70's Flicks ~ Remember?...

[Kolchak]

Boy do I feel old! I thought that issue of Time came out several years later. They did show it in a scene from Rosemary's Baby.

I know a lot of people who were alive back then who talked about how things were going downhill in all aspects of life and it was the Kennedy Assassination that started the whole thing. People claim that after the death of JFK that nothing was ever the same.

What I find disturbing about that sentiment is that people without even knowing it are putting JFK into a God-like role. I know people who think this man could walk on water and was perfect. Nothing could be further from the truth.

To this day if you walk into many Irish-Catholic homes, the first thing you will see is a portrait of Christ and right next to it a portrait of JFK. This attempt to deify a human being is one of the biggest reasons I have had zero contact with my fathers side of the family for 35+ years. In my eyes its pretty dad-gum scary, considering how close he came to starting WWIII.

[Murfreesboro]

I have kind of a weird family connection to JFK. My uncle was a close friend of his (although we are not Catholic; it was a political friendship), and JFK made my uncle Ambassador to Ireland in the early '60s. Then my uncle, who had resigned the ambassadorship (too expensive), attended Kennedy's funeral, and ten days later (on Dec. 2) he was dead himself. Official story, he committed suicide. However, that branch of my family has always believed he was murdered. We will never know, I guess. My cousins think he "knew" something that got him killed. He has become a footnote to the JFK conspiracy theories.

Anyway, my sentiments about JFK are all mixed up with this family drama. My grandmother, who had actually spent the night in the White House during the Kennedy years and had, of course, been very proud of her son's friendship with the President, ended by saying she wished he had never met him.

My own parents were actually Republican and hadn't voted for JFK. I was too young (still 8 when he was killed) to have any political opinions about him at the time.

It's strange to me now to think how commonplace assassination was in the 1960s. In Mississippi, it didn't start with JFK, but rather with a Civil Rights leader named Medgar Evers. And later in the decade, of course, both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy died within a couple of months of each other. Finally, in the Presidential election of 1972, former Alabama Governor George Wallace was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. Since I was so young, this decade (from, like, 1962-72) was really my first exposure to politics. It seemed that, no matter what side you were on, you were likely to get shot. I didn't understand why anyone would want to go into politics.

[Kolchak]

I was 3 when Kennedy was killed. My father utterly worshipped the man and JFK could do no wrong in his eyes. My mother from as long as I can remember never believed the Warren Report. Growing up, our house was full of Kennedy assassination books so I was exposed to them early on. Years later when I became somewhat well known for my firearms knowledge, I was asked to write a White Paper (really, just a title for a book review) on a book written by Bonar Menninger, where he uses the findings of a Baltimore weapons expert named Howard Donahue who concludes the fatal head shot came from one of the Secret Service agents who was in the car behind Kennedy, and panicked and accidently killed Kennedy after Oswald had fired at least twice from the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

Ballistics are a very dry and boring topic but Donahue had made a pretty good case for his belief and I couldn't find any fault with his findings vis a vis the weapon. That was really the only thing I wa asked to research.

This was right about the time JFK came out and it seems new books on the killing were popping up all over the place. I didn't want to get dragged into some kind of guerilla war between the "lone nut" crowd and the "conspiracy" crowd.

At the end of the day while I couldn't disprove Mr Donahue and claims, I felt it was necessary to add a little bit to express my serious doubts as to this having occurred November 22, 1963. I actually said it was a serious attempt at looking at numbers while tossing common sense out of the window.

Before my Big Reveal however, the book was pulled because the Secret Service agent they accused had filed a libel suit against them. So my little paper sat in some researchers shelf and in my attic for the next 17 years. When the Secret Service Agent died, the book was published and is out there on Amazon and other sellers. My paper was to have been in a different book that was cataloging all the different theories surrounding the assassination, but when Mortal Error was pulled from publication they left out my little piece and I was told it would not have been added in any case since it was a question of space and editors thought that it was too long and the book needed to be abridged more.

The fact they had to wait until the man died before they published this book speaks to how little the author had in hard credible evidence. A low blow if you ask me.

I have a pretty good idea who your uncle is and the possibility of foul play can't be ruled out. Since we both have roots in Arkansas the same can be said about the death of Vince Foster. In my years wearing a badge, I don't think I've ever seen or read as big a foul up that occurred following his supposed suicide.

I must be honest and admit I have no great love for JFK. That being said, he was president and we deserve to know the truth and all of it. To that end I am totally convinced there was a conspiracy FOLLOWING the assassination. I am not so sure about the actual assassination itself was a conspiracy. From my background as a sniper and weapons expert I can see where a single person could have done what they accuse Oswald and done so with relative ease. Still. I have a few unanswered questions that leave the door to conspiracy open.

[Murfreesboro]

The Vince Foster thing reminded me very much of my uncle, although my uncle was not shot. My husband and I have never believed the story of Foster's suicide.

My uncle was back in Miami around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I believe, and was in close touch with the President about that, according to my cousins. I think he also may have gone to New Orleans for JFK at some point. I don't really know exactly what they think he might have known.

