Here is a continued look at the worst movies of the decade. This time we take a look at the ten worst films of the 1970’s. As usual I am not going for obvious choices like the slew of B movies made for drive-ins so you won’t see anything starring Peter Fonda. You also won’t see any of the Disney rip-off films for kids such as “Digby – The Biggest Dog In The World” or “Hawmps.” I also avoided the many low budget “Jaws” rip-offs such as “Grizzly,” “Food of the Gods,” “Day of the Animals” or “Tentacles.”
This list was a little more difficult as there were so many candidates. Not making the list but certainly worth mentioning include the Jack Nicholson/Warren Beatty turkey “The Fortune,” or the musical remake of “Lost Horizon” or the musical dud “At Long Last Love” starring Burt Reynolds and Cybil Sheppard which proved that neither actor could sing.
I did break my rule of not using sequels because there is one so mind numbingly awful that it behooved me to include it.
Here are the 10 worst films of the 1970’s in alphabetical order:
ANDY WARHOL’S FRANKENSTEIN (1974) – Updated story of the mad doctor who makes beautiful monsters out of other human body parts. The film was a sensation when it was first released due to its X rating because of nudity and the over the top gore plus the fact that it was in 3-D. Today the gore that literally made people sick in 74 looks terribly phony and without the 3-D the film has nothing at all going for it besides terrible acting and some of the worst dialogue ever written. Says the doctor to an impending victim, “To know life you must first f**k death in the gall bladder.” With lines like that who needs Hemingway or Steinbeck?
THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE (1977) – Gene Hackman stars in this confounding thriller about a newly released con recruited by an organization for a political assassination. Candice Bergen, Richard Widmark, Mickey Rooney and Eli Wallach co-star in Stanley Kramer’s thriller that is so confusing I still haven’t figured out even the most basic points of the plot (such as what organization is hiring Hackman) after two viewings. And if that isn’t enough the film ends with an infuriating freeze frame that leaves everything up in the air. A major disaster for everyone involved.
EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977) – I did everything I could to avoid putting sequels on these lists but this film, quite simply, is one of the worst major motion pictures ever made. Linda Blair returns as Regan who is again possessed by the devil and Richard Burton co-stars as the priest trying to find out why. Louise Fletcher, Ned Beatty, Kitty Wynn, Paul Henried, James Earl Jones and Max Von Sydow all show up looking thoroughly confused at the proceedings. The film is so awful sold out houses were reported near empty by the time the film ends. Sadly those who left missed the shot of the giant locust flying by the Capitol building and the conclusion where Blair and Burton board a bus heading to the original house in Georgetown only after Burton yells at the bus driver to stop eating his hot dog and drive on. Meanwhile Wynn and Fletcher get into a cab heading to the same house. When they give the cab driver the address he shoots them a glance as if knowing exactly what happened there a few years earlier. When Blair and Burton arrive so does a swarm of locusts who take over the house causing Fletcher’s cab to crash and burn while not even a single neighbor on the street comes out to check the commotion until far too late. If you missed it you missed the howls of what few people were left. “Deliverance” director John Boorman helmed this film and pulled the film to re-edit. Once that version hit second run theaters he tried to re-edit again and Warner Brothers wisely put a stop to it. The film made almost $11 million its first week and barely made another dollar after that once critical reaction and word of mouth hit the streets.
GABLE AND LOMBARD (1976) – You would think that if you were going to make a biography of the romance of two Hollywood stars that would at least get the facts straight wouldn’t you? Let me count the ways that they get the facts wrong. The film opens with Gable (poorly played by James Brolin as if he is Rhett Butler instead of what Gable may have been like in real life) arriving at the site where Lombard’s (nicely played by Jill Clayburgh) plane has crashed where his press agent consoles him. In reality the agent was killed in the crash. In the same scene Gable wears an Army uniform when in reality he enlisted after his wife’s death. In the movie the two meet at a party while in reality they had worked together a few years earlier. In the movie the two hide their love affair due to Gable’s second marriage when in reality they were very open with their affair even attending Hollywood parties as a couple. In the movie Gable is sued for paternity that is thrown out after Lombard testified to having slept every night with Gable. In reality Gable slept with many women while with Lombard and the paternity suit referred to a child born 10 years before Gable met Lombard. Lombard played no part in the trial. Now you may think I am quibbling and maybe I would be if the film were better but it’s cornball trash with one phony scene after another.
