Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!
Directed by John De Bello
Written by Costa Dillon, John De Bello, and J. Stephen Peace
1978/US
IMDb Page
First viewing/Amazon Prime

Commerical voice: Last year, more people were killed by automobile accidents, heart attacks, lung cancer, and natural causes combined than by any one tomato.

I came for bad movie gold.  Instead I got an unfunny horror spoof with the worst songs ever written.

Ordinary grocery store tomatoes begin a rampage across the nation.  A bunch of bumbling idiots from the government try to stop the onslaught.  Their task gets harder when the tomatoes mutate into giant form.  The plot does not deserve a single extra word.

OK, I simply could not resist a movie with this title.  But it is stupid, the jokes are groaners, the songs are unbearable and its 83 minutes are interminable.  Avoid.

The Lovers’ Wind
Directed by Albert Lamorrisse
Written by Roger Lachant
1978/France/Iran
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube

“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

Experiencing the director’s vision of pre-Revolution Iran was rendered almost impossible by a very bad YouTube print.

The film looks at the landscape and life of Iran, mostly by helicopter.  It is narrated by a benevolent wind who is fighting with his malevolent brother.  We see the effects of wind in the Iranian desert and on the Iranian people.

The film was commissioned by the Shah of Iran who was a fan of Lamorisse’s great films White Mane (1953) and The Red Balloon (1956).  The documentary was filmed in 1970.  Reportedly, the Shah was not pleased with the result. The Shah was more interested in showing off his modernization efforts than the beauty of his country.  In the event, it was futile to try to find beauty in the YouTube print I watched.

Lamorrisse was killed in a helicopter accident during filming.

Up in Smoke
Directed by Lou Adler
Written by Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin
1978/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to members)

Pedro: Hey how am I driving, man?
Man Stoner: [looks around] : I think we’re parked.

This stoner comedy was lacking any big laughs for me.

Pedro (Cheech Marin) picks up Man Stoner (Tommy Chong) hitchhiking.  They find they have an insatiable love for marijuana and other drugs in common.  There is currently a shortage in LA.  So they head for Mexico.

Dumb narc Sgt Stedenko and his even dumber associates are on the trail of a drug smuggling operation that disguises marijuana in the form of different objects.  Unbeknownst to Pedro and Man they are selected to drive a van entirely made of the stuff back to Los Angeles.

The film ends with a punk rock contest in which Pedro’s band participates.

It may have been the wrong day to watch this, but I didn’t find it particularly funny. Maybe if I had been high?  One of the more baffling entries on the List.

The Last Waltz
Directed by Martin Scorsese
1978/US
IMDb Page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime

Levon Helm – Drums: [Talking about the region around Memphis, Tennessee where Levon grew up] That’s kind of the middle of the country, you know. back there. So, when bluegrass or country music, you know, if it comes down to that area and if it mixes there with rhythm and dances, then you’ve got a combination of all those different kinds of music. Country. Bluegrass. Blues music.
Martin Scorsese – Interviewer: The melting pot.
Levon Helm – Drums: Show music.
Martin Scorsese – Interviewer: What’s it called then?
Levon Helm – Drums: Rock-n-Roll.
Martin Scorsese – Interviewer: Rock-n-Roll, yes, for sure, exactly.

Scorsese’s beautiful rockumentary captures some of the best musicians of the 70’s, i.e. of all time.

This is a record of The Band’s farewell concert.  It is hardly needed to write a review.  Let’s just take a look at just part of the line-up:  The Band, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Van Morrison.  All these performers and more were in their prime and the music is fantastic.  They play together and alone.  The members of The Band tell Scorsese war stories of the road in between.

Here is Levon Helm of The Band belting out “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (`1978).

Joni Mitchell backs up Neil Young as he sings “Helpless”.

The entire line-up gets together with Bob Dylan for “I Shall Be Released”.

As far as I am concerned this is a must-see.

The Band performs “The Weight” with The Staple Singers

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Directed by Philip Kaufman
Written by W.D. Richter from a novel by Jack Finney
1978/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to members)
One of 1,000 Greatest Horror Films on They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They?

Jack Bellicec: It’s a big conspiracy.
Matthew Bennell: What’s a conspiracy?
Jack Bellicec: Everything.

Comparisons are odious.  But they can’t be avoided.  This movie, however, stands up on its own two, unique feet.

Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) is a food safety inspector for the San Francisco Department of Public Health.  He seems to be sweet on his pretty lab technician Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams).  But she is living with sloppy self-absorbed dentist Geoffrey Howell.  She is a plant lover and picks an unusual flower and takes it home to study it. Before she knows it, Geoffrey seems to be an entirely new person.  For one thing, he takes out the garbage.  He also starts attending mysterious meetings non-stop.  She is convinced something very strange must be going on.

Elizabeth has a hard time convincing anybody, including Matthew, that she is not delusional.  He wants her to talk to his friend, famed psychiatrist and author Dr. David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy).  She does so at a book signing where he reassures her this is just a sign that she is unhappy with Geoffrey.  Funnily enough, there is another woman at the party with the same problem.  We are introduced to poet Jack Bellecec (Jeff Goldman) at the same party.  He hates Kibner and is mad at the world.