I agree with you that there was something fishy at least in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. My mother said that, at the time, it was said no one then alive would ever read the full story, because it had been sealed for a certain length of time. That says to me that something needed to be covered up, but I don't know what.

[Kolchak]

For better or worse I've inherited my Mothers desire to read just about anything I can on the assassination. Many of the books try and put JFK on a pedestal and its hard to cut through the baloney and rose colored glasses. There are however; two books I heartily recommend "Ultimate Sacrifice" is a book written by Lamar Waldron with a contribution from Thom Hartman.

Mr Hartman is an extreme left winger who lived in Atlanta for a good while and now lives in Portland I believe, and works for a "progressive" tv/radio network that would make Mao turn green with envy.

So for me to cite him as a reference should suggest that I think he and Mr Waldron have something to say. One of my problems with any of the conspiracy theories was they left out any common sense. Whether you were of the Mafia did it or the CIA/Military Industrial Complex was responsible, the plan was to get rid of him. That doesn't mean you have to kill him. Killing someone is very risky and to listen to people like Oliver Stone and Jim Garrison the secret government pretty much had everybody involved in killing the man.

Why kill him? If these special interest groups had all this clout and power, why not just show that JFK was sleeping around? You recall what happened to Gary Hart 20 years later when it came out about his affair with Donna Rice! KA-BOOM! No more Gary Hart. Think of what the public of 1963 would have done if it came out that JFK was sleeping with...Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson, Hollywood starlets and Mafia misstresses!

Plus he had been married very briefly during WWII and they had to use all the Kennedy Bootleg money and influence to cover it up.

If the people out to get him had so much power, it stands to reason they knew all about this. Why take the chance of something going wrong and having it blow up in your face when you're trying to kill him, when all you need is one photograph or tape recording? Then it would have been adios JFK.

Obviously that didn't happen. Why? It can only be one of two things. One: They didn't know about it. Not possible if these people were as powerful as claimed.

Two: If they exposed his dalliances, it would come back and incriminate them. And that's what this book shows. I'm not saying its perfect, because there are several questions it doesn't answer, but so far this is the only book I've read that comes closest to giving it all.

The other book I recommend is called; Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth about the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK. By John Newman.

This is a very good book because imho it proves that Oswald at least had some tangential ties with US Intelligence during his time in the Marines and in the USSR and in the US. The book reprints documents the author found that to my mind leave no doubt that Oswald was involved somehow and someway with US Intelligence during his life. The book makes no attempt to tie him to killing JFK, it is just a well researched and written book that shows Oswald knowingly or unknowingly worked for the CIA.

[Murfreesboro]

Wow, interesting, especially about Oswald.

Unlike you, I have never read anything about the JFK assassination. All I know is the family stories, and they are mostly about my uncle.

I was always under the impression that the press knew about JFK's womanizing but elected to keep it secret because they liked him. I had never heard before that he had been married prior to Jackie. Since he was Catholic, I suppose he must have had an annulment?

I have always found it difficult to believe what I take to be Oliver Stone's theory (I never saw the movie), that our own government killed our President. I just never could bring myself to be that cynical. I could more easily believe Castro had something to do with it.

[Kolchak]

You're 10,000 % right about the news media covering up JFK and his skirt chasing, another reason not to trust the news media. If they liked you...And the Media Loved JFK, I think they would have looked the other way if he killed someone. But this only goes to prove how hard it would have been to have any kind of conspiracy in place.

But if there was one, it might also make the news media look like bigger twits than they do. Another reason to keep it secret.


See how this thing spins round and round?


Kennedy was married a short while to woman from Palm Beach. His father got the annulment by paying off big wigs in the Vatican, being the front runner to be the first Catholic Prresident, the Vatican was happy to help out. More reasons for folks to keep their mouths shut.

[Boogeyman]

I cringe whenever I hear or read Hartmann's name. He is from the same area as me and is most definitely an outlier.

[Kolchak]

I cringe whenever I hear or read Hartmann's name. He is from the same area as me and is most definitely an outlier.

I'm not a big fan of Mr Hartmann either, and it was Lamar Waldron who did the lions share of writing the book.

[SPOOKMART]

i love 70's horror. So many cool movies. I even consider a lot of the early 80's movies to be 70's in style or carry overs. It's the same with music. i could name all the usual suspects but I'm trying to come up with some unusual ones like Devil Times Five. There were some cool Mario Bava films in the early 70's. Jean Rollin? Shiver of the Vampires? Sometimes when I'm in the mood for a specific genre and decade or year I use the advanced search on IMDB. Sometimes the filter screws up but if it's a basic filtering with year, genre and even user ratings you can find some horror movies perhaps you never seen or don't remember or need to remember. The user rating thing is useful to weed out certain movies and not necessarily the worst rated. Cutting of the movies rated 7 and over can help. Horror movies tend to not rate very high. Besides some of the best most enjoyable films are the ones in the middle.