THE KLANSMAN (1974) – One of the most offensive films of the decade was this melodrama about racial tension in the (surprise) South with Lee Marvin as a sheriff and Richard Burton as a landowner who get caught up in the problems of racial harmony. This film is a sick and twisted look at a serious subject with enough violence to please most sickos in the crowd. Burton was reportedly drunk much of the shoot and it shows in his awkward and unconvincing performance as a rich Southerner.
LUCKY LADY (1975) – One of the worst films ever made with 3 top actors (Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman, Liza Minnelli) in the leads. The story revolves around three rumrunners in the 1930’s and their constant flirtation with a ménage-a-trois. The film is all flair and no body with a thin story, few laughs and lots of needless chases. “Singin In The Rain” director Stanley Donen reportedly shot four different endings and somehow he managed to include the worst one (not knowing what the other three are I can’t imagine one worse then the one in the final cut). This is one of the biggest flops of the decade.
MOMENT BY MOMENT (1978) – Hot on the heels of the smash hits “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease,” John Travolta suffered his first flop with one of the worst love stories ever made. Here Travolta plays Strip (Strip??), a California beach bum who falls in love with older woman Lily Tomlin in this dreary film that doesn’t even establish why Travolta prefers older women to that of women his own age. There is no motivation for the characters, they just exist because the screenplay says no. Blame goes all around but especially to writer/director Jane Wagner, Tomlin’s life partner for 30 plus years, who evidently got the job because of who she knows.
QUINTET (1979) – My personal choice as the worst major motion picture ever made was Robert Altman’s bleak look at the future with Paul Newman as one of a group of survivors in a frozen city who must play a board game to survive. Whatever happened to a nice game of Monopoly? Altman’s film is pretentious, boring and just plain impossible to follow.
SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (1978) – Someone out there actually thought that linking the songs to the famous Beatles album into a coherent story was a good idea. To accomplish this we actually get a female character named Strawberry Fields and another named Lucy (as in ‘In The Sky With Diamonds’). Someone out there actually thought it a brilliant idea to cast The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton (fine musicians to be sure) in the lead roles. With appearances by George Burns (as Mr. Kite), Steve Martin (as Dr. Maxwell with the silver hammer), Aerosmith, Earth, Wind and Fire and Donald Pleasance – each of who embarrasses themselves to varying degrees as they sing – the film is certainly filled with talent that is largely wasted. The musical numbers range from weak to horrible with a conclusion you have to see to believe. A despondent Frampton decides to kill himself by jumping off the roof of a building. As he falls he is zapped by a metal figure that turns into Billy Preston who puts him back on the roof while singing “Get Back.” It’s that kind of movie.
THE SWARM (1978) – Irwin Allen began the slow descent of quality disaster movies (followed by Beyond The Poseidon Adventure and When Time Ran Out) with this offering about a swarm of killer bees only proves that a boat load of talented actors will be wasted if there is no script to support them. Michael Caine, Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Katherine Ross, Richard Chamberlain, Slim Pickens, Olivia DeHavilland, Jose Ferrer, Fred MacMurray, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant and Patty Duke Astin all sleepwalk through their various roles trying to look scared at what ends up looking like nothing more then corn flakes blowing out of a fan. This is a monumental waste for the talent on the screen and the viewers at home. Amazingly there was a director’s cut that is on DVD and video that runs a full 30 minutes longer then the rotten version first released. You have been warned.
ZARDOZ (1974) – There is an old adage in Hollywood that you should never let a director make his pet project after having made a smash hit. Someone should have remembered that when John Boorman, fresh off “Deliverance” (but a few years before Exorcist II), went into production with this sci-fi thriller starring Sean Connery as a prisoner of a society of intellectuals fighting a society of misfits. Connery becomes the object of every woman in sight due to the fact that he wears a barely there loin cloth but there is little suspense outside of whether said cloth will slip off. Set in 2293, this muddled and confusing mess could have easily been set in present day. Boorman would thankfully bounce back from the two disasters he created to be nominated for his biopic “Hope and Glory” plus the successes of “The Emerald Forest” and “The General.”
