The 10 Best Films of 1977

For no reason whatsoever, and to come up with a top-10 list topic somewhat arbitrarily, I have selected a year at random, and have scoured my memory and film experiences to bring you the best films of that year. The year in question is 1977, which is notable to many geeks for being the year science fiction began, thanks to the popularity of a particular space opera. It’s notable to many genre fans as it was smack in the middle of the Italian exploitation era, and directors like Lucio Fulci were churning out horror films on a bi-monthly basis. It was the year “Godzilla” made it to Italy. Movies with titles like “Jailbait Babysitter” and “Satan’s Cheerleaders” were playing regularly at grindhouses.

At the same time, wacko art films were seeping slowly into the mainstream. Ingmar Bergman released “The Serpent’s Egg,” the “Raggedy Anna and Andy” film was released which is, if you haven’t seen it, one of the single most psychedelic animated films ever made. Ralph Bakshi’s “Wizards” came out. Paul Verhoeven made “A Soldier of Orange,” his first film. Largely forgotten today, films like “Julia” and “The Turning Point” each received 11 Academy Award nominations. 1977 was a healthy year.

I realize that 1977 is likely before many of Geekscape’s readers (indeed, even its contributors) was born, and there is an unfortunate trend with most young film viewers to stay away from any film before the year of their birth. Consider, then, this list as ten important recommendations. For the older readers, it may serve as a trip down memory lane.

Here, then, are the best films of 1977.

10) Saturday Night Fever

dir. John Badham

While John Badham’s “Saturday Night Fever” is often mocked in the post-disco era as a goofy curio, I come to remind you that it’s actually a dark and kind of edgy drama about a sexy NYC Guido trying to find his place in a scene, and win the approval of his disapproving family and peers. Like “Rocky” from the year before, it’s about a none-too-bright but warm-hearted mook trying to make good in the world. But whereas “Rocky” was about a thug trying to fight his way from the bottom to the middle, “Saturday Night Fever” is about a good-looking, rather vain, and talented nightclub rat only aspiring to be kind of the dancefloor.

John Travolta really gave his breakout performance with this film, having previously only played minor roles on TV, a supporting role in DePalma’s “Carrie,” and his infamous Vinnie Barbarino on “Welcome Back, Kotter.” In “Saturday Night Fever” he also proved he could play an angry young man with stirring authenticity.

It’s rumored that Gene Siskel, who often declared “Saturday Night Fever” his favorite movie of all time, not only bought Travolta’s famous white suit, but was also buried in it. The film also boasts one of the best soundtrack records of any movie, a record that sold millions. Watch it again. It’s a good one.

9) The Kentucky Fried Movie

dir. John Landis

Remember when spoofs used to be good. Not only good, but great? “Airplane!,” “The Naked Gun,” “Young Frankenstein.” These days, limp pop culture references, gay panic, and deliberate sexual crassness are all that seems to be needed for a spoof comedy (I’m looking at you, Seltzer and Friedberg). But there was a time, 1977 to be exact, when such films were beginning to find a renaissance in movie theaters. And it was largely in part to the release of “The Kentucky Fried Movie,” a slapstick effort so flip and so casual, and yet so calculated and brilliant, that it ranks among the best comedies of all time.

“The Kentucky Fried Movie” is a spoof of American TV at the time. Indeed, the film’s writers (Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker) used their new techno-marvel, the VCR, to record late-night TV programming, and would then write spoofs of what they found. At the time, there were still a lot of local affiliates who filled their own TV spots with whatever they could find, including public domain kung-fu flicks, weird advertisements for local businesses, and the occasional sex film that sneaked its way into the mainstream. So the groudn was fertile for satire.

The result is a schizophrenic little oddity that featured such spoof ads as “Catholic Schoolgirls in Trouble,” “A Fistful of Yen,” and “Cleopatra Schwartz.” Not every sketch is fall-over funny, but the result is something that is stronger than the sum of its parts. It’s a milestone in American comedy.

8) That Obscure Object of Desire

dir. Luis Buñuel

Buñuel, eternally surrealist and ever the prankster, played one of his most talked-about tricks in his latter-day classic “That Obscure Object of Desire.” The film starred Fernando Rey as a wealthy Spanish aristocrat named Mathieu who slowly becomes obsessed with a younger woman named Conchita. Rather than go through any osrt of straightforward courtship, however, they play games where they haphazard orbit one another until they finally find themselves living together in a black cycle of sexual blackmail. There is affection and resentment in equal parts.

