I’ve developed a bit of a thing for alternative / hard boiled movies from the 60s and 70s – I’m talking “Bullet”, “Point Blank”, “Dirty Dozen”, Dirty Harry of course, early De Niro, “Two Lane Blacktop”…can’t wait for my fresh print of “Bonnie and Clyde” and a twofer of the French Connections to arrive tomorrow. Your faves in this genre? What should I seek out? And why (avoiding list thread complaints…)?
Hard boiled movies
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Chinatown, kitty cat!
Good call. Ordered.
Can’t answer this, busy picking my feet in Poughkeepsie.
I lived in Poughkeepsie for a while, wasn’t sure how one “picks feet” though.
You point and say, “That one”
Badlands….just about Martin Sheen’s best film.
Based on true events (as always), the distinctive soundtrack was used recently in a twee supermarket ad.
Given the subject matter….underage Bonnie and psycho Clyde types on a murder spree, I’m guessing the ad agency haven’t seen it.
Would Shaft be a contender?
(or have we veered into Blaxploitation territory?)
Nope it’s a great suggestion
Ya damn right.
Vanishing Point
Which reminds me – not seen it in ages, may well now be Friday night viewing.
Forgot the important bit:
Runs Bullitt close as “best car chase in film”
I humbly submit that the French Connection car chase takes that title. I saw a doco years ago where Friedkin claimed the stunt driver (I believe the same guy as drove the bad guys’ car in Bullitt) was told to just floor it and hope they could get it in one take as they didn’t have clearance from the local authorities. He’s a notorious bullshitter, so I don’t believe it for a second. That would be like Spielberg using a real shark in a Jaws and not telling the actors.
“The stunt drivers were really impressed!”
Fear is the Key featuring the superb Barry Newman surely has the best car Chase.
Oddball choice of car too….Ford Torino grand sport.
The Pontiac Le Mans in connection is just awful
Ooh! I love a good car chase…
That was fun!
You are Alexander Armstrong and I claim my £5:00.
dog day afternoon – it says here
second this
The Conversation is intensely hard-boiled all the way through. I rate it higher than both French Connections.
Agree it’s brilliant, but it’s different. Equally good in their way. FC is gritty where The Conv has a paranoid claustrophobia about it.
You could make a good list of those paranoid mid-late 70s post-Watergate films. The Parallax View would also be on it.
The Conversation has John Cazale in it. Therefore it is a great film.
The Taking of Pelham 123.
The original with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw.
Why? Because WM and RS. And it’s another early 70’s Noo Yoik movie. showing the city in its pre ’80’s clean up grot.
Also, Serpico
Great choice @Beezer! It has been remade recently to my great annoyance. Why redo something that was perfect? The director Joseph Sargent was a grafter: he did lots of TV shows, sequels, etc.
In the same vein, I want to recommend John Carpenter’s Assault on Precint 13 from 1976.
What a film!
Equally top choice, @kaisfatdad
Jane Fonda is a fascinating watch in Klute.
You naughty man.
She definitely deserved that Oscar.
He’ll be on the depth of her performance in Barbarella in a minute. A fun alt thread might be 60s kitten movies – 10,000 years BC, the one where they are miniaturised and the white blood cells try to eat Rachel Welch etc.
I’m in no position to judge. I’ve only seen the opening titles.
I watched Barbarella in a stoned studenty haze in about 1993.
At the end I said, “That’s the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen”
My mate Jim Moorhouse said, “I liked it too”
Call me shallow, but I just love her wardrobe in that film (which, given her character’s profession, doesn’t say much for me).
The scriptwriter, Andy Lewis, died recently – here’s an excellent interview with him.
https://thenextreel.com/blog/a-qa-with-klute-co-writer-andy-lewis
Nice find, Sniffity!
A real, in-depth insight into the reality of working as a scriptwriter.
For every movie that gets made there are an unbelievable number that never make it to the screen. Even after a major success, it is not certain that your scripts will come to anything.
Anchorman. If I have to explain you won´t understand anyway.
