70s September Round Up

Scanners

Man, David Cronenburg is a weird damn guy. It's strange seeing this take on psychic powers after being raised on the idea with X-Men cartoons. Instead of it being some tolerance allegory, it's just this movie drenched in paranoia and isolation and conspiracy.

Plus after that great opening display, I kept expecting the effect to repeat itself later in the movie which made me wince and go "Oh god no!" every time things got too intense and people started spasming. Also one of the greater villain introductions I've seen.

Patrick McGoohan? Even a badass as an old man. He acts circles around anyone else in the movie and I still can't shake the feeling that he had the special ops experience to out mind-game and wrestle anyone in his general vicinity.

Vanishing Point
Sometimes watching a movie, you can tell the director is absolutely in love with someone in their movie, be it the lead actress, a city, or a political ideal. In Vanishing Point, Richard C Sarafian is no-holds barred, head over feet in love with the 1970 Dodge Challenger and the way it can rip across the beautiful vast American Southwest.
Yes, this is a love story, and I ain't talking about the flashbacks that Kowalski has about his lost girlfriend. It's about having a great car you know how to drive and amazing scenery to drive through. And not letting the stinking MAN get in your way. The definition of journey over destination. Why does he need to get to San Francisco at 3 pm tomorrow? Who knows? Who cares?
Next month, I might get a chance to stop off at the abandoned town that they used for the radio DJ set. Here's hoping!

The Fury
Kind of a companion piece to Scanners in a way, but with a whole lot less batshit awesome. It tries to be more human, less alienating, but it kinda peters out towards the end.

But it's hard to top a foggy junkyard chase in 70s cars where a disguised Kirk Douglas is bossing around some brainless cops.

"If you see Childress, ask him about his arm."
"What about his arm?"
Kirk snarls "I killled it." and jets off in the car into the lake.

I was lead to believe there would be way more one-armed John Cassavetes. And that would have made things about a million times better because he's just pure hatred. I love it, he fits it so well. He used to be this sensually-faced movie star and age and hard living just cracked his face into a million lines of menace and hate. He walks around with his one arm in a fancy silk scarf, with a black leather glove and it seems conceivable at all times that he could just decide to have everyone in the room with him offed because they offend him with their total uselessness.

But he isn't in it nearly enough, and it descends into this "righteous father fighting to get back his son" thing with some weird "destiny that we should meet" type psychic girl thing that isn't quite as interesting.

Hell of an ending though. Dark. Almost makes the rest of it worth it.