Unseen American Films of the 1970s

The unintentional shooting by police of a star basketball player has profound personal, political and community repercussions in this acclaimed adaptation of the novel Hog Butcher by Ronald Fair. This was one of the more thoughtful urban dramas produced at the height of the "blaxploitation" craze. Also released under the title Hit the Open Man, it features the screen debut of Laurence Fishburne, who was barely a teenager at the time.

When his cattlemen abandon him for the gold fields, rancher Wil Andersen is forced to take on a collection of young boys as his cowboys in order to get his herd to market in time to avoid financial disaster. The boys learn to do a man's job under Andersen's tutelage, however, neither he nor the boys know that a gang of cattle thieves is stalking them.

The Culpepper Cattle Co. is a worthy example of a certain kind of early-1970s Western: deglamorized, unromantic, and frankly violent. This one begins in familiar terms, as a greenhorn lad joins a cattle drive, surrendering himself to the extremely focused leadership of boss Frank Culpepper. The episodes that follow are engrossing and colorful, and the drive gets more interesting when a quartet of lethal hombres join the ride. The business of frontier justice--which here usually means shooting strangers just to be on the safe side--is worked out in refreshingly unheroic ways. Clearly director Dick Richards (making his debut in a relatively brief directing career) is responding to the revisionist era, and specifically to the films of the great Sam Peckinpah.

After his wife is murdered by street punks, a pacifistic New York City architect becomes a one-man vigilante squad, prowling the streets for would-be muggers after dark.

Melina Mercouri plays an actress who is attempting a comeback with a staging of the Greek tragedy "Medea" (about a woman who kills her children) in her native Greece. As a publicity stunt, she arranges a meeting with an American woman (Ellen Burstyn) who is serving a prison term for killing her own children. Features Mercouri performing "Medea" in the original, intercut with Burstyn narrating her crime.

John Wintergreen (played by Blake) is a motorcycle cop who patrols the rural Arizona highways with his partner "Zipper" (Billy (Green) Bush). Wintergreen is a rookie looking to be transferred to homicide. When he is informed by Crazy Willie (Elisha Cook) of an apparent suicide, Wintergreen believes the case is actually a murder. Detective Harve Poole (Mitchell Ryan) agrees, and arranges for Wintergreen to be transferred to homicide to help with the case.
Wintergreen has gotten his wish, but his joy is short-lived. He begins increasingly to identify with the hippies whom the other officers, including Detective Poole, are endlessly harassing. Workplace politics cause him to be quickly demoted back to Traffic Enforcement. The final straw comes when Poole discovers that Wintergreen has been sleeping with his girlfriend Jolene (Jeannine Riley).
Despite being demoted, Wintergreen is able to solve the murder. Nonetheless, a second tragedy strikes when Wintergreen is forced to shoot Zipper in self-defense. As the film ends, Wintergreen is alone and back on his old beat, when he runs into a hippie that Zipper was needlessly harassing near the beginning of the film. A misunderstanding over a forgotten driver’s license sets up the film’s tragic conclusion.

On July 31, 1970, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Elvis Presley staged a triumphant return to the concert stage from which he had been absent for almost a decade. His series of concerts broke all box office records and completely reenergized the career of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

It’s winter in a small southern Norwegian town in the late nineteenth century. After years of struggling, Dr. Thomas Stockmann and his family – his wife Catherine, their young adult daughter Petra, and their two adolescent sons Ejlif and Morten – have returned to town after being away for five years up north, he now well respected and successful as the medical resident of the Health Institute at Kirsten Springs, where he is also a board member. He devised the springs and institute as a center of therapeutic benefits on his own, but developed it with his brother, the town mayor, Peter Stockmann, who is the board chair. They have reinvigorated what was the financially crumbling town. Peter takes credit for giving Thomas this air of respectability, something that has never been important to Thomas, who would rather be seen as a man of conviction in doing the right thing. In this respect, Petra takes after her father.

Freebie and Bean, two San Francisco police detectives, have one goal in life: to bring down Red Meyers, a local hijacking boss. After many fruitless months they finally collect an important piece of evidence. However, before they can get an arrest warrant, they hear the news of the hitman being hired to kill Meyers.

An aging hood is about to go back to prison. Hoping to escape his fate, he supplies information on stolen guns to the feds, while simultaneously supplying arms to his bank robbing chums.

Mattie, a widow living in the backwoods of Florida during Prohibition, meets Trax, a charming man much younger that herself. Trax is a womanizing, lying bootlegger who needs money and he sets his sights on Mattie who can support him. After energetically courting her, Mattie marries Trax, who before long brings home a young woman to be their housekeeper, but it is obvious that she is to be his mistress. When Trax leaves on business, the two women each contemplate how they are being exploited and Mattie comes up with a plan of her own.

One-man show about the presidency of Harry S. Truman.

A biplane pilot who had missed flying in WWI takes up barnstorming and later a movie career in his quest for the glory he had missed.

Set in the 1920s Depression, a gang of half-witted small-time hoods led by Slim Grissom kidnap heiress Barbara Blandish and Slim proceeds to fall in love with her. Remake of the 1948 British film "No Orchids for Miss Blandish."

Harry Collings returns home to his farm after drifting with his friend, Arch. His wife, who had given up on him, reluctantly allows him to stay, and soon believes that all will be well again. But then Harry has to make a difficult decision regarding his loyalties and priorities.

In a dreary North London flat, the site of perpetual psychological warfare, a philosophy professor visits his family after a nine-year absence and introduces the four men - father, uncle and two brothers - to his wife.

Martha Beck, an obese nurse who is desperately lonely, joins a "correspondence club" and finds a romantic pen pal in Ray Fernandez. Martha falls hard for Ray, and is intent on sticking with him even when she discovers he's a con man who seduces lonely single women, kills them and then takes their money. She poses as Ray's sister and joins Ray on a wild killing spree, fueled by her lingering concern that Ray will leave her for one of his marks.

Dortmunder and his pals plan to steal a huge diamond from a museum. But this turns out to be only the first time they have to steal it...

Charley is a surgeon who's recently lost his wife; he embarks on a tragicomic romantic quest with one woman after another until he meets up with Ann, a singular woman, closer to his own age, who immediately and unexpectedly captures his heart.

Runtime: 239 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color (Eastmancolor)
Sound Mix: Mono
Certification: USA:PG