1970s

The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive.

In the Western world, the focus shifted from the social activism of the sixties to social activities for one's own pleasure, save for environmentalism, which continued in a very visible way. The seventies were characterized by the writer Tom Wolfe as the "Me Decade."

The perception of the established institutions of nuclear family, religion and trust in one's government continued to lose ground during this time. Major developments of the sexual revolution included the awareness of the impact of contraceptive pills on social-interactional relationships, and an increase in divorce rates, single parent households, and pre-marital sex. By the end of the decade the feminist movement had helped change women's working conditions. The Gay Rights movement became prominent, and the hippie culture, which started in the 1960s, peaked and carried on through the end of the decade. The United States' withdrawal from Vietnam and the resignation of Richard Nixon helped bring about a sense of malaise.

The United States experienced recession, but the economy of Japan prospered. The economies of many third world countries continued to make steady progress in the early 1970s because of the green revolution. They might have thrived and become stable in the way that Europe recovered after the war through the Marshall Plan; however, their economic growth was slowed by the oil crisis.

Worldwide trends in the Seventies

The ethos of the 1970s emerged from a transition of the global social structure. It reflected the transition from the decline of colonial imperialism since the end of World War II to globalization and the rise of a new middle class in the developing world.

Globally, the 1970s had several features that were similar and definitive across economic levels and regions. These aspects and essence that make up global essence of the 1970s are the defining points of the 1970s: the Bretton Woods system and its subsequent failure, the impact of the contraceptive pill on social-interactional dynamics, the rising of the Black community and the oil shock of 1973.

The developing nations experienced economic growth that came in the wake of political independence. However, several African economies declined and political states became dictatorial regimes. Many Middle Eastern democracies crumbled into chaotic regimes with pseudo democratic governments.

The 1970s ethos in much of the developing world was characterized by:

• the constant need to redefine social norms to newer socioeconomic systems,
• the sheer pace at which they need to adapt to new social influences along with the need to integrate it to their native cultural context, and
• the constant aspiration for a more egalitarian society in cultures that were long colonised and have an even longer history of hierarchical social structure.

The first facelifts were attempted in the 1970s. The green revolution of the late 1960s brought about self sufficiency in many developing economies. At the same time an increasing number of people began to seek urban prosperity over agrarian life. This consequently saw the duality of transition of diverse interaction across social communities amid increasing information blockade across social class.

Other common global ethos of the seventies world include: increasingly flexible and varied gender roles for women. More women could enter the work force rather than remain housewives. However, the gender role of men remained as that of a bread-winner. The period also saw unprecedented socioeconomic impact of an ever-increasing number of women entering the non-agrarian economic workforce, and the sweeping cultural-religious impact of the Iranian revolution toward the end of the 1970s.

The global experience of the cultural transition of the 1970s and an experience of a global zeitgeist revealed the interdependence of economies since World War II, and showed the huge impact of American economic policies on the world.

Bookending events

Significant events that occurred around 1970 which would influence the course of history and character of the decade include:

• The hijacking and destruction of four New York-bound aircraft (Dawson's Field hijackings) in 1970.
• Cyclone Bhola in Bangladesh and the subsequent war with Pakistan in 1970.
• The release of the Intel 4004 in 1971.
• The fatal shooting of four student protestors by National Guard soldiers at Kent State University, Ohio in 1970.

Significant events that marked the passing of the decade include:

• The signing of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in 1979.
• The death of Elvis Presley in 1977.
• The death of John Lennon in 1980.
• The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
• The mass murder/suicide of People's Temple cult members in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978.
• The death of Pope Paul VI, month-long reign of Pope John Paul I and subsequent accession of Pope John Paul II in 1978.
• The Islamic Revolution of Iran instituted by conservative cleric, later Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini.
• Election of Conservative government with Margaret Thatcher as first woman Prime Minister of Great Britain on 4th May, 1979

Economy of the Seventies

The 1970s was perhaps the worst decade of Western and American economic performance since the Great Depression. Although there was no severe economic depression as witnessed in the 1930s, economic growth rates were considerably lower than previous decades. As a result, the 1970s adversely distinguished itself from the prosperous postwar period between 1945 and 1968. Then, the world economy was buoyed by the Marshall Plan and the robust American economy. However, the high standing enjoyed by the American economy gradually became discomposed by years of loose domestic spending (particularly the Great Society campaign) and funding for the Vietnam war. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 added to the existing ailments and conjured high inflation throughout much of the world for the rest of the decade. Soaring oil prices compelled most American businesses to raise their prices as well, with inflationary results. The average annual inflation rate from 1900 to 1970 was approximately 2.5 percent. From 1970, however, the average rate hit about 6 percent, topping out at 13.3 percent by 1979. This period is also known for "stagflation", a phenomenon in which inflation and unemployment steadily increased, therefore leading to double-digit interest rates that rose to unprecedented levels (above 12% per year). The prime rate hit 21.5 in December 1980, the highest in history. By the time of 1980, when President Jimmy Carter was running for re-election against Ronald Reagan, the misery index (the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate) had reached an all-time high of 21.98 percent.

