My Nostalgia Year For Movies: 1972
Submitted by bertie on Tue, 02/25/2003 - 05:48
Tags:
- THE ADVENTURES OF BARRY McKENZIE [The character Bazza (= Barry) McKenzie was an invention of Australian comedian Barry Humphries, whose best-known invention is Dame Edna Everage. This movie is about Bazza M's exploits in Pommieland (= England) where he engages in a popular Aussie pastime, pommie-bashing (= making fun of English people and their ways). It was a big hit in Oz, though not as big as Crocodile Dundee was later to be. Its crude and rude humor appealed to me at the age I was back in '72. I sprayed more than one mouthful of beer on the inside of my car's windscreen as I watched this, I can tell you.]
- BAD COMPANY
- EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX
- FEAR IS THE KEY [A little-known action / thriller based on a book by Alastair MacLean. I remember almost nothing about it (having seen it only once back in '72) except it was good. I'd love to see it again. IMDb commentators say it has a good car chase - another reason to revisit.]
- FRENZY [This is a Hitchcock movie; it's about a serial killer 'The Necktie Strangler' in London. Two memorable scenes haunted me. One is very violent and disturbing, showing a woman being raped and strangled. The other involves the killer's desperate ride aboard a truckload of bags of potatoes, one of which contains the body of his latest victim; he searches the body for a tie pin that might incriminate him; it's one of Hitch's most macabre sequences.]
- FROGS [This is a horror pic with an environmental slant. Thousands of frogs lay seige to a decaying southern mansion on the edge of a swamp. It's one of the last movies to star the late great Ray Milland.]
- GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT [This is a very funny movie, but just about unknown. A business executive (played by Tommy Smothers) quits his job in order to follow his dream of being a tap-dancing magician. The title is one of the instructions given to him by his teacher in magic, Orson Welles. I remember this as being a 'quirky comedy' that tickled my funnybone where it had never been tickled before. Directed by, would you believe, Brian De Palma?]
- THE GETAWAY
- JEREMIAH JOHNSON
- LADY CAROLINE LAMB
- THE LAST GOON SHOW OF ALL [The Goon Show was a BBC radio series. The three main Goons were Peter Sellars, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe - all now gone to to Comedy Heaven. For those able to appreciate it, the Goon Show was as funny as comedy gets. This movie simply shows them standing at microphones performing and recording the final GS for radio broadcast. Most of the shows were made in the 50s, and for decades afterwards they were played and replayed and re-replayed on Saturdays at midday on Australian radio. I always listened and I always laughed.]
- MADAM SIN
- THE MECHANIC
- THE NIGHT STALKER [A movie-length episode of one of the classic tv horror series (of the same title). The late great Darren McGavin played a newspaper man who was always tracking down werewolves, vampires, demons, etc. Rather like The X-Files but with more tongue-in-cheek.]
- OOH, YOU ARE AWFUL! [Stars a British comedian named Dick Emery (died 1983) who could do hilarious female impersonations. One of his female characters, when hit upon, was liable to say, "Ooh, you are awful! But I like you." I remember nominating Emery for Best Actress award in a poll run by a movie magazine - and I wasn't the only one who did so.]
- THE OTHER [A horror classic about a pair of twin boys, one good, the other evil. I'll never forget the truly horrifying scene in which Spoiler: Highlight to viewa desperate search for the boys' missing sister ends when their father finds her body pickling in a barrel of brine.
- PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM
- PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT
- PRIME CUT
- SILENT RUNNING
- SLITHER
Author Comments:
Back in '72 I used to go every week, quite religiously, to one or other of our two local drive-ins (now we have none), which is where I first saw almost all these memorable movies.
Forget about which of these I've seen, I've only *heard* of seven of these!
I don't really have a nostalgia year, I have nostalgia movies, almost all of them bad (the movies, not the memories).
I suppose I should add some comments telling why each one is memorable for me. Would you like that?
(Almost a rhetorical question that). I have commented on several of these elsewhere in TL, but it might be interesting to gather those thoughts together. Damn! I need coaxing...wonder why.
Yes I want comments! Please consider yourself coaxed, although I'd be happy to be more abjectly supplicative if it would help!
Okay, Jim, I've started on the comments. No need to be 'abjectly supplicative' (whatever that means). But, in usual bertian fashion, I'm doing it in dribs and drabs (whatever that means).
Bertie, I wish Netflix had some of the more obscure movies you list (like "Barry McKenzie") since they sound really interesting. Please keep adding comments--I'm enjoying your list...
Thanks for your interest and encouragment, Auntie. I've done a few more for you and Jim, who probably thinks I'm holding out for more wheedling from him. I'm not; it's just that I'm a terribly lazy boy, a fault for which I often berate myself.
Just when I was about to wheedle too.
Hey, you really make quite a few of these movies sound compelling. Which ones would you still recommend today? I ask because I personally have plenty of nostalgia movies that I'd *never* recommend to *anyone*. :-)
Don't think I didn't notice that slew of posts last night, bertie (nor that reference to this list :-). So when are you going to tell me which of these movies you'd still recommend today?
Nice to see you about!
G'day Jim! Now. I would unhesitatingly recommend, today, for a today American audience, the following:
EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX
FRENZY
THE GETAWAY
JEREMIAH JOHNSON
THE OTHER
PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM
That's the pretty much risk-free list. The risky list would add an Aussie title and a British.
All on my "to see" list now, thanks! You know I'm curious about the risky choices too, but perhaps I'll but you for those when I've made some progress on the ones above.