The best hardboiled movie is Cool Hand Luke.
Think about it…
Oy!
I’d include Network, not conventionally hard boiled but equally out there.
Man, give her the FUCKING overhead clause.
I enjoyed Altman’s long and meandering The Long Goodbye. A lot of the pleasure was that Elliot Gould was so very far from Bogart and that Altman took considerable liberties with the book.
Another must is Don Siegal’s Charley Varrick from 1973 with Walter Matthau in the title role.
A top notch thriller about a small town heist that goes horribly wrong when Charley and his gang steal money from the Mob.. Siegel was a master of hard-boiled.
Top tip. There’s a great Altman box set on Amazon for 12 modest quid and includes MASH.
Robert Altman Collection: Fool For Love/ The Long Goodbye/ M.A.S.H./ O.C. and Stiggs/Thieves Like Us [DVD] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000QJMSGE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_zV-XAbVG740Q1
Marlboro Man…. EG was wayyy cool in that movie. Good choice.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) is an absolute stunner. Thought provoking and gritty. Comes with some amazing (CGI-free) stunts and chase scenes too.
Have you ever seen any late Melville films? Ice cool brilliance in french.
Le Samorai (1967) is what I’d suggest. If you like that then you might want to give The Red Circle (1970) a try.
Alain Delon… stepping out of a 2CV in a grey raincoat in a Paris street, smoking a Disque Bleu. Coooooool.
Berth ma lerngs are furl uv tarrrr, burt ah durrn’t geev a sheet, kers ahh am murch cooleur then yerr can eefen eemageen.
Was Alain Delon a Geordie?
HOWWWAAAYYYABOOOOGAMONSIEUR!
I’d also heartily add Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) , (Cassavettes most accessible film imho, but still a Cassavettes film…so consider yourself warned 😉
and judging from the list in your OP, McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971)
Thinderbolt and Lightfoot
Very very frightening
A yay for Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Terrific film. If Jeff Bridges were not one of the best actors ever, it would be a high point in anyone else’s career.
Meanwhile, on topic. howsabout the original Night of the Living Dead. (And I don’t mean the tinted version either. B&W!!!!)
Truly great performance from Bridges
Duel…if you want to know what it’s like driving on the Pacific Highway south from Brisbane any day of the week.
Duel is fucking boss. Dennis Weaver gives the white-knuckled performance of a lifetime. Knocks worthy crap like The Post into a hat any day of the week.
“Come on…. let’s GO!!!”
God, yes! Duel.
“If Ethel don’t maahhnnd….’
I endorse many of the selections above especially The Long Goodbye and The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
But my top tip for you is Night Moves, which starred Gene Hackman and was directed by Arthur Penn.
Hackman is a private detective, but unlike so many PIs in so many films,he’s not the smartest.
Is Gene Hackman in all of these films??
To be fair, he is impressively hard boiled.
A pattern emerges…
Great choice Carl. Night Moves is a cracker.
This list is an enjoyable ongoing project.
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls023849464/
This thread is a shameless exercise in nostalgia! All those films that I saw at the Rayners Lane Odeon.
Next up: Across 110th Street. Best remembered today because Tarantino nicked the stupendous Bobby Womack theme tune for Jackie Brown. Nice work Quentin!!
It also has in a fairly brief role Antonio Fargas, who was better known as Huggy Bear in Starsky and Hutch.
One thing I never understood with S&H was that the mobbed up guys never realised Huggy Bear was a supergrass. Can’t solve the crime ? Go to HB. He tips them off. Bad guys end up behind bars. Time and again. In Across 110th Street Mr F suffers the fate that should have befallen HB. I won’t say how in the interest of avoiding too many spoilers.
And how did Starsky manage to move while wearing that drenched cardigan? Must have weighed a ton.
One I should have included there and, to the best of my memory Tigs, Gene Hackman isn’t in it but Walter Matthau is. That’s the brilliant Charley Varrick. (edit, I see Kaisfatdad has already mentioned it, but I didn’t notice it beneath the YouTube box.)
