I came across a lot of movies, some made-for-TV and many theatrical films just getting their first run on the small screen. Remember, you young readers, there were no DVDs or Blu-rays, torrents or streaming video services back then. All we had were movie theatres and TV. That was it. Since that's all we knew at the time, we had no problem with it. And it was a real event, a treat, to see both big and lesser known movies on the tube.
Yul Brynner, getting a little hot under the collar in Westworld
When I was a lad, craving more and more weird and spooky stuff to watch, I religiously scoured the TV listings and noted the flicks to catch. Man, I remember loving movies like The Car, Duel, Westworld (and its unsuccessful TV spin-off series), Futureworld, and Killdozer whenever they hit the box. Those "possessed" machines sci-fi/horror films were a bit of a 70's trend, but then in the 80's, wouldn't you know it, along came Stephen King's Christine, and then the mother of all evil machine movies, Maximum Overdrive.
On the sci-fi end of things were low-key thrillers like The Andromeda Strain and Capricorn One, both of which have held up well over the years. More action-based was Logan's Run... and I even latched onto its TV series spin-off. Also from the TV studios came Space: 1999 (still a fave), Six Million Dollar Man (which spawned Bionic Woman), Land of the Giants, Planet of the Apes (not nearly as good as the films), Battlestar Galactica (loved it!), and The Starlost (either boring or way over my head, I watched this anyway and then complained about it later). Also forgettable but still worth noting were Man From Atlantis and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
Project UFO was a TV series based around the real-life Project Blue Book, which was a U.S. Air Force team assigned to investigate unexplained phenomena and events. Shows like this filled in the gaps nicely when I wasn't able to watch the aliens in Close Encounters at the theatre again and again. Quark was an oddity, a sit-com about an intergalactic garbage scow... but I was a loyal follower. I'm only touching the tip of the iceberg here... there were so many other shows during the 70's. Most were short-lived and made no impact on the world at large. Only nerds like me even remember them.
More in the horror vein were late night viewings of old Hammer, AIP, and Amicus films, much to the disapproval of my parents. Violent and gory, these usually featured undead monsters and other supernatural beasties. Lovely stuff! Then there were the Saturday Night at the Movies flicks, which often included the old Universal horrors and sci-fi classics, movies like The Thing From Another World, Frankenstein, Dracula, War of the Worlds, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Oh, and one of my absolute faves, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Not to mention the Abbott and Costello monster fests.
Then there were the wildlife-gone-amok movies, like The Swarm, The Killer Bees, Empire of the Ants, Kingdom of the Spiders (this didn't help me get over my arachnophobia at all), Grizzly, and Day of the Animals. I used to read the novelizations of some of these movies in order to re-live them in between showings on TV. Grizzly was one favourite back then... I vaguely remember the gory bits now, but not much else). Oh, and I mustn't forget the bizarre and disturbing rat flicks Willard and its sequel Ben. I thought those were cool back then, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about them now.
Though the amount of media to feed my passion for these genres then was small compared to the myriad of avenues today, I found plenty to keep me going. TV shows back then were coming around, bringing freaky and strange stories to a mainstream audience. For example, the Kolchak: The Night Stalker TV movies and follow-up series were forerunners of The X-Files. Creepy and moody, Night Stalker followed the intrepid journalist Kolchak as he ran down cases that the authorities couldn't rationally explain. So Kolchak ended up battling vampires and all other manner of supernatural and otherworldly beings.
What'you talking 'bout, robot?
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century... the show
that never should have been
Even comedic takes on unearthly genres ruled the airwaves, with Hilarious House of Frightenstein as one of my favourite kid shows. Hey, they even hooked Vincent Price for that series. Scooby Doo probably doesn't really count, since every ghost or monster was always ultimately unmasked and found to be "Old Man Withers". There were some great Bugs Bunny spoofs, too, my faves being the Jekyll and Hyde episode, and the hilarious Dracula one entitled Transylvania 6-5000.
Though I didn't see Amityville Horror in the theatre or even on TV until years later, I did purloin a copy of the book in my mother's modest literary collection. That was where I also first found and read Jaws, after I'd fully recovered from my dizzying theatrical viewing.
As you can see, there were other avenues, though not many, to supplement a taste for the macabre, morbid, and otherworldly. When film and TV weren't feeding the fires, there were books, both novelizations and non-fiction, and if you were a rabid fan like me, you'd hunt down the genre magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland and Starlog.
The 70's, what a decade... such a fertile landscape for the growth of genre films and shows. I look back fondly on those more "innocent" times, when the discovery of something weird and wonderful opened up a whole new world to me.
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