Continuing our year-long theme covering the history of cinema, today's episode covers films from the 1970s! Following the civil unrest of the 60s, cinema in the 70s took a much more cynical view of the world, exposing the rough edges of humanity with the "gritty realism" that defined movies from that decade. While not every movie from the 70s hated the world in which it was born, the increase in original horror movies that were more grounded in "reality" than reliance on classic monsters, the popularization of disaster movies, and an abundance of vigilantes and rogue cops "cleaning up the streets" was clearly holding up a mirror to reflect the disillusionment of humanity at the time. While a pretty solid chunk of the episode is discussing the representation of vigilantes (as well as the potential impact it continues to have on modern society), we do also spend some time talking about some brighter spots of the decade that don't center around rogue "justice." We also spend some time (not nearly enough time, honestly) discussing a hidden gem that might honestly be one of our favorite films of the decade, Keoma!!
As a reminder, these History of Cinema episodes will not be a comprehensive coverage of every single movie that was released that decade. It isn't even necessarily going to be the "top" movies from the decade. Instead, it will be more of a broad discussion of some of the advancements, themes, and highlights from each decade, with the various movies that we watched as examples. This series is also serving as an opportunity for us to fill in some gaps in our own personal film viewings (this series was also inspired, in part, by our Horror Movie Blindspots series we did last year).
Video Monsters is brought to you by the Chattanooga Film Festival and Central Cinema in Knoxville, TN. Follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or online at chattfilmfest.org and centralcinema865.com Links for each of these can also be found on our pages, so be sure to follow us at videomonsterpod on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well.
music for Video Monsters by Evan Simmons
Audio clip from Keoma (1976)
Directed by Enzo G. Castellari
starring: Franco Nero, Woody Strode and William Berger
music: Guido De Angelis & Maurizio De Angelis
song performed by: Sybil & Guy
