Christmas Movies of 1977

1977 saw the release of 11 major movies for the Christmas season. The season was not considered "high quality" by critics and awards committee's as only one of the films would rate a Best Picture nomination and only 3 others would receive nominations of any sort. Walt Disney would step up and release a film during the season but it would fall short of expectations as did several of the films. Only three were big hits while two others had decent if unspectacular results.

If you can remember these movies being released then I hope this article is a fond remembrance of those days. It's hard to believe it has been 30 years since some of these movies were first released.

The movies are listed alphabetically.

THE CHOIRBOYS (Universal Pictures - Director: Robert Aldrich) Perhaps the biggest dud of the holiday season was this adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh's popular novel that was turned into a raunchy sex comedy about the after hour lives of police officers in Los Angeles. The film is filled with sex, drugs, bondage, rape, murder and corruption. Sounds like a fun film for Christmas doesn't it? Charles Durning, Perry King, Lou Gossett, Jr., Randy Quaid, James Woods and Burt Young co-star and all look embarrassed to be part of the production. Director Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen) reaches a career nadir and Wambaugh was so angry at the final result that he refused to sell rights to any of his work in the future unless he was involved with the project either as a writer or producer. Needless to say this mean spirited, dim-witted comedy flopped at the box office despite Universal putting almost $7 million into its budget.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (Columbia Pictures - Director: Steven Spielberg) Easily the most anticipated film of the holiday season was director Spielberg's follow-up to Jaws. Richard Dreyfuss starred as Roy Neary, an everyman who witnesses a UFO sighting and soon becomes obsessed with strange visions that will lead him to the ultimate destiny at Devil's Tower in Wyoming. After a summer spent packing theaters to see Star Wars, audiences were more then ready for another epic Science Fiction/ Adventure film. Many of the same theaters that opened Star Wars in May would play that film right to the opening of this film on the 14^th of December. Close Encounters was made on a budget of just over $20 million and would gross over $83 million. It was nominated for 8 Academy Awards including Spielberg for Best Director and Melinda Dillon for Best Supporting Actress but would end up taking home only one trophy for Best Cinematography.

THE GAUNTLET (Warner Bros - Director: Clint Eastwood) It wasn't summer or Christmas in this era without a Clint Eastwood film playing and this adventure film cast Clint in a slightly different light as a flawed Arizona detective who drinks too much and is clearly washed up. He is given the thankless assignment of going to Las Vegas to retrieve a Mob witness and bring her back safely to Arizona. The only trouble is everyone is out to get her and no one minds taking the cop down too. This is a silly action film with some terrific scenes (thanks to good direction by Eastwood) mixed in to a flawed script. Still it's worth two hours if you just want some mindless entertainment. Seeing that Clint was one of the biggest stars in the world at that time it should come as no surprise that the film's $5.5 million budget turned into a $27 million gross - a tidy profit.

THE GOODBYE GIRL (Warner Bros - Director: Herbert Ross) Neil Simon fashioned a wonderful romantic comedy that appealed to both men and women and had the good fortune to get a director who was hot (his The Turning Point was released a few months earlier and would earn rave reviews and scores of Academy Award nominations) and a lead actor (Richard Dreyfuss) who was equally hot and had another hit in Close Encounters playing simultaneously. Simon' story tells of a single mother (Marsha Mason) who finds herself alone when her actor-boyfriend leaves her and sublets his apartment to another actor (Dreyfuss). The film is fused with terrific writing, great chemistry among the actors (including a sensational, Oscar nominated performance from young Quinn Cummings as Mason's daughter) and a sweetness that lingers throughout the movie. The film proved to be Simon's biggest hit as it made over $43 million and earned 5 Academy Award nominations winning one for Dreyfuss as Best Actor.

THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN (American International - Director: William Sachs) One of the oddest movies ever released during the holiday season made even stranger by the fact that its studio, AIP, never made big budget films and this is no exception. The film tells the story of an astronaut who returns from a space mission and begins to melt while also beginning to hunger for human flesh. So low is the budget that director Sachs couldn't even afford a single shot of the spaceship from the outside. Despite the scathing reviews one expects from a film like this, Melting Man was a mild success at the box office.

1900 (Paramount/United Artists - Director: Bernardo Bertolucci) A true epic motion picture from Bertolucci, his first film after the triumphant Last Tango In Paris. Here his mammoth production tells the story of two boys/men born on the same day in 1900 following their lives through 1945 dealing with Fascism and Communism. Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu play the young men with support from Burt Lancaster, Sterling Hayden and Donald Sutherland among many. Bertolucci had many problems with the film distributors in the United States as his original cut was over five hours long. Complying with a demand to cut the film Bertolucci brought it in at just under four hours forcing the studio to release it (having invested over $9 million on its budget) only in big cities on one screen splitting the show times so each half could play in the same day. Critical reaction was severely mixed, some called it a masterpiece while others called is a jumbled mess (possibly due to cutting over an hour out) and the film failed at the box office though it has grown in status in the years since.

