In May 1978, I graduated from high school, figured "it" out, and left the Nazarene Church. Going to movies in the theater, previously sinful, forbidden, and exceptionally rare, suddenly became commonplace (except that I was still living at home, so I had to tell my parents that I was working, or studying at the library). During my freshman year at Augustana College, my friends kept referencing Mel Brooks, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, or Woody Allen. I had never heard of any of them. I had a lot of catching up to do! In the end I saw 20 movies at the Showcase Cinemas, plus more in the student union on campus and through Film Club.
August: The Eyes of Laura Mars. Laura (Faye Dunaway, whom I had never heard of) can see through the eyes of a serial killer, and falls in love with the detective investigating the cases (Tommy Lee Jones, whom I had never heard of). Chiefly notable for its 10-minute long trailer that played before every single move for the next three months.
September: Death on the Nile. This star-studded version of the Agatha Christie novel featured Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith, David Niven, Mia Farrow, and Golden Age-Hollywood legend Bette Davis, some of whom I had heard of.
October: Midnight Express. An American college student (Brad Davis) is arrested for drug possession and imprisoned in Turkey. Not speaking Turkish, he tries to signal that he is cold, and wants a blanket, but the guard thinks that he wants sex, and rapes him. Later he has a unstated homoerotic relationship with a fellow prisoner. My first gay references since figuring "it" out!
October: The Wiz. Although Dorothy (a painfully miscast Diana Ross) is pushing 30, this urban African-American version of the Wizard of Oz mythos has some of the greatest songs in the history of musical theater ("You can't win, chile, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game.") Plus every black actor in Hollywood takes their clothes off as they are freed from Evilene's spell.
October: Halloween. The first major psycho-slasher movie, with Michael in a scary mask slicing up all of the teens who have sex, including some hot guys, leaving the virginal Last Girl still standing. I loved the moody, cloudy, ominous Haddonfield.
November: Magic. A ventriloquist (Anthony Hopkins) has a third-rate act: "Behave, or I'll hire a Mafia woodpecker." "I wish I had a wood pecker." Until his dummy takes on a life of its own and starts murdering people.
November: Paradise Alley. I had never heard of Sylvester Stallone or Rocky (1976), so I went in fresh to this story of three boxing brothers (Stallone, Armand Assante, Lee Canalito).
November: Movie Movie. An homage to the double-features of yesteryear, starring George C. Scott and a cavalcade of famous stars whom I had never heard of, like Harry Hamlin and Barry Bostwick.
December: Superman. The first big-screen Superman, except for some 1940s serials, with Christopher Reeve retelling the complete origin story, and Margot Kidder as the Daily Planet reporter with the crush on him: "How big are you? Um...I mean, how tall?"
December: California Suite. The movie adaption of a Neil Simon play about four bickering couples staying at a Manhattan hotel: Alan Alda/Jane Fonda, Walter Matthau/Elaine May, Bill Cosby/Sheila Frazier, and Maggie Smith/Michael Kane. The latter has just come out as gay -- the first openly identified gay character in any movie (that I had seen! His wife calls him a "fruit," but who cared? A hundred people from Rock Island saw a gay man on a big screen -- and they didn't run screaming from the theater!
January: None
February: The Warriors. A very stylized youth gang led by Michael Beck (Xanadu) tries to travel through the mean streets of New York, where other gangs are out to get them. "Come out and play-ay."
March: Phantasm. I don't remember anything about it now, except that the plot makes no sense and the boy is probably gay, but there's a review from 2012 here.
April: Love at First Bite. George Hamilton as a Count Dracula for the disco era. "I do not drink wine, and I do not smoke shit."
May: Over the Edge, with teen idol Matt Dillon playing juvenile delinquent. He;s all about buddy-bonding, although his friend (Vincent Spano) meets the Girl of His Dreams.
May: Alien. "In space, no one can hear you scream."
June: The Main Event, as heavily promoted as "The Eyes of Laura Mars" a few months ago. Miscast superstar Barbra Streisand ("Memories...light the corners of my mind.") manages miscast boxer Ryan O'Neill ("What can you say about a girl who died?"). They fall in love, of course.
June: The Muppet Movie. The Muppets are everywhere today, but in 1979 they appeared only on some guest spots on Sesame Street and on their own vaudeville-style Muppet Show Here we see how the performers got together. And Kermit sings
June: Meatballs. Irreverent camp counselor Tripper (Bill Murray) and shy, gay-coded teen Rudy (Chris Makepeace) fall in love. An astoundingly open gay subtext. I saw this with my brother, and even he noticed. I know some heterosexuals are going to scream and moan: "Rudy can't be gay! He never says the word!" But I don't care; my memory, my rules.
July: Breaking Away: Working class townies clash with elitist students in Bloomington, Indiana, where I would be going to grad school in a few years. Lots of buddy bonding amid a Girl of His Dreams plotline. Put this movie on your bucket list just for the scene where the guys are basking shirtless on some rocks at the quarry (top photo).
