Introduction


We’ve all heard the axiom that “art imitates life,” and most of us have a pretty good idea what it signifies. Art does not exist in a vacuum. Instead, it is inexorably bound to the time period from which it sprang. Sometimes an insight into a social or historical context in a work of art is entirely coincidental, arising from a set of understandings unknown even to the artist who rendered it. But more often than not there is intent in art to reflect, compare, reveal, contrast or echo some important element of the creator’s universe.

Another truism, one hoisted from the darker side of the aesthetic shelf, might offer an ancillary proclamation. Specifically, horror films have always mirrored the fears and anxieties of their “real life” epochs.

In the 1930s, protean genre films such as Dracula (1931) and King Kong (1933) represented a form of “escapism” for adventure-hungry and romance-starved audiences seeking to forget the daily drags and vicissitudes of the Great Depression. Likewise, 1950s era horror gems such as Them! (1955), which concerned radiation-spawned giant ants, played on the not-so-hidden fears of the American audience that its own government had opened up a deadly Pandora’s box by splitting the atom. In the same era, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) was viewed by many prominent critics as a thinly veiled indictment of Communism, a particularly timely target considering the pitch of the Cold War with America’s competitor, the Soviet Union, and the rampant paranoia of the McCarthy age.

Not surprisingly, the same paradigm proves true for yet another decade of the turbulent twentieth century: the “freewheeling” 1970s. The myriad horror films of the disco era likewise represent a catalog of that time’s mortal dreads and anxieties. Perhaps the only real significant difference between the 1930s or 1950s and the 1970s, however, is the sheer number of fears and apprehensions being evinced by the horror films of the period. Bluntly expressed, there was a lot more to be afraid about in the seventies.

Consider that the decade found people, and especially Americans, anxious about virtually every aspect of contemporary life. What was to be a woman’s role in American society during the post-hippie, women’s lib, bicentennial world? The Stepford Wives (1975) offered one nightmarish answer. What was to be the up-shot of all the random violence in the streets, and the worst crime rates in recorded American history? Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) had a few thoughts about that subject. Could the average citizen’s inadvertent exposure to microwave ovens, industrial pollution, X-rays, a weakening ozone layer, or contaminated water alter the fundamental shape and evolution of human life? Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive (1973) explored that frightening notion.

Similarly, Robert Wise’s The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Michael Crichton’s Westworld (1972) fretted that man’s escalating reliance on machines might prove his undoing. At the same time, Frogs (1972), Night of the Lepus (1972), Squirm (1976), Day of the Animals (1977), Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), Empire of the Ants (1977), The Swarm (1978), Prophecy (1979) and other ’70s horror films about rampaging animals traded on different fears. Beneath the hokey special effects, these films reflected genuine audience trepidation that Mother Nature would not stand for man’s continued pillaging and pollution of the Earth. These “eco-horrors” envisioned environmental apocalypse caused by humankind’s own shortsightedness.

Even the innocence of the old King Kong was flipped on its head in the mid–1970s. The big-budget (and much loathed) 1976 remake of the 1930s classic found an American oil corporation (a surrogate for Exxon) exploiting Kong, like some natural resource, on a mission not of unbridled adventure and awesome exploration, but of imperialism and cynicism. Kong’s new bride in the 1970s version was no innocent, either, but a struggling, opportunistic actress looking to find her fifteen minutes of fame.

And it didn’t stop there.

The Watergate scandal and President Nixon’s impeachment erupted in the early 1970s, and so the long-standing American pillar of “trust in government” soon crumbled to dust too. Consequently, horror films began to posit “evil” conspiracies at all levels of governmental bureaucracy. The town elders of Amity kept the beaches open in Jaws (1975) even though they knew a killer shark was prowling the waters off their coast. The doctors and politicos of Coma (1978) were responsible for a vast conspiracy exploiting the weak and rewarding only the rich and powerful. The presidential candidate of The Clonus Horror (1979) utilized living human clones as a bank of replacement body parts, and organized a cover-up to keep it under wraps … all the while playing the public role of “populist.” Ron Rosenbaum succinctly described the national mood in Harpers Magazine in September of 1979:

Horror is here with us again. Even the White House has been haunted, as witness the rhetoric of Watergate; Alexander Haig’s “sinister outside force,” John Mitchell’s “White House horrors,” Howard Hunt’s night-stalking “spooks,” a secret list of illegal campaign contributions maintained by the President’s secretary and known as “Rosemary’s Baby”; a cover-up, of course, is a premature burial, impeachment an exorcism1.

