From ‘Alien’ To ‘Kramer Vs. Kramer,’ See The Movies Celebrating 40th Anniversaries In 2019

‘Alien’

The one that launched a franchise that continues to this day! Ridley Scott directs as the crew of the space vessel Nostromo (among them Sigourney Weaver, Yaphet Kotto, and John Hurt) battles for survival against an acid-spewing creature that is picking them off one-by-one. This one scared the hell out of the audience — and for good reason: The creature makes its presence known after being ingested by a crewman, gestating and bursting through his chest to escape, rapidly growing deadlier in short order.

Back at the time of the film’s release, Sigourney Weaver recalled its making with Fantastic Films magazine: “I felt the role was going to be a tough one. All the characters and relationships in the film were written very loosely and the casting people were trying to choose actors who would bring an individuality to the roles. As a matter of fact, after I read the script I came back and they said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ And I told them I felt that the human relationships all seemed very bleak. I thought it was best to put all my cards on the table, because if they really wanted a ‘Charlies Angel’ I knew it wouldn’t be right for me. But they were the first to admit that it was going to take a lot of development and close working together.”

As to Ripley being the survivor of the Alien attack, she said, “I think that Ripley survived, because she had the attributes necessary to survive. She wouldn’t give up and had the ability to go into overdrive. The thing I thought was the most interesting about Ripley when I read the script was here’s a woman who lived her life very much by the book and believed that rules existed for a reason. But when the Alien appears, there’s nothing in the book to go by and she has to react only from instinct, and that’s very hard for her.”

‘The Amityville Horror’

They said it was a true story, that story was debunked, yet nobody seems to care and the sequels and remakes keep on coming This was the original about a family moving into a home who are haunted by the ghosts of the previous owners. There have been 21 films made dealing with the story so far. Now that’s scary.

‘… And Justice For All’

Al Pacino stars in this satirical drama as an idealistic lawyer who tries to prove his clients’ innocence within a corrupt system. You’ve got to see the explosive courtroom scene that concludes the film. John Forsythe, who some fans may know from Dynasty and some older fans may know from the sitcom Bachelor Father, plays a judge accused of murder, who Pacino’s character is forced to defend.

In an interview with Playboy, Al Pacino discussed the film, noting, “I sense a certain kind of originality in the way it is done. I have never seen a film like this before. It’s a simple picture, really. It’s about ethics and people; about a guy who is trying to do his job and his relationship to the law. To say it’s about legal systems sounds boring, and that’s not what it is. It’s funny and poignant.

“I researched it a lot,” he continued. “I did a lot of work with lawyers before the filming began, so I felt kind of close to the courts. At one point recently, a friend said to me he was having trouble with a contract and I just instinctively said, ‘Let me see that.’ You get the feeling that you are able to do these things. It is crazy. I literally took it from him and began to give him a legal opinion. Can you imagine that?”

‘Apocalypse Now’

Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam epic based on the novella Heart of Darkness. Google describes it this way: “In Vietnam in 1970, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) takes a perilous and increasingly hallucinatory journey upriver to find and terminate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a once-promising officer who has reportedly gone completely mad. In the company of a Navy patrol boat filled with street-smart kids, a surfing-obsessed Air Cavalry officer (Robert Duvall), and a crazed freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper), Willard travels further and further into the heart of darkness.” If you somehow haven’t seen this one, no better time to do so than now. Beware, though, it’s weird. 

In talking to Rolling Stone, Francis Ford Coppola explained the evolution of Marlon Brando as the Kurtz character: “Marlon arrived; he was terribly fat. As my wife says in her book, he hadn’t read the copy of Heart of Darkness I’d sent him; I gave him another copy, he read it, and we began to talk. There were a lot of notes that we compiled together. I’d give him some — he’d write a lot himself. I shot Marlon in a couple of weeks and then he left; everything else was shot around that footage, and what we had shot with Marlon wasn’t like a scene. It was hours and hours of him talking. We had an idea: Kurtz as a Gauguin figure, with mangoes and babies, a guy who’d really gone all the way. It would have been great; Marlon wouldn’t go for it at all.