July: The Amityville Horror. James Brolin (whom I had never heard of) and Margot Kidder (Superman) in a haunted house. A critique of the heterosexist job-house-wife-kids trajectory that the adults had been pushing at me for all my life. I don't remember the underwear bulge.
We have a lot of movies in common! I was madly in love with Brad Davis after "Midnight Express" but he really should have have sex with the guy in the shower. "Phamtasm" has a lot of gay subtext not too mention the cute older brother. And yes the guys in "Breaking Away" are out of Corbin Fisher video- specially the young Dennis Quaid
ReplyDeleteThe homoerotic relationship was heavily implied, but couldn't be explicit.
DeleteWell because it was an American film
DeleteBefore I was born, so Midnight Express I only know from jokes about a Turkish prison.
ReplyDeleteThe Wiz is fun. Not my favorite blaxploitation movie, that would be Coffy, but fun.
Halloween basically created the modern slasher: "This is how we scared kids away from sex before AIDS."
Wait, you're gay and hadn't seen Rocky Horror? I mean, it's terribly homophobic by modern standards, Frank is a "sweet transvestite" who rapes both Brad (future Spin City mayor Barry Bostwick) and Janet (future scapegoat of former PUMAs Susan Sarandon), but the only straight characters are a couple and also brother and sister.
Superman is an interesting existential conundrum, due to Crisis on Infinite Earths, though I guess Convergence or Dark Crisis or Death Metal fixes it. I kinda wish they could've crossed over with Batman. And had some Flash/Green Lantern/Green Arrow movies. Those are the big G2 gay subtexts, besides Batjokes. Not as comfortable with G3 in this era, due to the age gap between Robin and Speedy. (Speedy's four years older, but their ages are ambiguous. Robin should be 18. The big gay subtext between them comes later anyway.) I guess they couldn't do Lois's "Clark Kent is boring, I wanna fuck Superman" routine?
I remember thinking River City Ransom was based on the Warriors. There you get to see pixelated butt very briefly.
Alien is also famous for the Bechdel test strip.
Saw Meatballs on Comedy Central, and even though this is before comedies actually had gay characters win out in the end, yeah, it's practically text.
Kind of weird that they're basking shirtless. Like, after swimming?
The Amityville Horror also gave us the racist Indian burial ground trope, even though it's never actually mentioned in the movie. Mandela effect. And yeah, that bulge
The hilarious thing for millennials is, we want job-house. Wife-kids is debatable, maybe a husband instead or some sort of found family, but the job market, just jobs you can live on, has been shit for decades. And landlords are scum: The "good" apartments are often still not up to code, in egregious ways. But that's a whole other rant.
I saw "The Horror Picture Show" for the first time at the Nuart Theater in Davenport in July 1978, but I didn't know any of the actors, so I must not have realized that Barry Bostwick played Brad.
DeleteThey go swimming at the quarry, which I think is abandoned and sort of a working-class swimming hole. I lived in Bloomington for two years, but I don't actually recognize most of the scenes in the movie.
DeleteThough living in Indianapolis, was in Bloomington quite a times for the last 45 years. Having seen Breaking Way when it first came out, I pretty much recognized where every filmed location was. The quarry scene was shot south of Bloomington in one of the numerous limestone quarries in the area. I don't know if you ever knew this, but the Empire State Building and the Pentagon were built using the limestone from the numerous quarries there.
DeleteWhy is the Indian Burial Ground trope racist? It's the classic you disturbed a sacred ground you get punished horror idea which is as ancient at the mummy.
DeleteThat makes sense. I guess I more, if no one's around or can be, I thought it was standard practice to just strip entirely before diving in.
DeleteI should add a bit about Robin's age. Renamed Nightwing, he turns 20 during Crisis on Infinite Earths. Which places him at no older than 19 in 1980. 1980 is important because it ends the Rep. Batgirl arc, which by definition has to go from 1972 to 1980, during which time Robin was her page. (Oh yeah, also, this means that during the time, those two could not have dated pre-Crisis.) Since it ends on a failed reelection bid, we can assume that's two years. Therefore, he's likely between 16 and 19.
James Brolin was hot- watch him in "The Car" in which he plays a sheriff fighting a demonic vehicle - yes he has underwear scenes
ReplyDeleteI have "Mad Max Flexes" in the title because "Mad Max" premiered in March 1979, so I included it. Then I discovered that it played only in Australia; everyone else saw it on VHS or DVD later. So I removed the entry, but forgot to take it out of the title.
ReplyDeleteOver The Edge was Matt Dillon's first film role. He was "discovered" hanging around a middle school parking lot. Somebody thought he looked like a movie star. That person was right of course, but it wasn't until he teamed with Jodie Foster in Little Darlings a year later that we got to ogle that torso.
ReplyDelete