5 Great '70s Crime Thrillers To Prepare You For 'Killing Them Softly'

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by The Playlist Staff
November 29, 2012 12:27 PM
9 Comments

"Straight Time" (1978)
Based on Eddie Bunker's novel “No Beast So Fierce” -- an ex-con turned crime fiction author and occasional actor (he played Mr. Blue in “Reservoir Dogs”) -- in many circles of cinephelia, “Straight Time” is an uncrowned jewel that doesn’t get enough love. Originally meant to be Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, after several weeks of shooting, Hoffman realized he was in over his head by starring and directing in the same movie and he asked his friend, Belgian-born filmmaker Ulu Grosbard, to take over the movie (they met when Grosbard was directing an off-Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge,” where Hoffman served as stage manager and assistant director). While it nearly cost them their friendship (and did for several years), “Straight Time” is a somber, gritty and vastly underestimated thriller. Featuring an excellent supporting cast including Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, M. Emmet Walsh, and Kathy Bates, Hoffman stars as Max Dembo, a lifelong thief just paroled after six long years who's hoping to go straight, play by the rules and get a regular job. But hounded by a manipulative asshole parole officer (Walsh) who’s more than happy to throw him back in the pen at a moment’s notice, Dembo's desire to stay on the straight and narrow is severely tested with every second of his newfound freedom. While he meets and woos a young girl (Russell) while job hunting and wants to start something anew with her, Dembo eventually snaps when the officer tries to pin a bullshit drug charge on him, realizing he’s simply never going to catch a break. The inevitable happens, and Dembo returns to a life of crime, eventually planning a big jewel heist with some old accomplices. Throughout, Hoffman embodies this gentle ex-con with a short fuse with effortless realism, and if you didn’t know better at the time, you’d have thought the actor was simply playing himself, his natural cool and confidence is so in the pocket. There’s a lot of nice atypical texture for a convict; Dembo is a charmer who is soft-spoken, empathetic, tense and nervy when crimes are going down. Simply put, “Straight Time” is one worth tracking down.

“Prime Cut” (1972)
While "Prime Cut," the third film directed by Michael Ritchie -- the filmmaker behind such '70s classics as "Downhill Racer" and "The Candidate," but also "The Bad News Bears" and "Fletch” -- is loved in crime film aficionado circles, it's definitely lesser known than other films of the era. Ritchie at this point had been known for his satirical light touch on “The Candidate,” but “Prime Cut” sees him entering “Dirty Harry” and Don Siegel territory as the picture is raw, brutal and downright ugly and risque (its violence is ferocious for its day and it even has a graphic scene of naked female slaves being sold off as cattle). As surly as ever, Lee Marvin plays Devlin, a hatchet man sent from Chicago to Kansas to collect a debt from a crooked meatpacking scion played by Gene Hackman. Things get more complicated when it’s revealed that Hackman’s Mary-Ann character (yes, Mary-Ann) is involved in complex drug deals and pimping women on his farm. To exacerbate it all, it's revealed that Devlin has had a past romantic relationship with Hackman’s perennially-naked-around-the-house wife played by Angel Tompkins. In their film debuts, Sissy Spacek and Janit Baldwin play two of the naked, drugged-up girls in the film being pimped and auctioned off to these southern heathens. If that sounds fucked up, that’s because it is. But part of the fun, if you want to call it that, is the bile and disgust that Marvin’s character has for all the sordid happenings and the godless, backwood barbarians.

"The Seven-Ups" (1973)
The only directorial effort by Philip D'Antoni, the producer of police thrillers “Bullitt” and “The French Connection,” this exec-turned-filmmaker had a thing for groundbreaking and memorable car chases in his pictures, and “The Seven-Ups” also features a ridiculously long, and pretty awesome car chase. The thrillers D’Antoni produced were gritty and documentary-like, and “The Seven-Ups,” starring the great Roy Scheider, was very much in this same milieu. Co-starring character actors Tony Lo Bianco (NBC's "Police Story" in the 1970s), Larry Haines ("The Odd Couple") and Richard Lynch (known for playing villains on TV on “Starsky & Hutch,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “T. J. Hooker,” etc.), Scheider stars as a renegade NYPD investigator running a type of dirty and unorthodox task force made up of plainclothes officers charged with taking down criminals guilty of offenses and ensuring them a minimum sentence of seven years in prison upon conviction (hence the name). Lo Bianco plays Scheider’s street informant who tips them to a rash of kidnappings, only the victims are mob bosses and high level players. Things get muddled when one of the Seven-Ups gets killed in action and Scheider’s character is out for revenge. D'Antoni used "Bullitt" and ‘French Connection’ stunt coordinator and driver Bill Hickman to pull off his elaborate chase -- the film's major set piece (watch below) -- and the scene was edited by the Oscar-winning Jerry Greenberg of “The French Connection” fame. Somewhat slight in the ‘70s crime oeuvre, it’s still an engaging and loose pic in this era worth tracking down.

-- Oliver Lyttelton, Rodrigo Perez

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9 Comments

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VigilantSkeptic | December 14, 2012 4:28 PMReply

Here's another five that would look great on there.

Dirty Harry - 1971
Across a 110th Street - 1972
Mean Streets - 1973
Serpico - 1973
Taxi Driver - 1976

The 70's were something else, especially in New York.
Cousinkevin | December 3, 2012 10:48 AMReply

I would add Don Siegel's fantastic Charley Varrick, with Walther Matthau. Amazing film!
Rodrigo | December 3, 2012 11:13 AM

That's a great one too. The Outfit? So many to chose from. We'll do another for sure.
Rob Roy | November 30, 2012 3:53 PMReply

Great list, seen all of them.
George | November 29, 2012 7:49 PMReply

Really Great List but I've seen everything on here except for Prime Cut and Straight Time. Guess be watching them soon though.
Tom Block | November 29, 2012 4:20 PMReply

What do you mean by "but also 'The Bad News Bears' "? I don't know when you last looked at it, if ever, but except for "Eddie Coyle", "BNB" is better than any of the movies you've listed here.
Rodrigo | November 29, 2012 4:35 PM

I love Bad News Bears, but I'm not sure it's cherished in the same way, by the same group of cinephiles.
Fred | November 29, 2012 2:06 PMReply

Flawless choices, superbly written piece about an era and genre closer to my heart than most. Might suggest the Bill Cosby/Robert Culp private-eye drama "Hickey and Boggs," penned by Walter Hill and about as far removed from the world of I Spy and Cosby's comedy as one could imagine and Hill's "The Driver" which has been covered in recent times as an antecedent of "Drive" but is worth mentioning again.
Christian | November 29, 2012 12:56 PMReply

Badass American cinema!