Jack and his wife Nancy make their living running a spa, specializing in mud treatments etc.  Jeff takes a nap and soon Nancy sees a horrible thing taking shape that is looking more and more like Jeff.  The Bellecec’s dodge that bullet but soon Elizabeth is under grave threat.  Things get worse and worse and more and more terrifying as the quartet try to escape possession by the unknown force.  With director Don Siegel as a cab driver and Kevin McCarthy, who starred in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), as a man with a message.

I found this far more downright terrifying than the original, largely due to the revealing nature of color and the advancements in special effects.  The acting here is superior.  I particularly enjoyed the performances of Sutherland and Goldman.  There is more of Big Brother vibe to this, as befits a late 70’s movie.  Recommended but folks really should see the original, which is iconic, as well.

Gates of Heaven
Directed by Errol Morris
1978/USA
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime

Mrs. Harberts: Surely at the gates of heaven an all-compassionate God is not going to say, “Well, you’re walking in on two legs, you can go in. You’re walking in four legs, we can’t take you.”

Who knew a documentary about pet cemeteries could be so great?  Errol Morris knocks it out of the park with his first film.

There is no narration.  We start by being introduced to an animal lover whose dream of creating a beautiful park like pet cemetery was eventually dashed by his refusal to run it on the sound business principals insisted on by his partner.  All the pets eventually had to be dug up and moved.  We also meet various pet owners with opinions on the matter.

A rendering plant owner discusses an alternative method of disposing of dead animals.  The second part of the film is devoted to another pet cemetery and the family that runs it as a business venture.  Along the way, we meet many interesting and odd people both from the business side and the pet owner side.

A singing dog

I’ve seen this at least twice previously and it always seems like a different film.  It is about so much more than pet cemeteries including: capitalism, dreams, middle America, the afterlife, and people’s relationships with animals.  By turns comic and touching, it is one of the great documentaries.  The film is available on YouTube.  Highly recommended.

Werner Herzog told Errol Morris that he would eat his shoe if Morris could get this film released and was true to his word.  He boiled it up in a pot with lots of delicious things.

Clip

Vietnam Era films began to appear, including Hal Ashby’s Coming Home, Sidney Furie’s The Boys in Company C, Ted Post’s Go Tell the Spartans , and Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978).

Philips introduced the video laser disc (aka laserdisc and LD) — the first optical disc storage media for the consumer market. Pioneer began selling home LaserDisc players in 1980. Eventually, the laserdisc systems would be replaced by the DVD (“digital versatile disc”) format in the late 1990s.  Disney licensed its cartoon compilations to MCA’s DiscoVision – these were the first Disney videos available to the public.

In early March of 1978, Charlie Chaplin’s body was stolen from the grave where it was buried two months earlier in a small cemetery in the Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey. The body was held for ransom by the extortionist grave robbers, but their plot was foiled (and they were arrested) when the body was recovered two months later near Lake Geneva and subsequently reburied in a new, solid cement grave.

We lost Jack Oakie, Oskar Homolka, John Cazale, Will Geer, Mark Robson, Charles Boyer,  Robert Shaw, Gig Young, and Ed Wood.  A new generation of actors made their film debuts including: Kevin Bacon, John Belushi, Billy Crystal, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ed Harris, Michael Keaton, John Malkovich, Liam Neeson, and Christopher Reeve.

Andy Gibbs “Shadow Dancing” (a song I don’t even remember) was named #1 song of the year by Billboard.  Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  The Gin Game by Donald M Coburn won for Drama. Time magazine’s Man of the Year was Teng Hsiao‐ping, regarded by many as the official most responsible for the People’s Republic of China’s modernization.

After murdering investigating Congressman Leo Ryan and his companions, cult leader Jim Jones ordered the 900 inhabitants of Jonestown in Guyana to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-laced punch.  Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David accords.  The first “test-tube” baby was born.  The first ever mobile cellular phone was introduced.

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The list I plan to select from is here.  Suggestions and warnings will be warmly appreciated.

Wizards
Directed by Ralph Bakshi
Written by Ralph Bakshi
1977/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime

Weehawk: [to horse] Steady, Westwind. We’ll eat alone, lest we sit with fools.

The good vs. evil plot is just OK but the animation and music are absolutely outstanding.

In a post-apocalyptic earth, the land of Scortch is a polluted place occupied by mutants and ruled over by evil wizard Blackwolf.  The Good Lands are ruled by Blackwolf’s good brother, Avatar.  Both are about 9,000 years old.  Both lands are also full of elves and fairies, malignant or benevolent as the case may be.

Blackwolf has somehow got hold of an ancient movie projector.  The movie is a stream of Hitler speeches and combat sequences.  Blackwolf decides that fascism and technology are the route to world conquest (he obviously didn’t watch the end of the movie).  The good guys have only love and magic to defeat them.  A little band led by Avatar travels the perilous road to Scortch to save the planet.

The fantasy wasn’t the big draw, at least for me.  The fantastic animation and score overcame all and I really enjoyed it.  Thanks for the tip Hoosier.

And that finishes my viewing for 1977.