A heist goes too well. Far too well and Charley and his compadres are pursued by ruthless Joe Don Baker.
Unlike Gene Hackman’s character Charley is smart. People underestimate just how smart he is.
I believe the film had an alternative title with one word added – Kill Charley Varrick.
I’m confused. How can Gene Hackman play a character, albeit a not very smart one, if he’s not in the film?
How can a film be on this thread without Gene Hackman in it?
I’m referring back to my earlier recommendation of Night Moves – where you first raised the thought about Gene Hackman being in all these films.
Come on guys! Those were different times, Gene Hackman was not in Mary Poppins. Mary managed without a French connection.
Just a spoonful of Kryptonite helps the medicine go down…
He would have made a better fist of a Cockney accent.
Faint praise…
If “The Long Good Friday” is in, then “Get Carter” is as well.
Crossing back over the Atlantic, “L.A. Confidential”, “Se7en” and “The Usual Suspects” are contenders.
If we carry on across the Pacific to Australia, “The Proposition” is a contender.
Doesn’t get more noir than Performance, shirley?
Amazing how old Jagger looks in that film. James Fox has never topped it.
They may belong more on the joky side, like Our Man Flint, but I’ve always been fond of Sinatra’s two late 60s Tony Rome movies, Tony Rome and Lady in Cement. The Detective from the same period is pretty gritty and worth a look too.
I hope you’ve chosen the DVD set of French Connection, rather than the Blu Ray, as it’s one of the rare occasions where the Blu Ray picture is worse than the DVD. If it is the Blu Ray just watch closely at the scene early on when Santa Claus is in pursuit of somebody (hope that’s not too much of a spoiler!). The red suit bleeds all over the place. I took my copy back to the shop and stuck with the DVD.
Two more films you might want to consider are Blow Out and Three Days of the Condor. Great films.
I should imagine Gene Hackman looks terrible on Blu-Ray.
…And Justice For All
It’s got Al Pacino, John Forsythe, Jack Warden, Jeffrey Tambor and lots more, and of course it’s brilliant. And often forgotten. So do yourself a favour!!!
I don’t suppose Taffin is what you’re looking for?
Good to hear that again. Brings back happy Adam & Joe memories.
How about some Peckinpah?
The Getaway and Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia are pretty hard boiled
There were some great Westerns with a 70s culture influence around that time, Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid for example, The Outlaw Josey Wales as well
Oh yeah.
While we’re on Westerns, would also recommend The Hired Hand. It’s Peter Fonda’s next film after Easy Rider.
Warren Oates is absolutely brilliant in it, and the soundtrack by Bruce Langhorne is well worth a look as well.
You cannot get much more hardboiled than Prime Cut from 1972.
Mob enforcer Lee Marvin from Chicago is sent down to sort out a “beef” with vicious local crime boss Gene Hackman who owns a Kansas City slaughterhouse.
I agree, it’s the perfect hard boiled movie. Not so easy to find on DVD – it’s a dodgy looking foreign language import on Amazon, though I had a TV sourced VHS of it so I know it by heart though sometimes you find there had been cuts in the TV version so I want to get a pukka copy.
Anybody seen Short Eyes?
White middle-class paedo ends up in nick with somewhat illiberal ne’erdowells. A comedy it ain’t.
Soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield.
Thief anyone?
James Caan on top form. Good Tangerine Dream soundtrack.
Dear Twangy,
Knowing your love of motorcycles I think you may find Electra Glide In Blue mildly distracting for an hour or so.
Dear Pencil
I was looking at that very movie on Dodgers last night where it is really cheap, wondering if it’s any good. So I shall acquire it on you recco.
Seconded. Great stuff. Howdy Peter, long time no see!
Howdy Foxy.
Has anyone mentioned Paul Schrader’s “Blue Collar” yet?
None more hard-boiled. Or scrambled.
Definitely not over-easy.
Great film. I’ve got the soundtrack too.
I second the Conversation, mentioned above (brilliant film).
