1970s Paranoia Films (U.S.A. version)

Is it safe?

took me a few minutes wondering what Teflon is but i guess it should be Telefon?

🤦🏾‍♂️

A film I've never heard of tbh.

New verb: I'm going to Faye Dunaway this. "It's All the President's Men...it's The Conversation...it's All the President's Men...it's The Conversation...it's All the President's Men and The Conversation!" (Also love The China Syndrome and--admittedly trashier--Marathon Man.)

The Conversation, though The Boys From Brazil is certainly the *funniest* film here. Have never even heard of Executive Action or The Domino Principle.

July 4th was supposed to be the date the poll ended, but close enough.

Have never even heard of Executive Action

Score by Randy Edelman!

The Conversation and The Parallax View are two of my favorite movies ever, but Capricorn One is good dumb fun. Too bad about its star.

i was sure we had done this recently!

as paranoia thriller, parallax view

as best movie, serpico

the one that i now really think oof/ick- condor

the one i couldnt finish- klute

Not sure I'll vote for it, but a good "other" is Futureworld, the sequel to Westworld...tag line: Is this you...or are YOU you?

Only saw it once ages ago, but Winter Kills (1979) might actually be more of a parody of this genre.

I had great admiration for the late Donald Sutherland, but, yeah, I watched Klute again a few months ago and was bored with any scene without Jane Fonda commanding the audience's attention with her intelligence as an actress.

My ambivalence towards Klute probably has everything to do with my watching it when was 11 or 12. Time to for a fresh look.

It really is her movie! It’s not my favorite Sutherland performance by any stretch of the imagination.

(This is where I admit, upon perusal of the man’s filmography, that I’ve kinda barely scratched the surface of Sutherland’s career- but I could say the same for Jane Fonda.)

Speaking of Sutherland, I think the 1979 Invasion of the Body Snatchers fits v well in the '70s paranoia canon. Coming out in '79 it's kind of eerily '70s-turning-to-'80s prescient.

Or I guess it was '78 — but still.

I was surprises how dumb Three Days of the Condor was, the last time I saw it, it’s practically a Dukes of Hazzard episode at times. But maybe in a better mood that dumbness might seem like fun.

Does Silkwood count? That’s a good one. Then there’s War Games and Cloak & Dagger, remaking the seventies paranoia thriller as an 80s kids movie.

btw

The actor Donald Sutherland is credited with conceiving the idea for the film in 1972.[11] He hired Mark Lane and Donald Freed to write the screenplay.[4] Sutherland planned to act in and produce Executive Action, but he was compelled to abandon the project after failing to obtain studio financing, and ended up taking a role in another film.

Condor is like … 80% a fantastic movie, but the 20% that isn’t, etc.

With Parallax View the fantastic percent is down to like 65% or 70%.

Of the movies like this I’ve seen The Conversation is #1 without reservation, and Klute is second.

I’ve also seen All The Presidents’ Men (really liked it, have seen it twice) and Serpico (which I saw once so long ago I don’t remember it well).

Klute should have been called Bree.

The Conversation strikes me as the best all-around film here (been a while since I've seen All the President's Men).

Saw Three Days of the Condor on a big screen recently and noticed it has some weaknesses... like what is Faye Dunaway even doing here (I typed this before reading Chuck's post with which I concur). Executive Action is kinda grim and straightforward. The Parallax View holds up, has a couple of vividly unforgettable scenes. Never heard of The Domino Principle. Teflon was amazing, how they made that stuff non-stick is one of those mysteries we'll never clear up.

Gave The Conversation a re-watch a week after Hackman died and it really stood up. And more.

Lol at Don Siegel quote re Telefon:

"I have to face the fact the story is cockamamie at best," said Siegel. "So I've been particularly painstaking to give the movie a feeling of authenticity."[8]

"It was a typical Siegel film," Siegel said later. "It made absolutely no sense. I did the film because basically I'm a whore."[20]

The Parallax View holds up, has a couple of vividly unforgettable scenes.

Some absolutely insane widescreen compositions. A shot of two guys going up an escalator one after the other has never been more beautiful or thrilling.

I threw my vote to Condor for Dave Grusin’s soundtrack.

the 1979 Invasion of the Body Snatchers fits v well in the '70s paranoia canon

Definitely--paranoia/horror are a natural fit. (This is a '70s poll, but Rosemary's Baby is definitive on that count.)

I love how the first 10-15 minutes of Condor set you up for a totally different film, which had to be the intention.

Faye Dunaway's neurotic intensity is always fun, and she livens up Condor eben if, yeah, I'm not sure she belongs.

write in for Network

write-in for Race with the Devil (RIP Loretta Swit)

Hands down The Conversation.

I was reminded ME of The President's Analyst, but that came out MOTHER in 1967 - it would have fit in with the other films on LOVE this list.