If political machinations were a major concern in the 1970s, then the widening divide between races was another. Accordingly “old,” silver screen menaces such as Dracula and the Frankenstein monster were re-imagined during this decade as relevant “ethnic” ghouls in films with titles like Blacula (1972), Scream Blacula Scream (1973), Blood Couple (1973) Blackenstein (1973), Black Werewolf (1974), and J.D.’s Revenge (1976). The trend was quickly dubbed “blaxploitation,” an unholy integration of the words “black” and “exploitation,” and the sub-genre could not have been more aptly named. At the same time that white America was recognizing the economic potential of the black community at the box office, it also was selling the same community films that cast men of color as “monsters.” And—to gain the community’s sympathy (and ticket money)—Hollywood depicted these “villains” as being manipulated by a malevolent force known simply as the “Man.” Hence heroic (and black) Rosey Grier became a misshapen monster when white Ray Milland’s head was attached to his body in The Thing with Two Heads (1972), and so forth.

A deep-seated fear of “ethnicism” on the part of white America also played out in other major horror films, such as The Possession of Joel Delaney (1971), which saw Shirley MacLaine and her lily-white family implicitly “threatened” by the tenets of Puerto Rican faith and community.

The list of 1970s pre-occupations could go on for pages. Environmental, technological, sexual, governmental and ethnic fears all resulted in a slew of horror “mini-trends” in the 1970s. For instance, Deliverance (1972) and Straw Dogs (1971) orbited about a fundamental question: what does it mean to be “a man” in the eighth decade of the twentieth century? Remember, the 1970s were the dawn of Alan Alda, and the new age of “sensitive men,” and these films might be viewed as a response to the developing expectation that men eschew “machismo” and “express” their emotions instead.

Seventies films such as Frenzy (1972), The Last House on the Left (1972), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1973), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and I Spit on Your Grave (1978) were also more explicit, and far more intense, than previous horror productions had been. This was the result of the “new freedom” in cinema to freely depict graphic violence and bloodletting, and a shift to the paradigm of existential “realism” over the romantic “supernatural.” These films are representative of what horror historians term “savage cinema,” and they are wholly unique to the 1970s.

And what was to be the cumulative effect of so much intense questioning and fear about so many important topics, as well as such straight-faced glimpses of random violence (influenced, no doubt, by TV news footage of the Vietnam conflict)? Well, the fear shaped a decade filled with President Bush’s (Sr.) so-called “malaise days.” The president was referring specifically to the economy and American confidence when he coined that memorable phrase, but he might as well have been talking about the general anxiety that swept the nation before the dawning of the “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” yuppified 1980s.

One direct result of the anxiety-ridden 1970s was a retreat from the issues. After the sexual and drug revolutions of the late ’60s and early ’70s, many Americans were left feeling empty, de-valued and bereft of the moral values that had comforted previous generations. Accordingly, some people retreated to religion, to the Christian values that had guided life in the United States for generations. But this was, lest we forget, the 1970s, not the 1950s. Many well-educated American citizens found they simply couldn’t go home again; that the old ideas of good and evil, black and white, and absolutes simply didn’t stand up to scrutiny in the wake of new discoveries about evolution, genetics and history. Religion was no longer the shelter some imagined.

Seizing on this spiritual doubt and vulnerability was another blockbuster movie trend of the 1970s, the religious horror film. The Exorcist (1973), Beyond the Door (1975), The Omen (1976), The Sentinel (1977), Damien—Omen II (1978) and many, many more found stark terror in the concept that the Devil was real, and that mankind’s eternal soul was in jeopardy from demonic possession and the Antichrist, among other iconic bogeyman. Religious authorities should have been delighted that Hollywood was re-opening the debate about good versus evil, but most evangelicals were appalled by these films because they suggested that the Church was corrupt, and the Devil unbeatable. The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1970), Asylum of Satan (1971), The Brotherhood of Satan (1971), Daughters of Satan (1972), The Devil’s Rain (1975), A Touch of Satan (1973), Race with the Devil (1975), Lisa and the Devil (1975), The Omen (1976), Damien—Omen II (1978) and other “Devil” films culminated in stalemates, or with evil forces out and out victorious. That result—in the eyes of some—was akin to heresy.

