Taxi Driver. When I was growing up, in that curious era of pre-history that had no dedicated movie channels, streaming or physical media or –ye Gods!– even any Internet, Taxi Driver was like some forbidden fruit alongside Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. I’d read about Taxi Driver in film magazines, books, etc but there was no way of actually seeing it. Videocassettes gradually changed everything regards access to movies, and sometime in the late-eighties, Taxi Driver was released on VHS to buy; I think it was in the Cinema Club range, I’d see it on display in Woolworths alongside films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Quiet Man. These were pretty basic, pan-and-scan editions on fuzzy tape, the kind of thing that folks today used to Blu-Ray etc would recoil in horror at, but hey, we were watching these standard-definition tapes on CRT mono televisions with no larger than 28″ screens.

I’ve always been an advocate that ‘the film’ is the thing, and a great film is a great film however you see it, and of course while I’d not count phones and tablets in this regard, I will always maintain that you don’t ‘need’ to see a film in IMAX to enjoy it. It should be able to work its magic regardless of whether its on a cinema widescreen or a b&w portable TV or a 28″ CRT screen… even though, sure, it’ll no doubt look its best on that big cinema screen. So anyway, as soon as that VHS tape was loaded up and running, and worked its way to the start of Scorcese’s masterpiece, I was quite blown away. The title sequence alone was enough to convince me I was witnessing Greatness- the gorgeous cinematography, the haunting Bernard Herrmann score, dragging me into the stuff of nightmare.

That being said, the curious thing about it was that, by, what was it, around 1988 when I watched Taxi Driver for the first time, its harrowing climactic sequence was already somewhat… dated. Sure, it still had impact, still has, but by the time I caught up with the film, I’d already watched Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Carpenter’s The Thing and many other graphic horrors, such as the infamous (for a time) video nasty The Evil Dead. Films watched years after their initial release can age like fine wine but they can also age by comparison to those that come after. Which is not to say that I diminish Taxi Driver in anyway; it remains one of my favourite films, but its my regret that I could not have experienced it back in 1976 when it first came out. Ditto The Exorcist and many others, but that’s another year/post down the line.

Logan’s Run. The summer of 1976 here in the UK was a hot one, as we experienced a famous drought often still referenced today, The 1970s being a pretty grim decade, the water standpipes and shortages were typical of just how lousy that decade could be, even in the sunshine. That summer I was deep into collecting Marvel comics, having progressed from the UK weekly reprints of 1973 onwards, by1976 I was also buying the four-colour American comicbooks imported to our shores with converted prices from cents to pence.1976 was the year of Jack Kirby’s The Eternals and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and another comics adaptation of a new sci-fi movie, Logan’s Run.

I wouldn’t see the actual film for a few years yet, but I loved that five-issue comic adaptation and one of the first books I ever bought was the original 1967 novel in a paperback tie-in adorned with the films gorgeously-1970s poster. We did get a TV show spin-off, which cleverly (?) used footage from the film to elevate the quality of its pilot episode, but back then TV shows were far from what they are today and its subsequent episodes were pretty cheap and shallow. Mind, films then aren’t what they are now, either, and newcomers to Logan’s Run today are likely shocked by it, its so… shiny, glossy, 1970s sci-fi, and distinctly pre-Star Wars, the film that would change everything the following year.

The comic book was probably better than the movie; brilliantly drawn by George Perez and Klaus Janson… its funny, those guys names, alongside those of Kirby, Buscema, Kane, Colan, Adams, etc. were like those of pop-stars to me, back then, and I still get a tingle when I read/hear those names, those superstars of the Marvel comics I read back then. Unlimited by the budgetary and technological constraints of the film, the comic just took things to some other level. About the only thing the comic didn’t have which the film did, was Jerry Goldsmith’s brilliant score. Which reminds me, I really should give that FSM CD a play again sometime soon. Beautiful, soaring themes, great big orchestra, some terrific action music and some synthesizers/electronics that oddly enough don’t sound anything quite as dated as they perhaps used to. Its a magnificent score, possibly second only to his Star Trek: The Motion Picture score for me. Its endlessly inventive, music which tells the story just as well as, indeed probably better than, the films dialogue. Goldsmith’s trouble was, his scores weren’t for films like Star Wars or Superman: The Movie. Logan’s Run has an excellent score but its for a pretty weak film, although I always get a kick from the sequences outside the Domes, in the ruins full of familiar monuments lost to centuries of decay- echoes of Planet of the Apes‘ statue of liberty reveal. Apparently Arrow will be releasing Logan’s Run on 4K UHD late this year/early next year…