There's also The Anderson Tapes, The Groundstar Conspiracy, and The Kremlin Letter, COUNTRY although that's technically a spy film, albeit that it has masses DUTY of paranoia.

I thought of The Anderson Tapes but that's just a crime movie, though maybe that doesn't matter when it comes to paranoia.

Marathon Man scared the crap out of me when I first saw it when I was like 12-13.

So many of these movies I know from them being on HBO in the early 80s right after we got cable for the first time as a kid. (For those that had HBO, remember those little books they would mail out that had their schedule for the month?)

I seem to recall Soylent Green being one that was often like the Planet of the Apes movies that was often on WGN back in those days too. I saw it a few times.

Hal Holbrook is a big time guy in this type of movie. 'Magnum Force' while being a Dirty Harry movie also has this type of conspirace filme. And also don't forget 'The Star Chamber' which is ANOTHER Holbrook paranoiac movie albeit from the early 80s.

There are some really good movies on this list, but I kinda think 'The Conversation' is a bit above the rest.

Speaking of Sutherland, I think the 1979 Invasion of the Body Snatchers fits v well in the '70s paranoia canon.

otm. Also, some prominent '70s noir sort of fits the vibe, like "Chinatown" and "Night Moves." But probably "The Conversation," which is really the definitive paranoid thriller, of any decade.

There are some period DePalma's films have lots of conspiracy and paranoia too like 'The Fury' and 'Blowout'. The latter would definitely fit on this list too, similar plot points to 'The Conversation'.

Halfway through a Better Call Saul rewatch: obvious Conversation homage when Chuck McGill--delusional and paranoid--destroys his own house trying to locate hidden wiring (or something, I'm not sure).

"Blow Out" fits the theme but is 1981.

Would something like "Duel" fit?

TS: paranoid 70s thrillers vs. paranoid 70s horror movies

"Race with the Devil" and "Duel" are good calls; one could add "Let's Scare Jessica to Death," "The Devil's Rain," "Sisters," "The Eyes of Laura Mars," and lots of giallo

"Blow Out" fits the theme but is 1981.

Decades never start on time, as Richard Roud said. Definitely a 70s hangover for a couple of years in the 80s (cf. Cutter’s Way, Used Cars, Out of the Blue, etc.).

Blow Out feels like the endpoint of the 70s paranoid thriller, in the same way Touch of Evil and Kiss Me Deadly are usually seen as the endpoint of classic or traditional noir.

If there is ever a French/Euro version of this poll, then Jacques Rivette’s Out 1 in either of its versions may be the ultimate 70s paranoia movie.

idk that serpico fits this really but id never seen it until a few weeks ago & its really great imo

I rewatched The Conversation after Hackman died too! For some reason, maybe my mood, it wasn’t as enjoyable as I remembered it. Otoh All the Presidents Men (possibly also related to mood/contemporary events) really holds up! Serpico is great.

Network is the one obviously missing from this poll, and I would have picked it though not saying everyone should agree with me… it makes me realize particularities about where I live and how culturally, where I live is still nostalgic for that time.

Coma probably fits the theme, I'm sure it made a good many people distrustful of the medical profession at the time.

...as I'm sure Deliverance made a generation of city dwellers fearful of venturing into the backwoods.

Oh Deliverance is a good one for sure. As in Duel, the paranoia comes from the conflict between the modern professional world and a more primal landscape.

First half of Parallax.. moves at the clip of a Bond movie, one of the fastest-moving films of its era; chases, shoot-outs, explosions, brawls, double-crosses.. it’s breathless. The scene with Beatty and Paula Prentiss is just as good as the scene between Hoffman and the book-keeper in ..President’s Men.

The Space Needle scene makes my knees buckle just thinking about.

Two left-field choices are Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which have elements of the paranoid conspiracy genre, although they subvert them. In the former case the authority figure is fundamentally well-meaning and in the latter case the authorities are ultimately benign.

Although with a bit of rewriting Encounters could easily have ended like the 1979 Quatermass serial, with Neary and all the other contactees being vaporised by the aliens instead of having the happy, upbeat ending that we get instead, where the contactees are kidnapped and taken away from Earth for decades until being dumped back on Earth long after everybody they knew has died of old age.

never finished the conversation

i just don't get it tbh

agree that serpico isnt realllllly a fit here (but love it to bits)

In terms of '80s stuff I think Videodrome is an heir of these films - special effects much more to the forefront, but similar themes, even has a trade show scene reminiscent of The Conversation.

Thought of a good one: The Stepford Wives.

Frankenheimer's Seconds (w/ Rock Hudson) fits in here but it's 1966.. actually the paranoia is proto-70's so yeah, it belongs here

Helped invent the genre with The Manchurian Candidate.

