Paranoia Strikes Deep: Movies of the 1970s Quiz

Answer: Executive Action

Heavy hitters Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan play key roles here, but it didn't help. "Executive Action" received such bad press (and bad reviews) that many theatres pulled it or simply refused to show it. The primary objection was the film's depiction of the Kennedy assassination, which was, after all, still fresh in the memories of many Americans in 1973.

"Executive Action" did have at least one big fan - Reverend Jim Jones. The film's paranoid leanings played right into Jones' obsessions; he screened the film frequently for his followers in Jonestown.

Answer: The Parallax View

The assassination sequence that opens the film has eerie similarities to the Robert Kennedy assassination in 1968, just six years prior to the release of the film. "The Parallax View", like so many films of the 1970s, captures the atmosphere of anxiety and paranoia that enveloped the nation in the wake of civil unrest, assassinations, Vietnam, and Watergate.

Warren Beatty hadn't appeared in a film in three years prior to making this film. Much of his time had been spent campaigning and raising money for George McGovern. McGovern lost big, it could be theorized, because of the types of activities that ultimately led to Watergate. Hmmm.

Answer: The Conversation

"The Conversation" was a small picture that Francis Ford Coppola just managed to squeeze in between making "The Godfather" and "The Godfather II". Like both of those films, "The Conversation" received a richly deserved Oscar nomination for best picture. It lost to "Godfather II".

"The Conversation" is also one of only five films to feature John Cazale. The other four are the first two "Godfather" films, "Dog Day Afternoon" and "The Deer Hunter". All five were nominated for Best Picture Oscars and three of them won. Cazale died of lung cancer in 1978 at the age of 42. A wonderful actor whose work did not receive the recognition it deserved, John Cazale left behind a profound and impressive legacy.

Answer: Chinatown

"Chinatown" is one of the truly great movies of the decade. The film is directed by Roman Polanski, who only five years earlier had endured the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, at the hands of the Manson family. Five years later, he would direct this disturbing meditation on the nature of evil.

The face of evil in "Chinatown" is Noah Cross, played by John Huston. Huston, of course, was a legendary film director whose first film, 1941's "The Maltese Falcon", is considered by many to be the original film noir. Echoes of "The Maltese Falcon" can be felt throughout "Chinatown" - a private eye takes a seemingly simple case only to find himself surrounded by dangerously greedy and corrupt villains. But "Chinatown" is very much a '70s film, with its conspiracy mindset and its distrust of men in power.

Answer: Three Days of the Condor

The source novel by James Grady is entitled "Six Days of the Condor" but the film compresses the action into three days, thus the title change.

Robert Redford was one of the '70s' major stars and while this film is not among his most well known, it is one of his best. A year later, Redford would star in another classic '70s paranoid thriller, the fact-based "All the President's Men". That film tells the story of the "Washington Post" investigation that laid bare the Watergate scandal.

Answer: Marathon Man

Talk about evil! Laurence Olivier's brilliant performance as Nazi Christian Szell is one of the most chilling portrayals of evil ever put on screen. He received a justified Oscar nomination for his work. The character is based on Dr. Josef Mengele, the head S.S. doctor at Auschwitz, who was in hiding in South America when this movie was produced.

Over the years, many stories of conflict between Olivier and star Dustin Hoffman have circulated, some of them by novelist/screenwriter William Goldman. One story states that Olivier was put off by Hoffman's "method acting" style - Hoffman reportedly stayed up all night to play the scene in which his character stayed up all night. Olivier allegedly said to Hoffman, "Why don't you try acting? It's so much easier." Hoffman denies the story.

Answer: Capricorn One

"Capricorn One" has lots of cheesy fun with the absurd conspiracy theory that the 1969 Apollo moon landing was faked. They update it some by making it a flight to Mars instead of to the moon, but the premise and the paranoia behind it remain the same. Apparently, writer/director Peter Hyams started writing the film shortly after the moon landing.

"Capricorn One" was released in Japan in December 1977. It did not make its USA debut until the summer of 1978.

Answer: Coma

Years before writing "Jurassic Park" and creating the TV series "ER", Michael Crichton wrote and directed this paranoid thriller based on a novel by Robin Cook. It was his second feature, after 1973's "Westworld".

"Coma" is terrifying because, let's face it, we're all just a little bit afraid of hospitals and a tad apprehensive about going into surgery. In the first half of the film, several young, seemingly healthy, and movie star attractive people (one of the them played by Tom Selleck) go in for routine surgery only to come out of it in permanent comas. In true '70s form, however, we discover that the problem isn't with faulty medical procedures, but with a conspiracy at the highest levels.

Answer: The Boys from Brazil

Laurence Olivier, whose most recent Oscar nomination had been for his role as a Nazi doctor in "Marathon Man", took on the role of a Nazi hunter in "Boys from Brazil". Gregory Peck, normally a model of decency, here plays Dr. Mengele, who spearheads the efforts to fill the world with lots of little Hitler clones.

The film is based on the best-selling novel by Ira Levin.

Answer: The China Syndrome

"The China Syndrome" was released on March 16, 1979. Twelve days later on March 28, there was a partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island Generating Station near Harrisburg, PA. Experts have since dubbed it the most significant nuclear accident in American history.

The TMI accident lent credibility to the film's argument that nuclear power wasn't as safe as the powers that be wanted us to believe.

"Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away"
- "For What It's Worth" by Stephen Stills, recorded by Buffalo Springfield