So this past week I've watched some excellent older films that I'm reasonably assured most users here probably haven't seen but might enjoy, especially if you're sick of recent media. Anyway here you go.
Watership Down (1974 version)
Based on the excellent Richard Adams book (which I also highly recommend) about a small band of rabbits fleeing the destruction of their warren and setting out to find a new homeland. The animation is rather poor but its buoyed by strong voice acting and a compelling story. Pay close attention and you'll see some interesting stuff on the power of myth, folklore, leadership, Nature, and the will to power. Way more than just a cartoon about cute bunnies. Not for young children, by the way.
Zardoz
This might be the most ridiculously based movie I've ever seen. Unfortunately more people seem to know Zardoz from the infamous promotional picture of Sean Connery in a tight red speedo and riding boots with bandoliers than from actually watching the film. From the same director that made Excalibur and Deliverance, it stars Connery as the leader of a post-apocalyptic band of horse-riding barbarians who are manipulated by a powerful, hidden but debauched elite into keeping the hordes of unwashed peasants at a manageable level. The unusual aesthetics and sometimes iffy special effects might turn people away, but if you look past that you'll experience one of the most virile, masculine, Nietzschean, anti-feminist, anti-modern movies ever made.
The Naked Prey
Firmly in the category of "Things That Would Never Be Made Today", Naked Prey is about a white hunter in colonial-era Southern Africa who is captured, stripped naked, and forced to flee as he is hunted by spear-toting tribesmen. Read what you will into that plot in Current Year lol. If you like "man is the greatest prey" type stories, you'll love this. There is almost no dialogue, just a savage, kill-or-be-killed race for survival.
It's worth while getting into Westerns made prior to 1964. The genre was at its strongest during the Hollywood Code era, as later movies tend to rely too heavily on slow-mo blood splatters, and sex, in order to keep your attention. Code era Westerns are when the genre thrived, and included such greats as The Searchers, the original 3:10 to Yuma, Bend of the River, The Big Country, and the Ranown Cycle films that included Seven Men from Now and Ride Lonesome. Even the lesser known shittier quality westerns are still entertaining in this era. These movies depict men as real men, women as women, and racial tensions as they were. You can't go wrong with pre-64 Westerns.
Great comment. Strong agreement with the Ranown cycle as an excellent bunch of films. I also recommend Audie Murphy westerns of this era such as No Name on the Bullet, Ride Clear of Diablo, Ride a Crooked Trail and Night Passage.
Audie Murphy was criminally underrated.
never was much of a western fan, but the original True Grit and its sequel (I think it was Rooster Cogburn after the main character in both films) are solid entries, even though I think they came after your cutoff date.
The humor in those films is what really sells them for me.
And by the way I've found this site to be useful for getting decent film recommendations:
https://www.cinetrii.com/
Thanks a lot for the link, I had tried a couple of movie and book suggestions sites but this one seems like the best one so far
P.S. I've never seen Zardoz because I thought it was mostly a joke of a movie (because of the aforementioned Sean Connery speedo thing).
Understandable. It most definitely isn't. John Boorman was trying to do something different and unique and he got the "hurr durr Connery is wearing a speedo" treatment for decades for it. I'll take Zardoz over the millionth soulless CGI slop from Marvel any day.
Kinda related but I thought I'd share it for a laugh on a Friday about one of my friends grandfather.
He was a really sweet guy, very chatty and was a really positive male role model for him and others, he used to own a pub in the community and would sometimes look after the local kids as a kind of daycare for the parents. He decided to one day put on a film about bunnies they could enjoy for a hour.
It was Watership Down.....
I think Zardoz is inspired by the Wizard of Oz. It is a movie that scarily looks prescient with birth rates dropping across Western Civilization, and degeneracy rising.
Shhhhhh! You're spoiling it (the film's own opening monologue does spoil it a bit).
Obligatory mention of /pol/ favorite The Seachers
really? I woulda thought it'd be Gay Niggers From Outer Space (attn mods: that's the literal title, don't kill me on this one)
Lol, I don't spend enough time here to know the mod situation(I spend more time in Funny and Memes than anything...) I just figured I'd clarify to save on confusion, lmao.
Zardoz is one of those movies that you end up turning off each and every single time. rofl
Thanks for letting us know what the plebes think.
Really? I watched it all the way through.
But then I like shit that's a little bit surreal.
Honorable mention: "Ghost in the Shell" Not the series that came later, the og movie. very trippy, very entertaining. Anime movie from the same era as akira
There is too much art school theater production in Zardoz.
'Ghost in the Shell' was a good conceptual movie, but it had pacing problems and the non-ending was terrible. 'Akira' had pacing issues as all, even more than GitS, but it's still one of the best anime movies.
Zardoz was...odd...and sadly I think that's what I liked about it, same with GiTS.
Akira had a little bit of that as well, although it was more straightforward.
I dunno. there's a certain, for lack of a better word, "unreality" that certain movies have that just appeals to me. Dun really know why, but it does...
btw, not crapping on stand alone complex. it was good, but it didn't have the same feel.
A bar I go to plays a lot of WWII era war movies. I don't have any specific recommendations on them except to say as a general statement if you watch enough of them you can clearly see where Hollywood was trying to coalesce an American national identity from that shared war experience.
And with the benefit of hindsight you can also see that they ultimately ended up pulling it out of the oven a bit before that national identity had fully cooked.
...do you by any chance remember a movie from the 60s/70s about a submarine called the "sea tiger"? I have hazy memories of a movie that I think might have been somewhat tongue-in-cheek (though it went over my head at the time).
At one point, they had to paint the ship pink, because they didn't have enough paint to repaint it, so they combined all the paint they had, and it came out that way. As I recall, this became a major plot point.
...do you by any chance remember a movie from the 60s/70s about a submarine called the "sea tiger"? I have hazy memories of a movie that I think might have been somewhat tongue-in-cheek (though it went over my head at the time).
At one point, they had to paint the ship pink, because they didn't have enough paint to repaint it, so they combined all the paint they had, and it came out that way. As I recall, this became a major plot point.
Doesn't ring a bell, but I can ask.
it's okay, I ended not being lazy and looking it up. it was "operation petticoat", lol
Thanks! I’ve heard of these but haven’t seen them.
Maybe I have seen that with the bunnies when I was young but my memory is kinda blurry. Will check them out, also rare that none of my warez sites had the movie naked prey but the internet archive has it for free.
...Any fans of "smokey and the bandit" should look into "Convoy," and the song of the same name it was loosely based on.