Fuest! Sorry for the error)

Sexuality, spirituality, temptation, repression, the struggles of adolescence and coming of age, all wrapped up in a spooky, surreal depression era vampire tale. This film has that feeling of wandering through a nightmare, but it's different from the way SUSPIRIA or PHANTASM do it; it's a bit more like NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, a child's dark journey through an almost fairy tale landscape (which also has touches of Southern Gothic and even Lovecraft). It's one of the great underseen and underappreciated horror gems of the 70s, along with

72. MESSIAH OF EVIL (1973) dir. Willard Huyk and Gloria Katz

Another dream-like, vaguely Lovecraftian small town American horror story, this one from the writers of AMERICAN GRAFFITI. Creepy prophecies, creepy albinos biting the heads off of small animals, creepy zombies, creepy mysterious strangers who may be the devil. Creepy creepy creepy. In some ways it feels like a precursor to IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS and also features a surreal house that anticipates the disorienting interior design of Argento's SUSPIRIA and INFERNO.

These two really make a perfect pair - same year, similar vibe, some of the same themes and even plot points, and both deserve way more love and attention.

We've had several zombie threads over the years, and Let Sleeping Corpses Lie always gets mentioned - but it's always a single post, with no discussion following. It flies under the radar for some reason. I love it!

73. Gargoyles (1972, dir. Bill Norton). It's like someone took a '50s monster movie and dressed it up for the '70s, but it still scared the shit out of me as a kid.

74. Trilogy of Terror (1975)

If the Zuni fetish doll doesn't creep you out on some primal level, you are a stronger soul than I. 

76.  The Prophecy (1979)  d. John Frankenheimer

One of the most memorable mutant bears to ever scare a 10 year old.  Plus, if the scene where the poor kid in the sleeping bag getting jet-frigged against the rock doesn't make you say, "OH, SNAP!", then you, my friend, have no soul.

Those stories were written by author Richard Matheson, the guy who wrote I Am Legend and the coolest of the Twilight Zone episodes, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, just to name a couple of his masterpieces.  Mr. Matheson was a major influence on some hack from Maine that most of you have probably never heard of...

Trilogy of Terror, to be specific.

We can also thank him for Duel and The Night Stalker. What I'm trying to say is the 1970s was a good decade for Matheson.