“Marlon’s first idea — which almost made me vomit — to play Kurtz as a Daniel Berrigan: in black pajamas, in VC clothes. It would be all about the guilt [Kurtz] felt at what we’d done. I said, ‘Hey, Marlon, I may not know everything about this movie — but one thing I know it’s not about is ‘our guilt’! Yet Marlon has one of the finest minds around: Thinking is what he does. To sit and talk with him about life and death — he’ll think about that stuff all day long Finally, he shaved his head — and that did it. We’d go for it — we’d get there. That terrible face. I think it’s wonderful that in this movie, the most terrifying moment is that image: just his face.”

‘The Champ’

Jon Voight is Billy, a once great boxer who drinks too much and earns a living training horses. He does, however, have his son, T.J. (Ricky Schroder), the custody of whom he’s on the verge of losing when his ex-wife (Faye Dunaway) returns. Billy has to clean up his act and go back to doing what he does best — boxing. Make sure you have plenty of tissues for this one. Sorry for the spoilers, but of that ending Schroder reflected to the Post Gazette, “I wasn’t acting. It was real emotion. I’d never been to acting class. I think I suspended reality in an intense way, so I think I believed the Champ was dying. Little kids have vivid imaginations, and I was able to use that.”

‘The China Syndrome’

Offers the official description: “A news reporter (Jane Fonda) and her cameraman (Michael Douglas) are unintentional witnesses to a SCRAM incident, an emergency core shutdown procedure at a nuclear power plant in California. The crew prevents a catastrophe, but the plant supervisor (Jack Lemmon) begins to suspect the plant is in violation of safety standards, and tries desperately to bring it to the attention of the public, fearing that another SCRAM incident will produce an atomic disaster.” The thing that turned this one into a blockbuster is that one week after it was released, a similar event occurred for real at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. You simply cannot buy publicity like that. 

“The script got me excited,” Michael Douglas told Rolling Stone, “because I saw it could be suspenseful. It was basically about a documentary film crew filming an accident at a nuclear plant — individuals caught in a corporate or social structure that forces them to make a moral decision at the sacrifice of losing their lives. It’s an effort at what is basically Greek tragedy — classic drama situations.”

‘Dracula’

Frank Langella takes his Broadway performance of Bram Stoker’s King of the Vampires and brings him to movie screens.  The setting is the late 1800s in England, where the count begins his reign of terror, setting his romantic eyes on Kate Nelligan’s Lucy Seward. Langella is the perfect combination of charming gentleman and monster.

Langella noted to Fantastic Films magazine, “I never wanted him to strike terror from the first day of rehearsal of the play. I didn’t see him as a character who went around with long fingernails and hollow eyes and fangs and all that stuff. It didn’t interest me to play him that way, because it would have just been repeating a tried and true genre, which everybody knows works. I wanted him to be somewhat vulnerable, hopefully somewhat neurotic and occasionally not sure of his territory. I wanted him to be some kind of man who had come to some relevant peace in life with his circumstances. He had to exist for blood, but he didn’t necessarily spend all his waking hours in pursuit or in some kind of horrific guise. So I wouldn’t be upset if people said I changed the character, because that’s why I wanted to do it. It would have been absolutely of no interest to me to have done it in the Hammer way with fangs and snarling and all of that stuff. I just decided to play him as a mortal man for a very long time, and slowly began to add the curse. I found it fascinating to work on him in this way instead of as a predator.”

‘The Electric Horseman’

On the surface, this one seems a bit goofy in its premise, but it becomes endearing and actually about something. Great reunion for Robert Redford and Jane Fonda after a 12-year hiatus following 1967’s Barefoot in the Park. Says Google, “A former champion rodeo rider (Robert Redford) is reduced to using his saddle skills to promote a breakfast cereal in a gaudy Las Vegas show. When he’s asked to perform with a $12 million horse that he discovers is being doped to remain docile, he flees into the desert astride the beast in an act of defiance. A story-hungry female reporter (Jane Fonda) gives chase.”