In Eastern Europe, Soviet-style command economies began showing signs of stagnation, in which successes were persistently dogged by setbacks. The oil shock increased East European, particularly Soviet, exports, but agriculture became a growing annoyance to such economies.

Oil crisis

Economically, the seventies were marked by the energy crisis which peaked in 1973 and 1979 (see 1973 oil crisis and 1979 oil crisis). After the first oil shock in 1973, gasoline was rationed in many countries. Europe particularly depended on the Middle East for oil; the US was also affected even though it had its own oil reserves. Many European countries introduced car-free days. In the US, customers with a license plate ending in an odd number were only allowed to buy gasoline on odd-numbered days, while even-numbered plate-holders could only purchase gasoline on even-numbered days. The experience that oil reserves were not endless and technological development was not sustainable without harming the environment ended the age of modernism. As a result, ecological awareness rose substantially.

Social movements

Environmentalism

The seventies touched off a mainstream affirmation of the environmental issues early activists from the '60s, such as Rachel Carson, warned about. The moon landing that had occurred at the end of the previous decade transmitted back concrete images of the earth as an integrated, life-supporting system and shaped a public willingness to preserve nature. On April 22, 1970, the United States celebrated its first Earth Day in which over two thousand colleges and universities and roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools participated.

Feminism

Feminism in the United States got its start in the 1960s, but began to take flight starting in 1970, with the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (which legalized female suffrage).

With the anthology Sisterhood is Powerful and other works being published at the start of the decade, feminism started to reach a larger audience than ever before.

Gay rights

The Stonewall riots, which occurred in New York City in June 1969, are generally considered to have ignited the modern gay rights movement, especially in North America (England and Wales had already decriminalised homosexuality in 1967). In the 1970s, in western countries and especially so in major urban centers, gay and lesbian people came out of the closet as never before (even as many others remained closeted) and a vocal and visible gay-rights movement coalesced in an unprecedented way.

Considering the profound stigma still attached to homosexuality at the dawn of the 1970s, the movement, although still nascent, saw tremendous gains over the course of the decade. The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of psychiatric disorders in 1973. Gay-rights ordinances were passed by several cities, beginning with Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1972, and in 1977 Quebec became the first jurisdiction larger than a city or county in the world to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in the public and private sectors.

For the first time, a few openly gay people were elected to political office in the United States. In 1977 Harvey Milk, a politically active gay man in the emerging gay neighborhood The Castro, was elected to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. Milk and liberal San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated the following year. In 1979 their assassin, Dan White, received a sentence of voluntary manslaughter. The anger the gay community felt about the murders and about White's light sentence further galvanized the movement.

The increasing visibility of gay people also generated a backlash during the seventies. In perhaps the most discussed anti-gay rights campaign of the decade, singer Anita Bryant led a successful drive in 1977 to repeal a gay-rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida. The new openness about homosexuality proved disconcerting to some heterosexuals who had been accustomed to gay and lesbian people remaining closeted and politically silent. "The love that dare not speak its name," Canadian author Robertson Davies wrote during the decade, referencing the famous Lord Alfred Douglas quote, "has become the love that won't shut up."

On October 14 1979, approximately 100,000 people marched in Washington, D.C., in the largest pro-gay rights demonstration up to that time.

See also: List of years in gay rights (1970s)

Culture during the Seventies

Emerging social perspectives in the Seventies

Universities became friendlier and less authoritative towards students. This was reflected in the corporate culture of the 1970s, where the hierarchy between supervisor and subordinates became increasingly flat. This had influence in social interaction and family relationship as well. The nuclear family rose to prominence in the third world and the role of women in nuclear families took radical shift from those of earlier generations. With the rise of nuclear family and liberal attitudes towards social structure came new perspectives to child rearing and education. The 70s saw a decline in attendance to boarding schools and a rise of local day schools. The role of the nuclear family and the parent was increasingly noticed and given new impetus. Social norms and laws were increasingly framed in favour of women.

The Seventies in music

Main article: Timeline of trends in music (1970-1979)

The seventies were a time when a new generation of young people were exposed to new media and hence newer ideas in almost every field. TV and motion picture brought to varied audiences images, lifestyles and music from diverse regions and peoples. This led to the emergence of a new vocabulary and experimentation in music. After the war the second generation of German musicians began experimenting with music, these included experimental classical music and the tradition of Krautrock or Kraut music, rooted in the experimental classical music. This later influenced both art rock and progressive rock as well as the punk rock and new wave genres. The main exponents of progressive rock include Genesis, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Pink Floyd. The experimental nature of progressive rock is exemplified in songs such as Pink Floyd's "Echoes".

The seventies were also when many legendary rock bands started, or hit their peak, including Black Sabbath, Queen, Boston, Led Zeppelin, Electric Light Orchestra, Lynyrd Skynyrd, AC/DC, Status Quo, Family, Free,Pink Floyd, Michael Zach, Aerosmith,Badfinger,the Eagles, KISS, Rush, The Who, The Sweigman Brothers Band, The Doors, Deep Purple, and Van Halen. In Europe, there was a surge of popularity in the early decade for glam rock, thanks largely to the rise of T Rex,Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, Gary Glitter and David Bowie, and bands like Slade and the Sweet.

