Clash of the Titans

Despite the fact that Clash of the Titans is rather awful, I came out of the theater thinking that it was better than I expected. Which is kind of sad. It would be nice to be excited about a movie that I haven't seen, but it seems that doesn't happen so much these days. I'll get into conversations with friends and we'll discuss the decline of movies and how everything being made now is just garbage. So much of it just seems unwatchable. Too many computer effects, poor character development, bad dialogue being spoken by bad actors, plots that don't make sense. It feels like movies just try to overwhelm your senses. It's like they are trying to trick you. They want to pummel your brain into submission so you won't know how bad what you are watching is. It's easy to look back and think that there was some golden age of film making in the past.

Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Jaws, Alien, The Conversation, Chinatown, M*A*S*H*, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Sting, Blazing Saddles, Animal House.

The seventies were great, but I think all the bad stuff just kinda gets forgotten.

Take the year 1977. There was Star Wars. There was Annie Hall, Close Encounters and Saturday Night Fever. The first Smokey and the Bandit came out that year. All good movies (and if not good at least you've heard of them).

But a lot of other movies also came out that year.

Bruce Li in New Guinea and Bruce Lee the Invincible for example (Bruce Lee had been dead for four years).

There was The Curious Case of the Campus Corpse, The Legend of the Wolf Woman, Demoniac, Beast with a Gun, The Crater Lake Monster, I Spit on Your Grave, The Class Reunion Massacre and Welcome to Blood City. All classic horror flicks I'm sure.

I bet Satan's Cheerleaders was excellent. Cheerleaders' Beach Party was also probably pretty good.

There was Death Kiss which is not to be confused with Kiss of Death also released that year. And Death Driver which shouldn't be mixed up with Road of Death or Death Game or Fist of Fear Touch of Death.

Also coming out that year:

War of the Planets, Caligula II: Messalina Messalina, Confessions of a Driving Instructor, One Way Boogie Woogie, Madame X: An Absolute Ruler, Polk County Pot Plane, The Night They Took Miss Beautiful, The Rubber Gun, Not Now Comrade, High Rolling in a Hot Corvette, What's Up Nurse!, The 5th Musketeer and ABBA: The Movie.

As well as the deeply moving Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo.

I take comfort in the fact that, like all the above films, most of the schlock in theaters these days will just disappear into the ether. Still, it's hard to imagine anyone looking back on the movies of the 00s and thinking of it as a golden age.