Animal House (1978)

If I were marooned on a desert island, with a somehow, miraculously functioning DVD player, and could have only five movies to watch as I whiled away my days, dying of hunger and thirst, "Animal House" would definitely be one of them.

"Animal House" is, literally, sophomoric, but in the best way possible. You have two glaringly different fraternities - one filled with uptight, over-privileged, ass-kissing politician types, the other filled with overgrown boys who live to party and don't plan anything beyond the next second - and a Dean who wants the slackers OUT. Many frat house-themed movies have come after - "Revenge of the Nerds" comes to mind - but none hold a candle to this classic.

And here's why it wins:

There is some nudity and sexual content, but it's just the right amount (unlike "Revenge of the Nerds").

The casting is inspired. I can't think of one actor who isn't absolutely perfect in his or her role. Tom Hulce as Larry Kroger, aka "Pinto," and Stephen Furst as Kent Dorfman, aka "Flounder" ("May I have 10,000 marbles please?"); Bruce McGill as Daniel Simpson Day; Tim Matheson as Eric Stratton, shameless womanizer; Mark Metcalf as Doug Neidermeyer ("What is that? A pledge pin? On your uniform??"); John Vernon as Dean Wormer ("Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son"); Kevin Bacon as Chip Diller ("Thank you, sir! May I have another?"); Donald Sutherland as a rumpled, burnt-out professor smoking weed with his students; and, of course, John Belushi as John Blutarski. To name a few.

It's the absolute perfect length. There isn't one scene that goes too long - not one that you are tempted to fast-forward through to get to something better. It's all better.

There are no toilet jokes (think "Dumb & Dumber"), no homophobic humor (think "Meatballs"), no swearing that I can recall (save for Blutarski bellowing "Holy shit! Holy shit!" when Flounder accidentally kills Neidermeyer's prized horse).

The frat is eventually shut down and the lackluster students expelled. Their go-to response? Do something utterly stupid and pointless. Their revenge is epic because it is the one thing they actually apply themselves to!

Carrie (1976)

Based on the novel by Stephen King - his first big success as an author, a book his wife, Tabitha, literally rescued from the garbage - "Carrie" is, in a nutshell, the story of a sheltered misfit who uses her telekinetic powers to exact revenge on her classmates.

Everyone is familiar with the imagery: Carrie (Sissy Spacek) standing on stage at her high school prom, drenched in pig's blood that was dumped on her by her biggest tormentor, Chris (Nancy Allen) and her boyfriend Billy (John Travolta). Carrie's date for the prom is Tommy (William Katt), who took her at his girlfriend's (Amy Irving) insistence because she felt bad for what had happened to Carrie.

Carrie's devoutly religious single mother (Piper Laurie) has literally kept her in the dark - she locks Carrie in a closet, under the watchful, glow-in-the-dark eyes of a bloody Jesus on the cross, for hours - so when she starts her period in gym class (of course), she becomes hysterical because she truly believes she's dying. Her ever-helpful classmates throw pads and tampons at her, chanting "Plug it up!", until the gym teacher (Betty Buckley) puts a stop to it.

For their punishment, the girls get a week's detention with Buckley, who makes them work out (much like Carrie's mom makes her pray) while holding refusal of their prom tickets over their heads. When queen bitch Chris refuses, Buckley cracks her one across the face (which today would be caught on cell phone and end up with her fired and sued) and says "No prom ticket for you!". Miffed, Chris hatches the bucket-of-pig's-blood plan and enlists the help of boyfriend Billy.

What they don't know - what no one could know - is that Carrie has discovered that she has the ability to move things with her mind. She can shatter a mirror and piece it back together just by thinking about it. When Tommy asks her to the prom, and Buckley gives her encouragement to go and have a good time, Carrie is both emboldened and empowered. She's terrified, but she goes - against her mother's wishes - and has a magical time right up until someone dumps a bucket of blood all over her, in front of everybody.