Billy Graham, for one, railed against The Exorcist, claiming that William Friedkin’s film was responsible for real-life instances of demonic possession, and Paul Leggett wrote the following in Christianity Today:

The devil, it seems is upon us. That is, if the mass media is to be believed…. While we should criticize the current excesses of the Gothic film, we should also heed its warnings. These films may only be reflecting our present moral climate. Why has the triumph of evil apparently become a resounding symbol of our time?… Part of the answer lies with the incessant accounts of war, corruption, and torture that seem to be destined to dominate the news for the remainder of this century2.

In other words, a godless people—or even a questioning people—get the godless films they deserve. Art imitates life. Again.

Interestingly, all the debating and doubting about spirituality had another side-effect on ’70s horror cinema. Those who could no longer find adequate comfort in a Catholic structure to the universe were treated to another sub-genre of horror flicks: the non-explanation genre picture. Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) highlighted a wondrous mystery, a disappearance of several schoolgirls in the rugged Australian wilderness, which could never be solved in satisfactory “human” terms. In this case, law enforcement, science, and even reason could not solve the mystery, let alone explain it.

Similarly John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) showcased a villain, Michael Myers, who could not be diagnosed, contained, stopped, killed or likewise explained or understood. It seems fair to argue, then, that in the seventies, people were so frightened about the future that they began to sense that there were no answers out there in the universe to be had at all. Hence this brand of horror film.

Why were people so worried in the 1970s that their horror films reflected not one or two, but this whole multitude of uncertainties? The answers are many. Some writers, including the Irish poet Johnny Byrne, have called the 1970s the “wake-up” after the hippie dream. Look at how David Frum, author of How We Got Here: The 70’s—The Decade That Brought You Modern Life (For Better or Worse), described the time:

They were strange feverish years, the 1970s. They were a time of unease and despair, punctuated by disaster. The murder of athletes at the 1972 Olympic games. Desert emirates cutting off America’s oil. Military humiliation in Indochina. Criminals taking control of America’s streets. The dollar plunging in value. Marriages collapsing. Drugs for sale in every high school. A president toppled from office. The worst economic slump since the great Depression, followed four years later by the second-worst slump since the Depression. The U.S. Government baffled as its diplomats are taken hostage. And in the background loomed still wilder and stranger alarms and panics. The ice age was returning. Killer bees were swarming up across the Rio Grande. The world was running out of natural resources. Kahoutek’s comet was hurtling toward the planet. Epidemic swine flu would carry off millions of elderly people…3.

That’s quite a list of bugaboos, and it is important to remember that Frum is a cultural warrior as well as a historian, a Reagan revolutionary and ardent conservative of the highest stripe. Still, his reading of the time period is not so skewed (though he fails to mention the good aspects of the decade).

In fact, if one were looking objectively at the time, one might be tempted to write of the 1970s as the best of times and the worst of times. Though America celebrated its bicentennial birthday and flew high with the Apollo space program, it also faced the many deep-seated concerns listed above. The Vietnam War, the energy crisis, double-digit inflation, and the hostage situation in Iran were just a few of the disturbing news stories.

Importantly, the decade also began with a dearth (and the deaths) of principled leadership, following the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. These figures of greatness seemed to be replaced, strangely enough, by “celebrity” monsters like mad-dog Charles Manson, the insane Son of Sam, the thuggish Gordon Liddy, and powerful corruption personified, Richard Nixon. It was a decade of controversy about everything from a woman’s role in American society (remember the E.R.A.?) to her right to control her own body. This was the decade, after all, that Roe vs. Wade became, in the words of Attorney General John Ashcroft, “the settled law of the land.” All of these events played out in the horror films of the day. Again and again, we can see cause and effect; life influencing art; art reflecting life.