The trick, though is that Conchita is played by two different actresses. Like sometimes within a scene. Carole Bouquet with leave the room, and Angela Molina will return. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the changes. The woman just becomes another woman from time to time. Buñuel seems to be making the clear statement that our objects of desire are less about what powers they already possess, and more about what powers we give them.

Buñuel films are confusing under the best circumstances, but possess an eriudite, artistic joy that few filmmakers manage to possess. If you’ve seen none of his films, start with “Un Chien Andalou” and “L’Age D’Or.” Then see “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” and “The Exterminating Angel.” Now you’re a little more educated.

7) House

dir. Nobuhiko Obabyashi

This is a weird-ass Japanese cult film that I only recently discovered, thanks to the hard-working theater curators around Los Angeles. It played at a few local arthouses, and is now notorious in the area for it’s batshit craziness. Odder still, The Criterion Collection put it out on home video.

“House” has no precedent at all. There is nothing that is like it. It was made by a famous director of television commercials who wanted to make a horror comedy, and who got the story elements from his five-year-old daughter. The film’s musical score was completed years before the shooting even began, so the music is staggeringly inappropriate for much of the film. The result is a whacked-out wonder that plays like an episode of “Scooby-Doo” as if Mario Bava had directed it after a fistful of mescaline.

A group of teenager girls decide to vacation at a remote country house, that is possessed by the ghost of something-or-other. There are killer cats, flying severed heads, killer trees, killer pianos, killer mirrors, killer living mattresses, and a finale involving a lake of cat blood. This is one to watch in wonder, nd is so striking, it deserves a spot on the list as one of the best of the year.

6) 3 Women

dir. Robert Altman

Imagine if Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 classic “Persona” were made in rural America by Robert Altman. That’s “3 Woman,” a stylish and stylized film from a director typically known for his naturalness and ease of overlapping dialogue. To be sure there is plenty of natural dialogue in “3 Women,” but there are so many surreal elements, it’s hard to see the film as taking place in any sort of palpable reality.

A teenage girl named Pink (Sissy Spacek) and a flustering housewife named Millie (Shelley Duvall) both work at a spa somewhere in California. This spa is strangely low on clients, and, the way it’s shot, could easily stand in for a post-apocalypse setting. The swirling desert winds and emotional distance of the characters suggest the end of the world. As Pinky and Millie get to know one another, we find that they are becoming more like one another. Then they decide to swicth places, just to see what will happen. The results are damning.

The third woman is Willie (Janice Rule) who seems to be the balance between the two women, but, by no means, offers them absolution or sanity. Altman has made some great films in his day, and this one, probably his boldest experiment, is one of his greatest.

5) Star Wars

dir. George Lucas

I refuse to fall for that revisionist crap, and refer to the film as “Episode IV – A New Hope.” It’s called “Star Wars,” and “Star Wars” it shall always remain.

I grew up a “Star Trek” kid, and was so busy taking down the lives of Kirk and Picard that I didn’t get around to watching “Star Wars” until I was 18, so, as a result, I don’t have the childhood affection toward the film that so many of my peers do. Having recently seen it a second time, though, I can attest for its timeless quality, its grand adventure, and its invention of a film language that the best action blockbusters all possess. Its storytelling conceits are sometimes goofy, and the characters are a bit thin, but to get the opposite is not why you watch “Star Wars.” If you want intelligence and real science in your sci-fi, watch “Star Trek.” If you want “mythology,” (whatever that means) watch “The Empire Strikes Back.” If you want pure, unadulterated action, adventure and spectacle, all inspired by the fresh-faced joy of old “Flash Gordon” shorts, go to “Star Wars.”

The version I re-watched was the original 1977 version with the original practical effects. The effects are marvelous and are still amazing to watch. It’s sad that Lucas has felt the need to erase his original effects and replace them with digital effects in his subsequent clean-ups. If you can help it, only watch the 1977 version. Know why this whole phenomenon began.

4) Annie Hall

dir. Woody Allen

A moody and funny and defining piece of work of an important American filmmaker, “Annie Hall” is still reviled by many young genre fans as the film that beat “Star Wars” for best picture at that year’s Academy Awards. But while kids would clearly take “Star Wars” over “Annie Hall” any day, grown-ups can appreciate the epic neuroses and playful-yet-mature look at grown-up relationship any day.

Woody Allen managed to, with “Annie Hall” find a balance between the goofy slapstick of his early career, and begin an era of an earnest and confessional look into his own romantic and sexual obsessions. The 1970s in America is typically seen as a dark and somewhat dour decade, giving us films like “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now,” and “Taxi Driver,” where the heroes were criminals or amoral crackpots. Films like “Annie Hall” were kind of a tonic. A film about relationships going bad, but looked at with a good deal of humor.