 

You can see her mind snap.

In true Brian De Palma fashion, Carrie uses her mind to kill every last person at the prom - sympathetic gym teacher included - and burns the school to the ground. She drifts home - dispatching Chris and Billy, who are trying to make a run for it, on the way - and comes home to a house ablaze with candles packed on every surface. Mom's mind has also snapped, it seems, and she's decided that the only thing to do is kill her daughter who is clearly a witch.

Not a good night for Carrie.

"Carrie" was re-made in 2013, starring Chloe Grace-Moretz as Carrie, Julianne Moore as her mother, and Judy Greer (who I swear is the female Kevin Bacon of movies) as Carrie's gym teacher.

 

It's been updated - there is the bucket of pig's blood plus cell phone video of her meltdown in the girls' shower - and CGI has been added, of course, but my big issue with the re-make is Chloe herself. Sure, she's not athletic. Sure, her mother dresses her funny. But Chloe Grace-Moretz is entirely too pretty to be universally disliked and picked on. She just is. Sissy was great, because she looked like an ordinary high school girl. With all her freckles, Sissy probably was picked on in high school. It's possibly/probably my own ignorance, because I don't know what it's like to be beautiful. I do, however, know what it's like to be a walking target...

Anyhow, the original "Carrie" is a classic because 1) it did it first, and 2) the imagery and the lines ("They're all gonna laugh at you!") are memorable. For Halloween, put on a pink dress and dowse yourself in fake blood and everyone will know you're "Carrie."

This is Blythe

As a kid, I had a bunch of Barbies, but I had one precious Blythe doll that I absolutely adored! 

Blythe's body was smaller than Barbie's, and her head was giant - to accommodate a mechanism that allowed you to change her eye color with the tug of a cord at the back of her head. I was in my glory!

But then one day my mom threw her away! She had told me to clean this one drawer in my room that was messy, or else she was going to get a garbage bag and throw everything out. I didn't, and she did.

But Blythe went the way of the Dodo bird. Kenner made her for one year only - 1972 - and then stopped because American kids didn't like her (but they liked Cabbage Patch dolls - go figure!).

Then, in 2000, Gina Garan published "This is Blythe," a photography book featuring her collection of dolls in various poses/outfits/locations, and Blythe was back!

The first thing I did was take mine (which I bought as an adult to replace the one my mom threw out) to the beach and take "arty" pictures of her.

These new reproduction Blythes, made in China, are an improvement on the originals for many reasons, the biggest of which is, their eyes come in endless colors (my Blythe's eyes were blue, green, orange and pink). But the new phenomenon is, people buy a new Blythe, sand the shine off of her face, carve new facial features, switch out her eye chips and lashes, re-root her hair, and sell these custom dolls for hundreds of dollars!

By the way, my Blythe - the one my mom threw out (and I never let her forget it!) - is for sale right now on eBay for nearly $4,000!!!

Enter the Dragon (1973)

The '70s, like any decade, produced its share of forgettable rubbish as well as a handful of iconic gems that may be dated but are beloved nonetheless.

"Enter the Dragon" is one of those films.

Lee (Bruce Lee) is recruited by an agency to attend a martial arts tournament on an island fortress owned by a man named Han (Kien Shih), who they suspect is using the tournament as a front for dealing heroin. Roper (John Saxon) and buddy Williams (Jim Kelly) are also at the tournament, hoping to win big (Roper because he's a gambler and Williams because he wants the sweet life but being black in 1970s America is hampering that dream).

 

The tournament is a lavish spectacle, with exotic food (Williams is like "Oh hell no!"), complimentary female companionship (Williams is like "I'll take you... and you... and you..."), and an underground heroin lab complete with cages stuffed full of involuntary volunteers on which to test the product.

 

Lee is there to check on Mei Ling (Betty Chung), an operative the agency has lost touch with, but he's also there for a personal reason: to find the man (Robert Wall) who killed his sister Su Lin (Angela Mao). (She left him with a telltale scar down one side of his face.)