Basically, the world just looked a lot less certain in the 1970s than it had in the idealistic ’60s, when many young Americans in college felt they could make a difference in the process, and genuinely contribute to a climate of “world peace.” At home, Johnson’s “Great Society” promised an end to poverty and civil inequalities … but welfare didn’t seem to help, and poverty didn’t go away either. So the seventies were the end of many great dreams, a time of deep questioning and uncertainties, before America moved on to something else (the accumulation of wealth and the dependence again on traditional religious values in the Reagan ’80s). The seventies were a decade of pause, of introspection. At least that is one good thing that can be said of the seventies, that these issues were being explored, not repressed or swept under the carpet. People were afraid of change, yes, but they were introspective too, willing to look into themselves and to the facts of life that seemed so scary. Horror directors, especially, took advantage of this time of doubt. As director of the documentary The American Nightmare, Adam Simon, has noted of horror’s capacity to comment on society:

Horror as a genre, when it’s done honestly, when it’s done with serious intent, will naturally be open to the traumas of the world in ways that other genres aren’t and can’t be. Somehow by being focused on what disturbs us, especially if it’s being done by somebody who’s sort of determined to search their own soul for what’s disturbing … then it will naturally convey truths—universal ones, or at least national ones4.

Looking back at those years between 1970 and 1979, one can detect it is the extended moment between utter idealism (the ’60s) and utter conservative retrenchment (the ’80s) in American history, the moment between the Peace Corps mentality and the yuppie mentality. As a nation, American went from being a country that wanted to help the world to a country whose populace wanted better stock options. The seventies are the bridge between those disparate mind-states, and the decade’s many clever horror films capitalized on the looming sense of transition to highlight the national and universal truths Simon writes about. The old notions of patriotism, trust in government, trust in science, trust in technology, and trust in law enforcement, were evaporating … and that left audiences disturbed and unsettled. Their entertainment looked much the same way, at least in the horror genre (and particularly pre–Star Wars [1977]).


Horror movies of the 1970s can be divided into two categories: those that starred Peter Cushing (pictured here in Curse of Frankenstein [1957]), and those that didn’t.

In much less high-minded terms, horror films of the 1970s can be split into distinct categories: those that star British Peter Cushing (1913–1994) and those that don’t. Seriously, this gentlemanly actor was in more horror films than any man in history … and the world is probably better for it, since his screen presence is one of dignity and restraint, two factors not always found in the horror genre. As much as Nixon, the Devil and Vietnam are responsible for the look and feel of horror cinema, so, perhaps, is Peter Cushing, a true icon of the genre. Whether the villainous Dr. Frankenstein or the heroic vampire killer, Van Helsing, Cushing left an indelible mark on a genre he helped to redefine.

But beyond the joke about the ubiquitous Peter Cushing, this text is designed to categorize and review, often at length, many of the most interesting, meaningful and bizarre horror films that were produced in the 1970s, and note why they are special to their time period. Though the focus is generally on American films, this text also charts representative horror films from other countries, especially those that found favor in theaters on U.S. shores. In this regard, England is surely the undisputed champion of horror production in the 1970s, and Hammer Studios and Amicus both contributed many fine genre works during this, their twilight decade. In Italy, artists like Mario Bava and Dario Argento were toiling to re-invent the look and feel of horror (usually with a lot of the red stuff…), and in Australia directors such as Peter Weir and Richard Franklin were adopting the same mission. Canada, the home of David Cronenberg, is represented here as well, as are some unique works from Spain and Germany.

There will no doubt be some readers who flip through the pages of this book and ask why every single horror movie in the world made between 1970 and 1979 is not included. The problem is, simply, that some seventies horrors films have never been released on the home video market, are not currently available, or have disappeared from the face of the Earth all together. The author has endeavored to be as complete as possible in tracking down “signature” horror films of the 1970s, but there are no doubt other genre jewels out there in video store clearance bins, just waiting to be re-discovered and re-evaluated. This book is a beginning point for researchers, but no doubt the last word on the subject has yet to be written.

So let’s boogie…