PETE'S DRAGON (Walt Disney - Director: Don Chaffey) Disney's big Christmas offering was this mix of live action and animation telling the story of a young orphan living with bad adopted parents who escapes his world with the help of his animated dragon friend Pete. Pete can make himself invisible and usually does to everyone but Elliot, the boy which gets him into more trouble. Soon they escape to live with a lighthouse keeper while hiding out from everyone looking for the two. Helen Reddy, Mickey Rooney, Red Buttons and Shelley Winters star in the film which had a storied history. The film was originally to be released in a "roadshow" attraction meaning it would play one theater a city with tickets available through the mail only. This practice was big in the 60's and early 70's but had been abandoned for a few years at this time. The film opened to dismal reviews and lackluster business so the film was pulled and edited from 134 minutes to 121 minutes and was then released nationwide at Christmas. The reviews were no better and while the film did make over $18 million the budget ran over $11 million including costs of pulling the film, re-editing and re-doing advertisements. Despite this its length was often sided as one reason children were not overly fond of the film and it has been severely edited further through the years for television and video. Some prints run as briefly as 91 minutes today. The film would receive two Academy Award nominations for the now defunct Best Song Score Adaptation and Best Song.

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (Paramount - Director: John Badham) The Christmas sleeper movie of 77 starred teen heartthrob John Travolta, best known for his roles on television's Welcome Back, Kotter and a supporting role in the hit film Carrie. Here Travolta took center stage as a Brooklyn youth going nowhere fast in life that gets his only pleasure from dancing at the disco every Saturday night where he is "King" of the scene. Soon he meets and falls in love with an older woman he is going to dance in a competition in but she resists his attempts at a relationship. The film is a rough look at teenage life with hard language and sexual situations that make the film more for adults. It is filled with wall to wall music and dancing scenes that have to been seen to be believed. The film and its soundtrack album by The Bee Gees became phenomenons and Travolta became a superstar. Travolta would earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor but most shockingly was that none of the songs that proved so popular would be nominated. The film grossed an amazing $74 million and a few years later would be re-released with a softer PG rated version which would premiere on television that fall.

SEMI-TOUGH (United Artists - Director: Michael Ritchie) The most disappointing film of the Christmas season was this adaptation of Dan Jenkins' raunchy novel about football players that was neither raunchy nor much about football. Superstar Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson star as football teammates vying for the affections of the team owner's (Robert Preston) daughter (Jill Clayburgh). The film gets too bogged down in preachiness and righteousness and fails to deliver on the raunch, sex and comedy the book and films ads promised. Director Ritchie (The Candidate; The Bad News Bears) seemed the ideal choice to make this movie but delivered his first critically lambasted film of his career. Despite this the film made a respectable $23 million thanks, no doubt, to Reynolds popularity and the mis-leading (see the original movie poster I have attached) ad campaigns.

TELEFON (MGM - Director: Don Siegel) Another dependable star of the 1970's was Charles Bronson who packed audiences in with his action films - many of them less then mediocre. Bronson had great screen presence but usually saddled himself with third rate scripts with second rate directors. In those rare times when he worked with a first rate director, as he does here with Siegel (Dirty Harry), Bronson made exciting adventure thrillers. Here Bronson plays a KGB agent who heads to the U.S. to stop a psychotic agent who, by reciting lines from a Robert Frost poem, can trigger people previously hypnotized to commit terrorist acts. Lee Remick and Donald Pleasance (as the villain) co-star in this taut, suspenseful film that came in under the radar that Christmas making a small profit but remains one of Bronson's better vehicles.

THE WORLD'S GREATEST LOVER (20^th Century Fox - Director: Gene Wilder) Gene Wilder was one of the best film comics of the 1970's who made the drastic error in believing he could also direct and write his own vehicles. In 1975 he made The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother, a mildly amusing mystery/romance/comedy that did well at the box office. Two years later Wilder brought this comedy about a Wisconsin baker who, along with his wife, heads for Hollywood to see if he can become the movies next Rudolf Valentino. The film is peppered with bits that lay flat and don't work at all with few laughs outside of an amusing early scene. Critics savaged the film and even Wilder's fans stayed away this time costing Wilder another chance at writing/directing for seven years.