I still never liked the way Diane Keaton dressed in this film, despite her look launching an an entire fashion movement, but I do love the character she played who, like the women in “That Obscure Object of Desire” seemed to change based on who was looking at her.

Also, there’s that great scene where some New York blowhard is trying to impress his date by talking up Marshall McLuhan, only to have Alvy (Allen) produce the real McLuhan to discredit him. Golden.

3) Suspiria

dir. Dario Argento

Horror had never looked so good, and it hasn’t since. Dario Argento’s masterpiece is a virtuoso job of directing, composition, and terror that still scares me each time. Sure, the film is completely illogical, the dubbing is bad, the story makes no sense, and the acting is well past the line of camp, but for me, that only makes the film stronger. It is a delicious mixture of true dread, over-the-top style, and pure kitsch that is a product of its time, and one of the best horror movies ever made.

“Suspiria,” (the first of a trilogy) also features one of the best horror movie scores in the genre’s history, featuring a soundtrack by the Italian rock group Goblin, and has one of those obnoxiously repetitive themes that bored its ways into your ears and never leaves. The band, not convinced that their score would convey the appropriate level of dread, also shouted and whispered warnings on the soundtrack. “It’s a witch!” You can hear them cry.

The story, about a wispy American (Jessica Harper) trying to make her way at a remote dance academy is rife with Sapphic tension and soap opera dynamics. There is, naturally, a killer on the loose, and some sort of witch conspiracy at the academy. The story often gets lost in the style, but man is it fun to take the journey.

2) Stroszek

dir. Werner Herzog

Herzog’s documertaries are constructed like fictions. His features films always contain some element of documentary. No film director seems to straddle the line between the dream-like storytelling power of film and its necessity to capture ecstatic truth than Werner Herzog, and none of his films seem to exemplify this straddling better than “Stroszek,” one of his best, and the second best film of 1977.

“Stroszek” tells the kind-of true story of a homeless German man named Bruno S. (The “S,” I’m geussing stands for Stroszek) who plays music in a courtyard, and whose only friends are a destitute old man and a run-down hooker. Herzog did write dialogue and come up with situations, but it’s pretty obvious that Bruno S. is playing himself, and that all the little quirks and character choices were just Bruno’s actual idiosyncrasies.

When the sad trio moves to rural Wisconsin, looking for a better life, not much imporves, and Herzog looks at America (from an outsider’s perspective) as if its a bundle of broken promises and curiosities and tortures that just can’t really be understood. The film’s final shot is a marvel to behold. After all the tragedy and weirdness, Herzog takes us out on a dancing chicken.

1) Eraserhead

dir. David Lynch

I saw “Eraserhead” when I was 16 or so, and it blew my mind. Here was a film that took away all pretense, and just to the real depth of horror and fear that lurk deep within the brain. Fear. Pure. Clean. Unadulterated. Terrifying. This is one of the most striking film ever made. Truly unique. Images that hadn’t been seen before or since. It intensity hasn’t been matched. This is one of my favorite movies.

Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) is a fright-wig-haired nebbish living in grey-skied urban decay in a tiny apartment. He never smiles. Life has been drained of all its joy. All its color. It’s reached the point where his life is a surreal landscape from a Beckett play. He has dinner with his hysterical girlfriend Mary (Charlotte Stewart), and her family. They have Cornish game hens that come to life. He has a child. The baby is monstrous, and cries through the night. It looks like a calf fetus. He has dreams of a cancer-cheeked ’50s moll that lives in his radiator. Something is going on here…

Equal parts Beckett, Kafka, and complete originality, it’s been said that “Eraserhead” reflects Lynch’s own nightmarish experiences living in the big city, and his own anxiety about having children. He has confirmed the former, but is evasive about the latter. Lynch has never been articulate about the “meaning” of his films, allowing them to speak for themselves. He feels they are complete, and warrant no film school interpretation. Lynch’s lack of disclosure and seeming inability to articulate his exact meanings only proves, to me, how earnest and pure a film like “Eraserhead” is. This is not a representation or an essayic dissection or an intellectual exercise. This is a pure look at a depth of human fright never before reached.

Good one.

Witney Seibold is a film critic living in Los Angeles with his wife. He watch a lot of movies, and reads a lot of old books. He occasionally updates his ‘blog Three Cheers for Darkened Years! which features over 850 of his articles to date. He is also one half of The B-Movies Podcast on Crave Online, where you can hear his dulcet voice discussing movies with William Bibbiani. He also recently started a series of articles, also for Crave Online, called Free Film School, where he shares his film knowledge with you.