Human Nature

Massacre at Central High, 1976

I think the 70s is the decade I’ve spent the least amount of time with cinematically, for a few reasons. It’s the decade in which the breakdown of the studio system is most apparent, despite having properly crashed the decade before. It’s also one of the uglier decades of moviemaking, in every sense. Sometimes I’ll turn on a 70s movie—such as 1974’s Earthquake—and won’t be able to get past the fact that no one seemed to have so much as heard of moisturizer. There’s too much hair, too much skin, too much violence, and too much sex.