Critics Club III: Film of the Year 1977

[JazzFunk]

THE CHOIRBOYS, lol. I remember watching that (aged about 5) at my local working men's club, they'd bought a film projector and used to show movies on Saturday afternoons and charge tuppence or summat so my mum n dad used to get pissed while I watched chest-bursters and swearing children and loved every minute.

Random movies but nearly always 'X's. THE EXORCIST. ALIEN. THE CHOIRBOYS. MOONRAKER, too. But that wasn't an X. I called it' Moonbreaker'. I was only 5.

Yeeeeeah, about halfway through, THE CHOIRBOYS has *the* most distinct change in tone I've probably seen in a film. As a kid, I remember wondering why the guy with the 'tache was wearing that mask and then he gets beaten up and dies and I just didn't really know what was going on.

But then I remember the guy getting handcuffed to the lamppost with his pants down and the Frankie Howerd dude starts sniffing round and it all feels like POLICE ACADEMY.
.

Very strange film. Ain't seen it in probably over 30 years!!!

[gunrock]

If you mean films that I saw in 1977 at the cinema, as I turned 7 that year, then I'd pick The Rescuers. I had read the book and really enjoyed it. Candleshoe was a David Niven, Jodie Foster affair and was ruined by the fact that it was preceded in my viewing by a trailer for The Amityville Horror, which scared the living **** out if me and I can still recall some of the imagery, even now.
I never got to see Star Wars (until it came on the telly about 5 years later) but you missed the Evil Knievel movie off that list, which I saw with my dad, whilst my mum took my sisters to see ABBA: The Movie.

As to what I'd vote for now, I'd probably say Fun with Dick and Jane because I used to really like George Segal, though I haven't seen it in years, so it probably doesn't hold up.

[Neon Ignition]

I had to have a check on that Knieval film and found it. I think it didn't come up in my searches because apparently it was a very small release because the studio scaled the film back in light of Knieval being convicted for practically attempting to murder his promoter with a baseball bat a few months before, never knew that one.

[QualityChimp]

Quoted for truth.

A verrrrrrrry close tie betwixt this and SW. Two absolute MOVIE MEGABUSTERS that year, both movies proper rocked my world as a kid but I've always remembered how strange and funky and cool the soundtrack to TSWLM was, it stays with one. "Bond '77" FTW!!!

Yeah, it's one of the few Bond films without a John Barry score because he couldn't come to England for "tax reasons".

Wikipedia:
The soundtrack to the film was composed by Marvin Hamlisch, who filled in for veteran John Barry, who was unavailable to work in the United Kingdom because of tax reasons.

The soundtrack, in comparison to other Bond films of the time, is more disco-oriented and included a new disco rendition of the "James Bond Theme" titled "Bond 77"; several pieces of classical music were also included in the score. For instance, while feeding a duplicitous secretary to a shark, Stromberg plays Bach's "Air on the G String", which was famous for accompanying disappointed characters in Hamlet cigar commercials. He then plays the opening string section of the second movement, Andante, of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 as his hideout Atlantis rises from the sea.

The score also includes two pieces of popular film music scored by Maurice Jarre. The Doctor Zhivago theme, which is played on Anya's music box during the pre-credit sequence, and the theme from Lawrence of Arabia, which appears as background music during a desert sequence.

[beecee]

great year for movies, and much i love James Bond, Close Encounters and Smokey and the bandit, it has to be Star Wars, biggest impact on my movie going experience ever (even though i didn't see it at the cinema until 1980!)

[QualityChimp]

I'm quite impressed how we've managed to pretty much talk about anything other than Star Wars!

[JazzFunk]

BTW, Suspiria's 1976, innit? It's a bit overrated, anyway.

My bad. It *is* 1977. I stand corrected like that bloke wearing the orthopaedic prosthesis.