That’s Really Scary, Boys and Girls

It’s been a few years since The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane came out, but I still get asked to talk about ’70s Hollywood every once in a while. Recently, I did an e-mail interview with Brian Solomon, the editor of The Vault of Horror, where we talked about how the changes to the business and the culture of American movies affected the horror genre. During our back-and-forth, I reaffirmed the awesomeness of The Exorcist (not that William Friedkin needs my help, but hey) and put in a good word for one of my favorite films in any genre from the decade, Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To.

I also noted in passing that one of the biggest signs of the impact of 1970s horror films is the extent to which, it seems, every last one of them is getting remade, and in the days since I sent along my responses, I’ve been thinking of two films that fall into that category that I could have mentioned but didn’t. George Romero’s The Crazies is another one of my all-category favorites from the decade, a perfect time-capsule of the prevailing mood of the period that society was just barely holding it together and everything could degenerate into chaos without warning; a new version of that film is coming out next month. Then there’s Race with the Devil, the one where Warren Oates, Peter Fonda, Loretta Swit, and Lara Parker get chased around the South by devil worshippers—it’s unclear in the film whether they actually have any magical powers, although I suspect they don’t; as I said in Stewardess, though, it’s scary enough just to be chased across the South by guys wearing hoods. Apparently there’s a remake in the works and projected to come out some time next year. I’m not sure there’s a pressing need—the original was satisfactory in and of itself—but honestly I’ve felt that way about most of these remakes.

21 January 2010 | interviews |