 

Eventually there is a big showdown between Lee and Han, which is kind of a letdown because Han, with his clunky wood-and-knives fake hand seems a pitiful opponent for Lee, who is in absolute prime condition. This movie is worth watching for the locations and the cinematography, but Lee is worth watching because he is a wonder, for lack of a better word. He doesn't have an ounce of fat on him, every muscle is taught, he is mad graceful and cocky as hell (deservedly so)... 

 

On a side note, Jackie Chan is among the hordes of martial arts students (?) that Lee cuts through like a hot knife through butter. (I haven't spotted him myself, but I'll be looking for him the next time I watch "Enter the Dragon.")

The Stepford Wives (1975)

I don't know whether it's an age thing, but I am not a fan of remakes. I can't even say whether or not I like them, because I simply can't bring myself to watch them.

A prime example is "The Stepford Wives" (1975). Walter Eberhart (Peter Masterson) moves his wife Joanna (Katharine Ross) and two kids (including a young Mary Stuart Masterson) out of the big, bad city, to the quiet suburb of Stepford, Conn., where time seems to have stopped somewhere in the 1950s. The men all seem happy as hell (turns out, with good reason) and the wives seem, well, weird. They cook and clean as if they were expecting a surprise inspection from Good Housekeeping, and don't seem to have any interests (or lives, for that matter) of their own. Joanna wasn't thrilled about leaving her full life in the city behind and is less thrilled that Walter seems accepting, even approving, of the women of Stepford embracing their roles as "traditional" wives.

Another newcomer to Stepford, Bobbie (Paula Prentiss), and Joanna bond over their mutual puzzlement, and try to lure the other wives out of their domesticity - with little success. Charmaine (Tina Louise) is the only other Stepford wife who does her own thing (tennis) and expresses feelings and opinions about things other than cleaning products and fabric softener. But she goes off for a weekend with her husband and returns a brand-new woman. Suddenly the tennis court is out and the kitchen is her favorite place to be. Any dissatisfaction she had with her marriage has evaporated. It's bewildering and, in this "Stepford Wives," more than a little creepy. By the time Joanna slooooowly realizes what's really going on - that the men of Stepford are swapping out their all-too-human wives for perfect (OK, better endowed) replicas that have no opinions, never disagree, and cook and clean (and screw) on autopilot - it's too late.

The 2004 remake, starring Matthew Broderick and Nicole Kidman as Walter and Joanna Eberhart and Bette Midler as Joanna's friend Bobbie, tells the same story in a humorous way, with a less depressing ending. At least, that's what I think. The thing is, I've never actually watched all of it. I only caught the end of it one day when I was channel surfing, and it didn't make me want to watch it from the beginning.

Coma (1978)

"Coma," directed by Michael Crichton and based on the novel by Robin Cook, is a refreshingly straightforward hospital thriller starring Geneviève Bujold as Dr. Susan Wheeler and Michael Douglas as her partner ("boyfriend" seems a bit trite), Dr. Mark Bellows. There is a great casual exchange between the two toward the beginning of the film, where Mark says he's tired after a long day of work and wants her to have dinner ready for him, and Susan, from the shower, informs him that she's had a long day of work, too, and would wouldn't mind if he had dinner ready for her. Love it!

They both work at the same hospital, under Chief of Surgery Dr. Harris (portrayed chillingly by Richard Widmark). Susan notices that several seemingly healthy patients undergoing "routine" procedures are coming out of surgery in inexplicable comas and grows suspicious, especially when it happens to one of her girlfriends.

These hapless victims are sent to the Jefferson Institute, a high tech facility that keeps them suspended and carefully monitored... until their organs can be plundered for big bucks. I knew that a young Tom Selleck was one of the suspendees(?), but - according to good ol' IMDB - apparently Christoper Reeve and Ed Harris have bit parts as well.

