It Should Have Been . . . 1970s

“Does your physical disability preclude you from coming to the point?” – The Eiger Sanction

In 1970, baseball pitcher Doc Ellis pitched a no-hitter while stoned on LSD, which is less impressive when you realize that in 1970 all the batters were on LSD, too.

The Oscar® is, after piles of cash, the biggest award in Hollywood™.  It is when the industry votes on who they feel is the best of their very, very visible profession.  Oh, sure, the people who influence more lives, like the guys who invent ways to clean water or manage the building of the interstate highway system get awards, but those are ignored because illegal aliens hadn’t made driving spicey again.

I’ve decided that I’d go through the decades (at least a few of them) and start comparing who won the Oscar™ versus who I think should have won for both best picture and best actor.  Since Hollywood® now thinks that men are exactly the same as women, I’ve decided to skip the best actress and just name the one I think is hottest.

After going through all of the movies of the 1970s, they sucked.  The 1970s was a dismal, joyless decade of crappy movies, for the most part, which is why my “It Came From . . . “ series is done going backwards into the past.

All movies are from the ones I’ve seen.  There are a lot of movies I haven’t seen from the 1970s, and I’m probably better off for that.

Here we go:

1970

Best Picture:  Patton.  Biopic of, perhaps, the greatest tactical Allied general of World War II.

Should have been:  Patton.  Reason:  I like tanks.

Best Actor:  George C. Scott, Patton.  Perhaps the best choice possible of someone who could play Patton.

Should have been:  Donald Sutherland, Kelly’s Heroes.  Disagree?  Always with the negative waves, man.  Plus, still has tanks.

Hottest Actress:  Sandra Dee, The Dunwich Horror.  Especially in that one outfit.

1971

Best picture:  The French Connection.  Didn’t see it because I don’t like the French.

Should have been:  Dirty Harry or Vanishing Point (Tie).  So hard to choose, so I decided I didn’t have to.

Best Actor:  Gene Hackman, The French Connection.

Should have been:  Kurt Russell, The Barefoot Executive.  A very reserved performance from Kurt Russell of what should have been a long string of Oscars™.

Hottest Actress:  Jill St. John, Diamonds are Forever.  Honorable mention:  The “more buoyant than her sister” Lana Wood (also Diamonds are Forever) in her role as Plenty O’Toole (named after her father).

1972

Best Picture:  The Godfather.  A movie that came together perfectly for Francis Ford Coppola and is now one that many view as one of the best movies ever made.

Should have been:  The Night Stalker.  This made-for-TV movie featuring veteran actor Darren McGavin about the exploits of a plucky Chicago newsman is simply more fun.

Best Actor:  Marlon Brando, The Godfather.

Should have been:  Ned Beatty, Deliverance.  What goes on in the mountains, stays in the mountains.

Hottest Actress:  No entry.  I looked.  Dismal.  1972 was probably the nadir for hot chicks in Hollywood©.

1973

Best Picture:  The Sting.  Long documentary about how people develop allergic reactions to insect venom that I saw in health class.  I’ll pass, thank you.

Should have been:  The Exorcist.  Long documentary about Rosie O’Donnell’s childhood.

Best Actor:  Jack Lemmon, Save the Tiger.  No idea what this even is.

Should have been:  Clint Eastwood, High Plains Drifter.  Yeah.  Guns.  Dynamite.  Retribution from beyond the grave.  Yeah.

Hottest Actress:  Mariana Hill from High Plains Drifter gets the nod – she is also Norman Schwartzkopf’s cousin, so, more tanks.

1974

Best Picture:  The Godfather, Part II.  Some people like it even better than the first one making it even more classic-er.

Should have been:  The Man with the Golden Gun.  Bond putting a midget in a basket so he can bang hotties?  Yes.

Best Actor:  Art Carney, Harry and Tonto.  Seriously?  Who voted for this crap?

Should have been:  Sean Connery, Zardoz.  Any actor that can wear that orange jockstrap for an entire movie and not laugh wins.

Hottest Actress:  Susan Penhaligon, Land That Time Forgot.  Not a lot of competition this year, and she looked great struggling against that quicksand.

1975

Best Picture:  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Revenge fantasy where a Native American kills a white guy in the end.

Should have been:  The Eiger Sanction.  Clint Eastwood, spies, mountain climbing, double crossing, murder.

Best Actor:  Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Should have been:  Kurt Russell, The Strongest Man in the World.  It should have been Kurt’s year, with this poignant portrayal of a victim of science gone mad.

Hottest Actress:  That girl at the beginning of Jaws, but I think she was an acquired taste.

1976

Best Picture:  Rocky.  Tale of a bum who became a boxer.  I can play the theme on a bass drum.

Should have been:  Rocky or The Outlaw Josey Wales.  I’ve seen Rocky two times, I think.  I’ve seen The Outlaw Josey Wales about twenty, because when I flipped through the channels, regardless of where it was in the movie I’d watch it.

Best Actor:  Peter Finch, Network.  Sure, I’ve seen the same clip, but that’s all I’ve seen.

Should have been:  Sylvester Stallone, Rocky.  His perfect movie.

Hottest Actress:  Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Logan’s Run.  Close second?  Jennie Agutter, Logan’s Run.

1977

Best Picture:  Annie Hall.  Crap.

Should have been:  Smokey and the Bandit.  Not crap.

Best Actor:  Richard Dreyfuss, The Goodbye Girl, meh actor in crap movie.

Should have been:  The Car, The Car.  A much better actor with a much better range than Dreyfuss, since during The Car’s scenes, you could hardly tell he was a 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III, which is pretty impressive acting.

Hottest Actress:  Marilyn Chambers, Rabid.  The Ivory Snow™ girl grown way up.  Way up.

1978

Best Picture:  The Deer Hunter, a how-to video on how to win at high-stakes Asian gambling.

Should have been:  National Lampoon’s Animal House.  Animal House was unique, in that it was a comedy that had a plot, yet the comedy never overwhelmed the plot until the end, and the writers gave up.

Best Actor:  John Voight, Coming Home.  The world did not need this movie.  I don’t have anything against Voight personally, since he’s never hit me up for that $20 I borrowed from him.

Should have been:  Tommy Chong, Up in Smoke.  It’s amazing what life a Shakespearean-trained actor at Julliard and former astrophysicist Tommy Chong can bring to a role.  Or in this case a rolled joint.

Hottest Actress:  Annie Potts, Corvette Summer.  Another rough year, I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find Annie.

1979

Best Picture:  Kramer vs. Kramer.  Kramer vs. Kramer was used to normalize divorce to a public that still regarded it as skeevy.  Plus?  Boring.  It would have been better if it were just Michael Richards from Seinfeld arguing with himself for two hours.

Should have been:  Alien, Apocalypse Now, The Jerk, literally anything but Kramer vs. Kramer.

Best Actor:  Dustin Hoffman, Kramer vs. Kramer.  Watching Kramer vs. Kramer made me wish that I could ask Dustin “Is it safe?” for a few hours.

Should have been:  Angus Scrimm, Phantasm.  Being the Tall Man was an understated role, all he had to do was be evil while the evil dwarves and spike-spheres had to do all the hard work.

Hottest Actress:  Bernadette Peters, The Jerk.  It was her or Sigourney Weaver in Alien, so I went with cute over space underwear.

Movies got (generally) better and women got hotter as the decade went on.  Still, a far weaker decade than we’ll see when (in November) we get to the 1980s where the women were hotter and the movies were better.  Oscar®?  He still missed most of the best movies and performances, since even though movies were better, the voters of The Academy™ were stuck getting high on their own supply.  Your take?