We just saw this movie for the first time a few months ago and it falls squarely into the category: could-not-be-made-today. That doesn’t automatically make it good, but it just so happens this is a pretty good flick. You’ve got a young, intense Al Pacino, noirish direction from William Friedkin of Exorcist fame, and a story focused on sex, drugs, and violence. Basically, Pacino plays a cop who goes undercover in New York City’s gay BDSM subculture. He’s looking for a killer, which requires him to play the role of an available, leather-clad party boy. But there’s deep cover, and then there’s deep cover. When you cross the line trouble always results. The art above comes from a promotional pamphlet, and it conveys the mood of the film quite nicely. We recommend it, with a reservation—if you’re progressive-minded, you’ll probably hate it. But you know that going in. Whenever Hollywood portrays a so-called subculture for a genre flick, it’s an affront to those being portrayed, whether gay, Chinese, black, female, religious, Texan, environmentalist, Iraqi, or what have you. Could Hollywood make films that portrayed all these segments of society in only positive terms? Sure, but who’d go see them? So bring on the action, and we’ll deal with the caricatures by agreeing that they’re just living cartoons, designed to offer some thrills and chills. Cruising premiered in the U.S. today in 1980. 

The French Connection opened in October 1971 in New York City to immediate and universal acclaim. Working from material based on actual events, actor Gene Hackman and director William Friedkin were at the top of their form, and took audiences on an unforgettable ride. The famous chase scene, which contains no music, only the screech of tires, the continual blasting of horns, and the relentless chattering of an elevated train, has been surpassed perhaps twice in all of film history. Of the eight Oscars for which the film was nominated, it would win five, including the trinity of Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. And there should have been another category—Biggest Bad-Ass. Hackman would have won that too. French audiences heard the transatlantic hype, but wouldn’t be able to see the film until after the New Year. The wait ended today, 1972.

It was released today in 1973, and it implanted into happy holiday audiences enough nightmare material to last seven lifetimes. Half its tricks have since been stolen by other films, and the other half can’t be—because they can’t be shot legally on American soil anymore. The scene in which Linda Blair stabs her own nether regions repeatedly with a crucifix would make it past neither the test audiences nor the deciders in Hollywood’s executive suites. And even if it did the moral police at the MPAA would slap an NC-17 on it. That’s one of the reasons we love the 70s so much—what was produced then was uniquely daring and artistically viable.

Even though The Exorcist was based on a William Peter Blatty novel that sold like a billion copies, its success was surprising. It scored two Oscar nominations—one for director William Friedkin and another for Best Picture. It was beaten in both categories by The Sting, in a decision that marks something of a watershed for the Academy’s own artistic viability. Not that The Sting wasn’t good—it was. But history has made its judgment now, and few would argue that, of the two films, The Exorcist hasn’t been more influential, more imitated and, ultimately, more beloved.