[Murfreesboro]

I was in high school/college/grad school in the '70s, so you'd think I'd know all about '70s movies, but in fact I saw only the blockbusters of that era. I didn't even see Halloween when it first came out. I was too busy with school, I guess. Amazingly, I also missed The Exorcist. I think it was one of the first to get an R rating (the ratings system was still fairly new), and I was young enough that I feared I might be considered morally "loose" if I saw an R-rated movie, Actually, most of the girls in my social circle were reluctant to see R-rated movies when we were teens.

I also saw Jaws, and some of the disaster movies. They were big back then. I mainly remember The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. After that I think I skipped most disaster films.

[Kolchak]

I had a much older brother and he would bait me into seeing scary movies. I was 13 or 14 I think when the Exorcist came out and he took me to see it. I recall it was during Christmas and I probably didn't sleep without a light on for two weeks.

Years later I always wondered about that movie.

Linda Blair must have been really messed up by that movie. she went on to date Rick James AND Rick Springfield. How is that? Then she became a vegan and rode horses all the time. Later in the 90's she hosted a really silly show that had people running around supposed haunted houses in Scotland. I can't recall the name, but it also had the little old lady from the movie Poltergeist doing the narrative. she spoke real slow and quiet as if the ghosts were going to jump out and get you. They admitted having people in the house moving stuff acting like ghosts were doing it, and that more than destroyed any credibility the show had.

These days if I watch a 70's era show, I spend most of the time looking at the hair and clothing we had back then. Hard to believe we actually wore stuff like that.

The great thing about movies like Jaws was how Spielberg made it better and scarier without really trying. At the beginning where the girl goes skinny dipping at night and becomes the first victim; what you see in the movie is not what Spielberg originally wanted.

You were supposed to see the shark that night, but it was broken and remained broken during most of the filming, so they had to improvise. They put the girl in a harness and had people off screen pull her around as if she was being carried by the shark. They shot that scene during the day and put filters on the cameras to make it look like it was dark.

In a commentary done by Richard Dreyfus about the movie, he said that later after they finished filming, Spielberg took the girl to a sound studio and poured water down her throat so he could get the sound of her drowning as the shark ate her. Dreyfus went on to say that Steven Spielberg was water boarding people, decades before it was in vogue. LOL!

[Murfreesboro]

OMG, that does sound like water boarding! But I agree that the opening scene is much scarier if you don't see the shark.

I was old enough to see The Exorcist, but I didn't. I'm trying to remember how old I was. What year did that movie come out? I just Googled 1973, though I had thought it was a little earlier. If it was Christmas season of '73, I was 18 or 19. But for some reason I had thought I was maybe 17.

Anyway, I do remember that there was controversy about casting such a young girl in a role like that. I don't know if the subject matter bothered her, but I have heard her say that the scene in the bed, where she is sitting up violently and going back down, again and again, damaged her back. She still has problems because of that. I am guessing that her career never really took off after that one megahit movie because she got so associated with horror or something. However, Jamie Lee Curtis (admittedly older) managed to overcome the horror queen stereotype. Some do, some don't, I guess.

Probably Linda Blair would have been better off if she'd just left Hollywood altogether and followed a more conventional career path as an adult.

[Kolchak]

Mercedes McCambridge(sp?) is supposed to have doubled Linda Blair during the more graffic scenes. But like you said, Linda Blair was pretty much typecast from that moment on.

Years later I went and saw the prequel for the Exorcist. My wife refused to go with me so I went alone to an afternoon matinee. I figured, being around 35 years following the original, the special effects would be super. I actually fell asleep during the movie. It had its scary parts to be sure, but I wasn't a child anymore and had seen my share of pure evil. I don't know how I should interpret my lack of fear? We see movies to escape and have that vicarious thrill. To me though it turned out to be a way to kill 2 hours.

The Sixth Sense did the same thing.

[Murfreesboro]

I adored horror movies as a kid, and back then (when I was 12 or 13) anything would scare me. Even silly stuff like Creature from the Black Lagoon on the Friday night TV horror movie. Now almost nothing scares me. I have seen too many of them and know all the tricks, so I end up analyzing how well they manipulate the audience. I almost never get lost in them anymore.

One that really did get to me--although I gather very few other people shared my opinion--was The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The extreme ambiguity of that movie just scared me to death the first time I saw it, in my living room on DVD in the middle of a sunny afternoon. Since then, even knowing how it goes, it still creeps me out. All the "what-ifs," I guess.

As a child, I was terrified by the 1960s version of The Haunting, which I saw on TV one night. For many years I thought it was the scariest movie ever. I have it on DVD now and still regard it as a classic of its type. Interestingly, though, there are hardly any special effects in it at all. It plays on your imagination.

When my husband and I saw Wolfen in the theater in the early '80s, it was one of the scariest things ever. At one point I recall asking myself if I would even be able to stay in the theater. I believe my husband did ask me if I wanted to leave, and right about that time, someone did get up and leave. I said no, and we sat through to the end. There was something about seeing the world from the POV of the predator, and not knowing what it was for so long a time, that was terrifying. Also, they used a lot of the burned out, destroyed locations from up North (NYC? I guess) that really did exist in the '80s, and I had never seen them before. I hadn't known there were places like that in America, and that was scary to me,too.