Reviewed Roger Ebert at the time: “The Electric Horseman is the kind of movie they used to make. It’s an oddball love story about a guy and a girl and a prize racehorse, and it has a chase scene and some smooching and a happy ending. It could have starred Tracy and Hepburn, or Gable and Colbert, but it doesn’t need to because this time it stars Robert Redford and Jane Fonda… If The Electric Horseman has a flaw, it’s that the movie’s so warm and cozy it can hardly be electrifying. The director, Sydney Pollack, gives us solid entertainment, but he doesn’t take chances and he probably didn’t intend to…  He seems to understand (as the directors of Bogart, Hepburn, Gable, et al., did in the forties) that if you have the right Boy and the right Girl and the right story, about all you have to do is stay out of the way of the Horse.”

‘Hair’

The Broadway musical comes to the silver screen. John Savage is Oklahoma farm hand Claude Hooper Bukowski, who comes to New York and is befriended by a group of hippies. Then he meets upper class Sheila Franklin (Beverly D’Angelo) and they start to fall for each other. Hippie leader George Berger (Treat Williams) is determined that love find a way despite the class difference — even when Claude receives a draft notice for Vietnam.

‘The Jerk’

This would seem to be the first time you can hear somebody referred to as a jerk and just smile, shrug, and acknowledge, “Yeah.” Steve Martin made his movie debut as Navin — who believes he was born a poor black child in Mississippi. When he discovers that he’s actually white, he heads out into the world to discover who he is, learning along the way that his name is in the phone book, that he has the ability to create devices that turn him into a wealthy man (though his riches don’t last very long), and he finds the woman of his dreams (played by Bernadette Peters). The premise is so silly, but so perfectly suited for Steve Martin, particularly at that time when he’d established himself as that “wild and crazy guy.”

‘Kramer vs. Kramer’

There are moments in this one that will just rip your heart out. Meryl Streep, who had recently arrived on the scene in films like Julia, The Deer Hunter, Manhattan, and The Seduction of Joe Tynan, is Joanna Kramer, who decides to leave her husband, Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and their son, Billy (Justin Henry). As a result, Ted, who had just gotten a huge account at his advertising firm, ultimately ends up losing his job as he is thrust into being a single parent. The result is the (gradual) building of a true connection between father and son, until the return of Joanna, seeking custody and who threatens everything. The film took home Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (for Dustin Hoffman), Best Supporting Actress (Meryl Streep), and Best Adapted Screenplay.

‘Mad Max’

Despite the fact it’s been so long since his last time in the role, Mad Max was one of Mel Gibson’s most popular characters. Offers the official description of the first film, “In a not-too-distant dystopian future, when man’s most precious resource — oil — has been depleted and the world plunged into war, famine and financial chaos, the last vestiges of the law in Australia attempt to restrain a vicious biker gang. Max, an officer with the Main Force Patrol, launches a personal vendetta against the gang when his wife (Joanne Samuel) and son are hunted down and murdered, leaving him with nothing but the instincts for survival and retribution.” That retribution carries him through the two sequels.” The 1979 original, directed, as each of the films were, by George Martin, had a micro-budget but captured the imagination of the audience so effectively.

‘The Main Event’

This is pretty lightweight stuff, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Barbra Streisand plays a successful member of the perfume industry, who finds herself broke when her accountant steals all her money. Desperate, she digs around to see what sort of investments she still owns and finds one: a pretty worthless boxer named Eddie “Kid Natural” Scanlan, played by Ryan O’Neal. Having nothing else she decides to do everything she can to promote him into a winner, along the way the two of them falling in love.

Note, if anyone remembers the TV series Moonlighting, the premise — model Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepard) robbed by her accountant and ultimately teaming up with detective David Addison (Bruce Willis) at a detective agency it turns out she owns — is remarkably similar.

‘Manhattan’

Coming off of the success of Annie Hall (four 1977 Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actress for Diane Keaton), Woody Allen continued to move away from the farces that had made up so much of his career into more mature comedy and drama. In it, he plays twice-divorced television writer Isaac Davis. His second wife (there’s Meryl Streep again) leaves him for another woman, he starts dating a high schooler (Mariel Hemingway), and he finds himself attracted to his best friend’s mistress, a writer named Mary (Diane Keaton). Let’s face it, Woodman, farce was easier on your characters.

