Shocking Cinema of the 70s

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One of the most controversial Oscar winners for Best Picture and a member of American Film Institute’s “100 Years…100 Movies” list, “The Deer Hunter” has faced open accusations of historical inaccuracy, unnecessary emotional wear, and even racism. The Last House on the Left” is mostly inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece “The Virgin Spring”, a moving allegory about vengeance and redemption set in the Middle Ages. Departing from its inspiration, “The Last House on the Left” lets go everything about Bergman’s obsessive search for redemption, and instead focuses on the exploitation side of its revenge story. As a result, the film faced censorship in many countries due to the extremity of its sequences.

Sometimes consciously, others as a mere result of circumstances, the 70s were rich in productions that further crossed the already transgressed boundaries of good taste, through widely polemical depictions of sexuality, religion, morality, violence and exploitation. The precursor of a considerable amount of vigilante films of varying quality that permeated the 70s, “Dirty Harry” raised a series of debates surrounding, among other things, the nature of its main character’s acts and whether its director was delivering a political message. As a late outcome of the lax censorship forced by the countercultural manifestations of the 1960s, the increasing recurrence of violent films in the late 60s anticipated the 1970s experimentation with extremism in cinema. Misogynistic, pretentiously comic and widely polemical, the film faced open accusations due to its cruel depiction of women. The film’s creators tried to overcome these accusations by appealing to the only issue some critics regarded as redeemable about the otherwise widely ripped film: the “humorous spirit” beneath it.

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Michael Cimino’s answer to those accusations has been the same: “The Deer Hunter”, a non-polemical and inaccurate film, never postured for one side in particular. You miserable, no good, dirty sons of bitches!': Queer(y)ing 'Canuxploitation' revenge narratives in the films of John Dunning and André Link Japanese cinema is always at the forefront of progressive cinematic movements. J-Horror shaped the 00’s American horror aesthetic, while the country embraced grindhouse and exploitation movies years before the States did. A prime example is The Snare, the second segment of the “ Hanzo the Razor” trilogy. This sleazy and absurd movie is one of the must-sees entries, especially for Shintaro Katsu’s titular Hanzo role. Mainly dialogic, “Carnal Knowledge” follows the evolution of two best friends’ sexual lives. A local incident upon its release led “Carnal Knowledge” to be part of a major case before the US Supreme Court, which concluded that the film’s depictions were not offensive in any way. Though some of those productions are now held as mere reflections of its time, the controversy raised by others of them has not yet been overcome.

Dirty Harry” was just the beginning of a series of films following the adventures of the now pop icon Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood in one of his most paradigmatic performances), an unorthodox and ruthless San Francisco police inspector, as he ignores the rules of the book and chases criminals by any means possible.Though it was another attraction of many audiences seeking to fulfill their morbid expectations solely based on its title, Carnal Knowledge resulted, instead, in a groundbreaking revision of misogyny and dysfunctional relations that ultimately reflected a period of transition.