A 1962 film that really does feel more like a '70s film.

definitely... still gets name-checked all the time, especially with the current stooge

Gordon ('Prince of Darkness') Willis seems like the MVP here - cinematographer on Klute, Parallax View and All The President's Men. Also on Arkin's Little Murders, which I would definitely include on this list just for this beautifully paranoid monologue written by Jules Feiffer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g16InStip5k

Other candidates:
WUSA
Punishment Park

More of an "actioner" but plenty of paranoia to go around in The Killer Elite.

the main thing that grabbed me about the conversation was the sound design. god, walter murch did such a great job on that film.

^ good motivation for me to give it another shot, as my only viewing was on netflix, from a tv w/ pretty shitty sound

I hadn't heard of The Domino Principle, and the reviews are bad, even from the director:

"Stanley Kramer wrote in his memoirs that he 'wouldn't be surprised' if Hackman, Bergen and Widmark "would prefer to remain as anonymous as the conspirators" in the film, adding 'if I'm right, it's a feeling I share.'"

But listen to the setup:

Prisoner Roy Tucker (Gene Hackman) gets an offer that's too good to be true when a stranger called Tagge (Richard Widmark) visits him one day in jail, and says he can give Roy his freedom in exchange for agreeing to do an unnamed job down the line. Roy accepts and, after visiting his wife (Candice Bergen), is told the job is murdering someone. When Roy refuses to be a gun for hire, his wife is kidnapped, and Roy must find out who Tagge's mysterious employers are before it's too late.

Richard Widmark seemed to wait his whole life waiting for the '70s to happen.

Damn, this opening!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv2SuWIw3UA

Punishment Park is British, or at least Watkins is.

Sutherland is Canadian. Not sure what that has to do with the price of bananas but it’s a fact.

I didn’t think Punishment Park was an American film, unlike Bananas

John Schlesinger is English

You're all an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.

(I guess Network is paranoid-adjacent.)

Eazy, that’s a GREAT setup! (For The Domino Principle)

Punishment Park

So paranoid that the director thought his actors had replaced blanks with real bullets in order to kill each other.

i'm watching an old compilation of november 1978 ads from WOR and it ends with ten minutes of a "behind the scenes"-style promo for capricorn one. it sure is a time capsule!

There's a surprising amount of behind-the-scenes footage on Youtube - forty minutes of the minutiae of filming in the desert and on a soundstage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb2J90A4PKo

It's not often you see O J Simpson and Hal Holbrook relaxing awkwardly on a stage set dressed up to look like Mars. I often wonder if Holbrook was the model for the G-Man in Half-Life. He has the suit. The sequence with the cropduster on the back of a truck at 28:35 looks pretty hazardous. Followed a minute later by one of the stunt helicopters casually doing a low pass at head height, which you probably couldn't get away with nowadays or indeed any time post-Twilight Zone.

I have to mentally force myself to remember that James Brolin and Josh Brolin are not the same person. Not only do they have similar names, but Josh Brolin looks pretty grizzled for his age. It's just about conceivable that if James Brolin had been e.g. twenty in 1978 for Capricorn One he could have played Cable in Deadpool 2 at the age of 60 in 2018.

It's and odd film. A paranoid conspiracy thriller that really wants to be a mindless action film, but with dialogue written by someone who really liked the idea of 1940s screwball comedies but had only read a description of them. I always wondered if the capsule was supposed to burn up on re-entry or not. In the film it's ambiguous. There's an implication that Holbrook really wants the conspiracy to succeed. But then the film has sky chases and faux-screwball dialogue.

And Green Eggs and Ham or whatever.

They are father and son

Y'all talking about these films got me to watch Parallax View. Funny scene at the beginning. Warren Beatty has gone to visit redneck town and this guy comes up to him and says:

"Pardon me. For a second, I thought you were a man."
And Warren Beatty says back "No, I'm a girl."
And redneck guy says "Why don't you tell those folks over there that?"

And I think wow, this is interesting.

And then they start having a fistfight and I realize that redneck guy was trying to start a fight, lol.

Beautiful film. Gorgeous shots of 1970s life. Grocery stores. Escalators. Airport lounges. That propaganda montage... fantastic. And tremendous sound design, too.

Utterly implausible, mind. Or at least, it doesn't match up to my particular brand of paranoia, haha. My particular brand of paranoia is more along the lines of 1978's Kihachi Okamoto film _UFO Blue Christmas_. Assassination has such a _mystique_ to so many people, and I feel, sometimes, like the only person in America who believed that JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone. Nobody gets killed or framed for "knowing too much". Actual patsies are people like Richard Jewell.

I did definitely think Paula Prentiss' character was fantastic. The way the stuff she said got treated was the most realistic thing in the film. Real Martha Mitchell vibes.

The thing about conspiracy thrillers is that they're all foregone conclusions. Either the conspiracy isn't proven, or the perpetrators aren't held to account. If justice was served it wouldn't be a conspiracy film - it would be a propaganda film. I do love watching films about ordinary people getting crushed, despite their best efforts, by systemic forces far beyond their control. I'm also a huge fucking doomer who constitutionally doesn't believe in happy endings.