What a year 1968 was!  United States history was forever changed with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.  Vietnam War protests mounted as the fighting raged unabated.  Amid ghetto rioting, there was some progress on the Civil Rights front with President Johnson signing the Fair Housing Act.  Youth moved beyond “flower power” into a more revolutionary phase.  1968 also saw the Prague Spring followed by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union.

Watts on fire

The film industry submitted to a new ratings system under the auspices of the MPAA. The voluntary system classified films according to their suitability for viewing by young people, in four categories: “G” for general audiences; “M” for mature audiences; “R,” no one under 16 admitted without an adult guardian (later raised to under 17 years of age); and “X,” no one under 17 admitted. The four criteria used in the ratings included theme, language, violence, and nudity and/or sexual content. Many parents thought films rated M contained more adult content than those that were rated R. This confusion led to its replacement in 1969 by the rating of GP (or General Public, or General Audiences, Parental Guidance Suggested).  Brian De Palma’s  Greetings (1968) was the first film in the US to receive the X rating.

The Academy Awards Oscar ceremony in April of 1968 was delayed by two days (and held on April 10th) due to Martin Luther King’s assassination.

A number of films were seized by US Customs ) on charges of obscenity, including the Swedish film I Am Curious – Yellow, Jack Smith’s avant-garde Flaming Creatures (1968), and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968, It.).

Billboard’s number one single of 1968 was the Beatles’ “Hey Jude”.  The song spent a record nine weeks atop the Billboard charts.The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to William Styron’s  The Confessions of Nat Turner.   Time Magazine’s Men of the Year were Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, and William Anders, who completed man’s first lunar voyage on December 27, 1968.

Poor Albert Dekker. Such a good actor, such a sad end.

For lovers of salacious LGBQT Hollywood gossip ONLY:  US character actor Albert Dekker, known for his fine performances in films such as Dr. Cyclops (1940), The Killers (1946), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Wild Bunch (1969) died at the age of 62. He was found naked in his own Hollywood bathroom – hanged by accidental autoerotic asphyxiation. He was bound, blindfolded, gagged and handcuffed, with sexual obscenities scrawled on his body in red lipstick.

At the age of 69, Mexican-born, early silent film star actor Ramon Novarro, known as the “Latin Lover” (famous for Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ (1925) and Mata Hari (1931)), and also an alcoholic and homosexual, was found dead in his Hollywood bedroom covered in blood He had been tortured and then choked to death during an altercation with two male prostitute hustlers/robbers who assumed he had money hidden in his house.

Clearly something strange was in the Kool-Aid in 1968 …

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I’m not going to live forever so I’ve decided to restrict my views per “year” a bit.  I’m especially going to ask myself “Is this worth delaying the next really essential watch?”.  Only if it excites or at least interests me.  Does this mean I’m not going to keep seeking out good “bad movies”.  Of course not.

The list of movies I will select from is here.  I have previously reviewed Once Upon a Time in the West; Rosemary’s Baby; Monterey Pop; The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins; In the Year of the Pig and  God Respects Us When We Work But Loves Us When We Dance on this blog

Oscar winners

Nominees for major Oscars.