Anyhow, nobody, of course, believes Susan and they chalk it up to women's histrionics or some such, but in the end she's proven right, nearly at the cost of her own life.

(Funny - I thought of comparing it to "ER," and it turns out that Crichton directed "ER" from 1994 to 2009!)

Space 1999 (1975-1977)

For my very first post, I thought I'd blast off with my favorite '70s Sci-Fi series, "Space 1999."

The premise, summed up far more succinctly on IMDB than I could ever manage, is:

In 1999, Moonbase Alpha, nestled in the Lunar crater Plato, is a scientific research colony and watchdog over silos of atomic waste from Earth stored on the Moon's far side. On September 13, 1999, magnetic energy builds to cause an explosive chain-reaction of the waste, blasting the Moon out of Earth's orbit and off the plane of the ecliptic, out of the Solar System. The inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha are unable to return to Earth and must survive on their wandering Moon as it is displaced further into unknown space...

Martin Landau plays Commander John Koenig (I've always had a soft spot for him, because he looks so much like my dad!). He had only just arrived on the the moon base when everything went south, and now he finds himself tasked with leading these men and women when none of them knows where the moon is taking them or how long they can survive.

Barbara Bain, Landau's wife, plays Dr. Helena Russel. She is not my favorite character, because she's so flat. She has almost no affect at all, even when the computer is telling her that someone's life signs are tanking.

 

There is also Prof. Victor Bergman, played by Barry Morse, who is like an old hippie. His is the measured voice of wisdom.

"Space 1999" wasn't "Star Trek" and didn't aim to be. It wasn't a crew aboard a space ship bouncing from one adventure to the next; it was men and women who would never see home again, who never got to say goodbye. There is an episode where they are facing freezing to death on the moon, and John and Victor sit and have a drink together and talk about what each thinks happens when you die. In another episode, a crew member goes crazy and beats John bloody with a model airplane, all the while grinning maniacally.

The thing is, dark and depressing is a tough sell. "Star Trek" had that fun, cheesy factor going for it. Tribbles. Styrofoam boulders. Hippies looking for the planet Eden. It was empty calories - like McDonald's french fries. And it worked.

For the second - and final - season, "Space 1999" changed its formula, perhaps hoping to draw in more viewers. Everything is literally lighter. The computer is all but bedazzled with colorful buttons and blinking lights. Dr. Russel is no longer chill bordering on dead; now she runs everywhere.

And then there is Maya. Played by Catherine Schell, Maya was my favorite character as a kid - she could morph into any animal she wanted to! - and my least favorite as an adult. No, that's not true. Maya was cool, but she took all of the interesting conflicts away. Where once Koenig and the rest would have to really work to survive different situations, now Maya could just turn into a tiger and bail them out. Oh, and there was a love interest for her, Tony Verdeschi (played by Tony Anholt), who literally came out of nowhere. Suddenly he is Koenig's younger, cuter, more English right-hand man. (I say this now, but as a kid I used to just love Maya and Tony!)

In the first season, Schell was the show's "guest artist" in "Guardian of Piri." The moon passes the planet Piri, and Koenig sends some eagles down to check out whether or not it's suitable for colonization (they can't survive on the moon forever). They don't return. He sends some more eagles down to investigate what happened to the first, and they don't return. Pretty soon, everyone is packing up their kit bags and heading down to the planet (very similar to the "StarTrek" episode "This Side of Paradise"). Piri's main computer, represented in alluring female form by Schell, offers them a life of ease. They can just lounge around all day, never having to worry or work again... Koenig (like Kirk) is  the only one who isn't affected (or is it infected?) by a giddy sense of well-being. Eventually he straight up blows the guardian of Piri's pretty face off, revealing that "she" is nothing more than a hollow machine, offering an even more hollow existence. (On a side note, Schell is stunning in a filmy low-cut ivory dress and liquid gold body jewelry.)