THE MOVIES OF MY LIFE PHASE ONE: Candidates for 1973

Here we are in 1973.  During this year, my family moved from Highland Park in Brooklyn to Woodhaven just over the border in Queens.  I’m pretty sure my mother became pregnant with my youngest brother Geoffrey, and that I saw my first silent film when the Woodhaven BID ran City Lights one morning at my new local theater, The Haven, as a free children’s viewing.  I’m also pretty sure that my natural father bought a Super 8 movie camera, and I began writing and shooting ‘movies’ featuring my brothers and the brother and sister who were my next door neighbor.

So your nominees are:

MY NAME IS NOBODY

Yes, it’s another Spaghetti Western, only this one is a lot lighter than the ones I’ve put up on previous polls.  It’s apparently inspired by an idea by the Grandpapa of All Spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Leone (the only film that he was involved in that was shot mainly in America), partially directed--uncredited--by him and stars Italian Cinema Icon Terrence Hill and Henry Fonda.

Yes, that Henry Fonda.  It’s a real unlikely bit of Star Power for what is, by all accounts, more of a comedy than a western.  I love Leone, and this is one of the very few films he’s been involved with I’ve never seen.  Plus I’ve never seen a film featuring Hill to the best of my knowledge, and I’d like to correct that.

PETS

This is a weird one--apparently Raphael Nussbaum was looking for some new angle on softcore sexploitation and came up with this ‘girl on an odyssey’ adventure that ends with her leading a congregation of ‘pets’--women kept as prisoners by a sadistic rich asshole--against their captors.  The closest thing we have to a star is female lead Candice Rialson, who appeared in a handful of films (yes, they were mostly softcore porn, including the notorious talking vagina parody Chatterbox) throughout the 70‘s.  It just looks So Odd that I want to see what The Hell Nussbaum Was Thinking.

HIT!

I couldn’t find a trailer, so here’s a clip.

Given my love of blaxploitation cinema, it was inevitable I would look for an obscure example of the genre.  But the reason I want to see this actioner is not that it stars both Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor, but that it was directed by Sidey J. Furie, whose work on The Ipcress File blew me away.  I want to see what Furie, who worked with Williams two years prior on the Billie Holliday biopic Lady Sings The Blues, does with this particular, particularly of its time, genre.

FANTASTIC PLANET

Our first animated candidate.  I saw television commercials for this film as a young’un, and caught clips of it, and all I can intuit is that it’s Pure D Weird.  I have only a vague concept of what it’s about and viewing the trailer I’m including only confused me more.  That being said, I’ve been told this is a great viewing experience, and I’m curious.

There you have it.  Head over to my Twitter Page  between now and the 15th and vote for which of these four flicks you’d like to see me watch and report on the following week.  Good luck, and please be kind and Retweet the Poll after you vote!