Going slightly tangential (it’s a horror, but it’s set in grimy early 70s London) Deathline is worth a punt. Donald Pleasance as a copper investigating some odd deaths at Russell Square tube station. It uses the eeriness of the tube (see also “An American Werewolf in London”) to great effect.
Death Line aka Raw Meat is one of Edgar Wright’s favourite horror movies according to IMDB.
Donald Pleasance is also in John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, playing the very un-presidential President. Got to add that to our list. Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken was as hard-boiled as they come.
Aside from some very good recommendations above, particularly “Assault on Precinct 13” and “The Long Goodbye”, “The Laughing Policeman” (1973), based on one of the original Nordic Noir “Martin Beck” series but relocated to San Francisco and starring Walter Matthau.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070292/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Relocating Martin Beck to Frisco seems so very odd, particularly so in these days of Nordic Noir.
But it does remind me of a hard-boiled Swedish thriller also featuring Inspector Beck: Bo Widerberg’s The Man on the Roof from 1976. Thomas Hellberg as the sarcastic and well-hard Gunnvar Larsson was obviously a great inspiration to Michael Persbrandt when he took the role for the Beck TV series.
It’s a top notch movie!
Now we’re talking. Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt is great as Beck.
I also enjoy some of the Gösta Ekman movies, but The Man On The Roof is the best Beck movie.
I was thinking about other Swedish hardboiled stuff from the 70s.
Thriller: A Cruel Picture, a violent revenge drama which Tarantino is keen about, probably fits the bill. It is classic drive-in stuff on a par with Russ Meyer. Gratuitous nudity, gratuitous violence, gratuitous mooses, gratuitous smörgåsbord…. They just pile it all on.
Speaking as a gratuitous moose, I was glad of the work.
Just finished No Country For Old Men. Saw it in the cinema when it came out, haven’t seen it since. Really good. Not typical Coen. Based on a novel by Carmac McCarthy. He doesn’t do happy.
If we’re talking car chases, “The Seven-Ups” from 1973 is a good film with an astounding car chase.
Also fitting the bill (except it’s from the eighties), the John Frankenheimer-directed, Elmore Leonard-scripted, and like The Seven-Ups also starring Roy Schneider “52 Pick-Up” is worth 2 hours of your time – one of the better films from the Cannon stable.
Elmore Leonard and Raymond Chandler always deliver the goods. I do like my hardboiled with a smidgeon of humour. A protagonist who delivers as many snappy one liners as punches.
We have had Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman and Clint Eastwood but what about the ladies of hardboiled? Pam Grier, Jane Fonda, Helen MIrren, Maggie Smith …….?
Watched ‘ Goodfellas’ on Netflix with my 15 year old last night (she enjoyed it a lot).
Was surprised & delighted to see a cameo from a young Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Clay Davis from The Wire) who checks out Henry’s health at the hospital as his frantic coke-fuelled frenzy approaches its peak. And he doesn’t say ‘Sheeeeit!’ once.
There is a movie, just out of your nominated era, that I think fits the bill – namely Cutter’s Way, which came out in early 1982. It was one of the first, if not the first, films I saw after moving to London.
It starred Jeff Bridges and John Heard.
Heard played a disabled Vietnam veteran (the Cutter of the title) who gets involved in a murder investigation.
In Who’ll stop the rain? aka Dog Soldiers, Nick Nolte plays a Vietnam vet who gets drawn into a drug smuggling scam. Rather good as far as I can remember.
Heros…..a film starring “fonz” Henry Winkler should also fit the bill.
Essentially a road movie with a twist, Vietnam vet tries to recruit his old war buddies in a hokey business venture.
Shot in 1977, the first film to address the problems suffered by Vietnam veterans.
Happy days it ain’t.
If you like that one, you might also enjoy 1973’s Scarecrow, another road movie starring Al Pacino and (surprise!) Gene Hackman as two down-and-outers with big ideas and high hopes that may or may not be realised.