‘Meatballs’

The success of Meatballs proved to the world that Bill Murray was more than the guy they were watching on Saturday Night Live every week. A major hit on a tiny budget, in it he plays the head counselor of a low budget summer camp named Camp Northstar. But this guy, Tripper, who initially could care less, finds himself motivating the campers in competition against a rival camp, and manages to fall in love along the way.

‘Moonraker’

The 11th James Bond film and the fourth to star Roger Moore as 007, Moonraker is essentially a remake of the 10th Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, which in turn was a remake of the fifth, You Only Live Twice. Not that it really matters. This time Bond is attempting to stop Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) from decimating the planet from space to make way for the perfect race of humans he’s designed. Lots of spectacle, but to this day there is little that tops the opening sequence that has 007 thrown out of a plane without a parachute, having to catch up to a bad guy below him who has one, and wrestle it away from him in mid-air. Just, wow!

‘Norma Rae’

This is where Sally Field realized that people liked her; they really liked her. She plays textile mill worker Norma Rae who is pushed to the point where she rebels against the terrible working conditions and low pay, convincing others to join her in her fight. Needless to say, this doesn’t go over well with management or her family, who can’t understand why she’s making waves. Sally deservedly took home the Oscar for Best actress.

‘Rocky II’

Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed are liars. At the end of the 1976 original, Apollo claimed that there wasn’t going to be a rematch and Rocky said he didn’t want one. Don’t believe ’em for a second: you bet your arse there’s a rematch, and it’s great.

‘The Rose’

Inspired by the late of 60s icon, singer Janis Joplin, Bette Midler plays Mary Rose Foster, a rock star from the 1960s who achieves enormous fame, but allows that fame to be accompanied by a descent into alcohol and drug abuse. Her only hope of salvation comes from her boyfriend, Dyer (played by Frederic Forrest), who does his best to save her from herself.

‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’

It took 10 years, but the original Star Trek, which ran from 1966 to 1969, finally made to the big screen after a number of false starts throughout the 1970s. It’s a fairly polarizing film in the franchise, in that many viewers think it’s a snore fest as the starship Enterprise encounters a machine entity that threatens us with extinction, while others feel it is the one entry in the film series that has an epic scope to it. Either way, its success has paved the way for 12 additional films (including the JJ Abrams reboot trilogy) and five live action series with more on the way.

‘Time After Time’

Malcolm MacDowell plays author H.G. Wells who has created a functioning time machine that Jack the Ripper (David Warner) manages to steal to escape the law and live among us in modern day San Francisco. Wells follows him there in an attempt to apprehend him — though he’s hopelessly incapable of doing so — and along the way falls in love with Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen). Chilling scene is when Jack is watching the evening news, and all the violence being covered, and he turns to Wells, saying, “I’ve come home.”

‘The Villain’

Imagine a Looney Toons cartoon brought to life and you’ll get the sensibility of this one. It’s not really great, but it’s included strictly because of its cast: Ann-Margret as Charming Jones, who is being guided across the desert of the Old West by Arnold Schwarzenegger as Handsome Stranger.  The two of them must deal with the black-hatted bad guy, Kirk Douglas’ Cactus Jack. Harmless fun, and always nice to see Kirk Douglas in action.

‘The Wanderers’

Set in the Bronx, New York of 1963, the focus is on an Italian-American gang named The Wanderers who are trying to earn their cred against other gangs, learning lessons in life and love along the way. The leader of the group is played by Ken Wahl, who a little less than 10 years later would go on to star in the undercover cop TV series Wiseguy. 

‘The Warriors’

This one may not have aged as well as some of the others included here, but at the time it was oh-so-cool.  It’s all about a turf war between the various New York City street gangs, with one man attempting to unite them all. But his murder is blamed on the gang the Warriors, who have every gang out after them as they try to live the night and make it back to their own territory.

‘When a Stranger Calls’

The old story told to scare the hell out of people is brought to life in this film: a high school babysitter (Carol Kane) begins to receive strange phone calls threatening the children she’s watching. Initially she thinks this is just a joke, but as the threat becomes more intense, she begins to realize that the phone calls are coming from another number within the house (everybody scream!).