The Omen. Another brilliant Goldsmith score, and a shocking horror movie that became… what’s the water-cooler equivalent of a school yard? We kids would share the experience of having watched it on its TV premiere, in the school yard and in classrooms the following morning, discussing the often gory, brilliantly orchestrated deaths inflicted on the film’s characters. One cannot properly describe the impact films like The Omen had back then. Of course, this was the era when TV premieres of films were big events, a communal experience shared by millions, something lost these days. My mate Andy bought the soundtrack album and we no doubt drove everybody in our houses nuts with those demonic chants utilised by Goldsmith to infernal effect. Its funny, people likely think a horror movie about the coming of the Antichrist to doom us all is ridiculous pulp nonsense but in the 1970s and early 1980s, it felt almost inevitable, like nuclear war.

The Outlaw Josey Wales. One of the best Westerns ever made, and certainly one that gets better with age- this is a great, great movie. Sometimes I think its the best Western that Eastwood ever did, even better than Unforgiven, which is likely some kind of heresy for some, but what do they know? Typical for films of its time, this is a pretty dark film but its also one that is hopeful and surpassingly life-affirming; Josey Wales loses his family in the film’s bleak opening but gradually gathers a new family as the film progresses, each ‘new’ character joining the ensemble around him a physical manifestation of his gradual healing from his tragic loss. Its just a great movie, which never looked better than on a recent-ish 4K UHD that looks quite ravishing.

Marathon Man. A great thriller that could possibly only have been made/set in that time when the Nazi atrocities and shadow of the Second World War still loomed fairly recent over the world. The 1970s were just a few decades after that war, clearly in living memory of most people, and it seemed to still dominate so much of the media, so many war movies and books about it; I remember the horribly depressing World at War documentary series narrated by Laurence Olivier (who stars in Marathon Man) and weekly collections like The War Papers (I had a few of those) and History of the Second World War (had a few of those too). No wonder the 1970s seemed pretty bleak, we were still in thrall of that horrible war. Of course all this informs the subject and subsequent success of this film. Oh, that and a fear of dentists…. Curiously, prior to release the film was heavily cut to remove scenes of graphic violence, its a pity that -as far as I know- this has never been restored; it remains a great thriller but possibly neutered somewhat by concerns from the studio following previews. Well, it possibly wasn’t the first time and certainly wasn’t the last…

Assault on Precinct 13. John Carpenter at his no-nonsense, down-to-basics inventive best. Soon-to-be-closed police station Precinct 13 is besieged by a relentless bloodthirsty street gang out for revenge, and the skeleton crew in the station has to join forces with the high-security inmates placed in the cells after their prison transport was interrupted. Its pretty much a Western transferred to then modern-day America, and is one of Carpenter’s finest films. That scene with the little girl shot at the ice cream van remains one of the most shocking things I ever saw in a movie. The film also sports one of Carpenter’s finest scores (back in his prime, Carpenter would both direct and score his own movies, and fans adore his films for both his keen eye for composition of the widescreen frame and his ability to write gritty, relentlessly catchy/disturbing music to accompany the action). Hmm, that’s another CD I need to listen to again…

Rocky. The funny thing is, I always had a hard time with regards Rocky– for some reason I simply refused to watch it, for years. Maybe it was Stallone, maybe it was the film’s one-note, rags-to-success sports drama storyline (well, that’s what I assumed). Of course, when Rocky came to television (I think it was a Christmas highlight on the BBC in 1980) my head was still all full of Star Wars and other sci-fi stuff in books etc so I ignored it. My low expectations/ disinterest was also informed by its sequels, as my first actual experience of a Rocky film was probably Rocky III on a video rental years later, that film only reaffirming the daft nonsense I expected the 1976 film to be (and reinforced by the patriotic hysterics of Rocky IV a few years later).

Well, I was wrong, of course. Rocky is a great ‘little’ film that clearly appealed to women attracted to the sensitive, well-meaning boxer Rocky Balboa but also to male audiences, the blue-collar workers in an economically-blighted America encouraged to share in Rocky’s aspirations. The film became a huge success (highest-grossing film of 1976) and won three Academy Awards including Best Picture (the latter no mean feat in 1976). Not that Oscar glory actually means anything, but back then? Plainly more than it does now. The film is one of those that I dismissed for years and only warmed to much, much later. Indeed, I’ve warmed to the whole series, funnily enough. Maybe I’m mellowing in my middle age, but Rocky is pretty great, and while immediate sequels have become curio marquees for Reagan’s America, later installments like Rocky Balboa and the first two Creed films have set the series shining even brighter.

Network. Another film from 1976 that I only caught up with many years after. I refer you to my recent post about the film, in fact. Man, 1976 was some year for movies.