One of my favourite genres. Some more suggestions. I’ll stick to 70s and 80s:
70s:
The Killer Elite
Farewell My Lovely
The Late Show
Hardcore
The Outfit
Rolling Thunder
Marathon Man
Hustle
Freebie and The Bean
The Yakuza
The Driver
80s:
To Live and Die in LA
Manhunter
The Hit
Miami Blues
Sharky’s Machine
Fort Apache, The Bronx
Blue Velvet
House of Games
The Killer
Blood Simple
Thief
The Long Good Friday
This has morphed into my favourite thrillers of the 70s but what the hell. Many are mentioned somewhere above.
Charley Varrick is indeed great..can’t go wrong with Walter Matthau and the incomparable Joe Don Baker
Three Days of the Condor
Parallax View
Freebie and The Bean
Sorcerer
The Offence
Serpico
Hickey & Boggs
Hustle – Burt Reynolds is excellent in this
George C Scott was in a couple of forgotten fairly hard boiled thrillers of the early 1970s – The New Centurions and The Last Run. Also he is also extraordinary in The Hospital from 1971 which was written by Paddy Chayefsky who also wrote Network mentioned by Twang above.
Several more names are starting to recur. Scriptwriter and director, Paul Schrader, and then the mighty Walter Hill.
Hill’s The Warriors from 1979 is a loose re-telling of the Odyssey, set amidst the rival gangs of New York. All done with great flair and a marvelous ability to tell a story.
Good one. I’ve got the reissue Warriors with the cartoon transitions which were cut from the original print. Classic hard boiled, with a twist.
I didn’t know about those cartoon transitions.
It’s a film which is so cultish that it has its own (excellent) website.
http://warriorsmovie.co.uk/production
I got my facts wrong. It is based on the Anabasis by Xenophon. I’m surprised that the many AW classicists did not pick me up on that one.
Sorry chaps – Freebie and the Bean hard-boiled?
It was a supposed to be a comedy and it wasn’t particularly funny. I certainly didn’t find it thrilling. More like a blancmange rather than hard-boiled.
I disagree, and demand the Confessions of a Window Cleaner be included on this thread.
It’s from the seventies, innit??
But it was surpassed by … Driving Instructor.
A more artfully shot, detailed examination of the perils of finding and keeping employment in the 70s.
That 3rd movie in the canon was more social commentary than soft porn farce
Soft porn farce sounds like a starter in a poncey restaurant. I bet it’s got bastard pomegranate on it, like everything else these days.
and it will probably be deconstructed, and involve panko breadcrumbs somewhere.
(probably underneath the poached pear velouté and banana foam)
Yes I agree, it would be interesting to define “hard boiled” (beyond “Gene Hackman’s in it”) but comedy ain’t hard boiled, much as it’s fun.
No sensible person would describe those Robin Askwith films as fun…
Hard boiled and humour can go comfortably hand in hand. Philip Marlowe often has some rather witty comments as do John Carpenter’s heroes.
Agreed, a certain grim humour is important. Clint was good at this too. “Opinions are like assholes, everyone’s got one” being one of my favourites.
Can I nominate Gumshoe, 1971 Brit detective set in Liverpool starring Albert Finney, Frank Finlay & Billie Whitelaw…its hard to find but if you can its well worth it….like a hidden gem
Seconded.
Bloody hell, I just watched “Bonnie and Clyde” and wouldya believe it, Gene Hackman’s in it. The rule holds. There’s a cameo from Gene Wilder I’d forgotten, too.
I had”Network” last night. OK, so two nights of Faye Dunaway, but I’m taking one for the team here.
Avoid The Thomas Crown Affair from the same period then. Definitely not hard boiled (more like a two minute egg) and contains Faye Dunaway.
Risible plot that has the “bonus” of the original version of Windmills Of Your Mind recited by Noel Harrison.
The remake with Pierce Brosnan isn’t bad. Not just because it has Nina’s Sinnerman in it… but that helps.
This fella’s work might fit the bill..
(Brother trailer).
Americanwise, Linda Fiorentino is quite the femme fatale in The Last Seduction..