1970’s

[7] Two young couples rent a Winnebago for a cross-country road trip, but jealousy soon turns their romantic adventure into a nightmare. Richard Hatch (Battlestar Galactica) and Doug Chapin play the men, both recently discharged from service in Vietnam and anxious to begin new lives. Hatch plans to marry his fiancée (Susanne Benton), but Chapin tries to talk him out of it, fearing marriage will …

[6] A deadly alien lands in the English countryside and assumes the form of a human male. Two lesbians living in a large manor invite him for dinner, and then to stay the night. He studies them with great curiosity… but he’s also hungry. He eats their chickens and some of the local wildlife. His presence begins to drive a wedge between the women, just …

[7] A married couple who’ve made a game out of sexual conquest invite a younger married couple over for dinner. There’s much more in store for the evening, though, especially when booze and poppers slick the way for same-sex seduction. Some might call Score pornographic, but there’s far too much storytelling and craftsmanship put into the movie to dismiss it so quickly. While director Radley …

[7] Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) directs this made-for-TV adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a writer who discovers his hometown is being overtaken by vampires. The most remarkable thing about Hooper’s work here is how genuinely scary Salem’s Lot is without ever resorting to gore or excessive violence. Scenes of vampire children floating outside bedroom windows, beckoning their next victims to let …

[6] Sam Elliott plays an L.A. beach lifeguard who begins to question, at the age of thirty-two, if it might finally be time to put on a shirt and get a ‘real’ job. There’s no question that Sam Elliott has charisma and can carry a movie, and that’s probably the only reason this flick has had any shelf life at all. Lifeguard is decidedly a …

[6] In this dream-like film from director Juan López Moctezuma, a teenaged girl named Justine goes to live at a convent after the death of her parents. Unfortunately, her nun roommate, Alucarda, turns out to be a satanic lesbian with slightly vampiric tendencies. How the nuns missed the warning signs, we’ll never know. But after Alucarda takes Justine to a devil orgy in the woods …

[3] This faux documentary featuring people’s alleged encounters with a sasquatch-like monster in the Louisiana woods made millions at drive-ins across America when it was released. It was a remarkable fete for a G-rated homegrown independent flick featuring non-actors. And that’s the most remarkable thing about The Legend of Boggy Creek — it’s gumption and box office success. While the story is narrated by a …

[8] Indie maverick John Cassavetes examines a family under the stress of mental illness in A Woman Under the Influence. Cassavetes regulars Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands (his real-life wife) star as the parents of three children whose family is put to the test when Falk has Rowlands institutionalized for insanity. After six months of therapy and shock treatment, the matriarch returns — but will …

[2] During World War II, four fascist leaders round up a group of adolescent boys and girls to torture for one-hundred-twenty days. Just knowing what Salò is about kept me from watching it for decades. But now that I’ve finally seen it, I can safely say I’ll never want to see it again — not because it’s too graphic or upsetting, but because it’s point …

[6] After the world saw its first bona-fide blockbuster, 1975’s Jaws, daring Italian movie mogul Dino De Laurentiis decided he needed to go down in history for producing the second one. He settled on a remake of 1933’s King Kong and hired John Guillerman (The Towering Inferno) to direct. The screenplay is faithful to the original film in its broad strokes: A boat seeks passage …

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