We also saw the rise of Alternative Pop music with the soft, velvety tones of the brother and sister duo the Carpenters. The group went on to become the biggest selling artists of the decade (1970-1980).

The first half of the 1970s saw many jazz musicians from the Miles Davis school achieve cross-over success through jazz-rock. Particularly notable were the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, created by Chick Corea, and Weather Report, built upon the keyboards and saxophone of Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, respectively. No European band could rival these American successes, all eventually signed to the CBS label, incidentally. In Germany, Manfred Eicher started the ECM label, which quickly made a name for 'chamber jazz' through the likes of Jan Garbarek, Keith Jarrett and Terje Rypdal. These two movements attracted many fans of progressive rock after its destruction by punk in 1976-77.

Another experimentation in European classical music was brought about by composer Philip Glass and Michael Nyman, with what was to be called Minimalist music. This was a break from the intellectual serial music of the tradition of Schoenberg which lasted from the early 1900s to 1960s. Minimalist music sought to appreciate simple music with systematic patterns repeated in complex variations.

These experimentations were also used in several movies made in the early 1970s. In world music the musical collaboration of violinists Yehudi Menuhin and L. Subramaniam was appreciated by a large audience.

The commercial cinemas around the world tended to imitate nuances of disco beats in their movies to present their movies as western and upbeat. These included the increasingly popular Kung-fu movies in far East Asia and Bollywood movies from India.

One of the most successful European groups of the decade was the quartet ABBA. The Swedish group, who are still the most successful group from their country, first found fame when they won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. They became one of the most widely known European groups ever, and were the decade's biggest sellers. "Waterloo" and "Dancing Queen" are two of ABBA's most popular songs.

To many people, the Seventies will be most remembered for the rise in disco music. First creeping into dance clubs in the mid-seventies (with such hits as "The Hustle" by Van McCoy), songstresses like Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Dalida and Anita Ward popularized the genre and were described in subsequent decades as the "disco divas." The Village People scored a Top Ten hit with "Y.M.C.A." and the Bee Gees had a string of #1s following their collaboration on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

As quickly as disco's popularity came, however, it fell out of favor with the new decade, and effectively died in 1981, with the popularity of New Wave bands such as Blondie and Devo, who both formed their respective bands in the seventies. Many of the aforementioned singers who became popular during the disco era found themselves out of tune with the 1980s, and were out of work for many years, until a renewed interest in disco brought many of them back to the forefront. Many songs from the disco era are still very popular dance hits and receive continuous airplay in nightclubs throughout the world.

The mid-seventies saw the rise of punk music from its protopunk/garage band roots in the 1960s and early 1970s. The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and The Clash were some of the earliest acts to make it big in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Groups like the Clash were noted for the experimentation of style, especially that of having strong reggae influences in their music. Punk music has also been heavily associated with a certain punk fashion and absurdist humor which exemplified a genuine suspicion of mainstream culture and values.

Towards the end of the decade, Jamaican reggae music, already popular in the Caribbean and Africa since the early 1970s, became very popular in the U.S. and in Europe, mostly because of reggae superstar and legend Bob Marley as well as his band, The Wailers, his former bandmate Peter Tosh and other artists like Burning Spear and Jimmy Cliff.

Country music remained very popular in the USA. In 1977 it became more mainstream after Kenny Rogers became a solo singer and scored many hits on both the country and pop charts. He achieved the biggest crossover success ever for the genre (although he would later be replaced by Garth Brooks).Waylon Jennings was very big and Willie Nelson released Red Headed Stranger.

Top music acts in Australia/New Zealand included Sherbet, Skyhooks, Dragon, Hush and the Ted Mulry Gang.

The Seventies in cinema

World cinema

In cinema all over the world, the seventies brought about vigor in adventurous, cool and realistic complex narratives with rich cinematography and elaborate scores. The cultural interaction between aided with TV and visual media and the rise in motion picture technology ushered in a new period of motion picture making.

In European cinema, the failure of the Prague Spring brought about nostalgic motion pictures reminiscent of the ones that celebrate the 1970s itself. These movies expressed a yearning and as a premonition to the decade and its dreams. The Hungarian director István Szabó made the motion pic Szerelmesfilm (1970), which is a nostalgic portrayal and a premonition of the fading of the young 1970s ethos of change and a friendlier social structure. The Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci made the motion picture The Conformist (1970). German movies after the war asked existential questions especially the works of Rainer Fassbinder. The movies of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman reached a new level of expression in motion pictures like Cries and Whispers (1973). Young German directors made movies that came to be known as the German new wave. It was the voice of a new generation that had grown up after the second world war. These included directors like Wim Wenders, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg and Werner Herzog.

Wim Wenders made movies that explored psychological states of humans in situations intimate and significant to the characters. He made Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty Kick) in 1962. It was based on a novella by Peter Handke. He further explored this realm in the motion picture Alice in den Städten (Alice in the Cities), 1964. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg created a sensation in 1967 with the motion picture Andy Drew: ein Film aus Deutschland (Hitler a film from Germany). It was a seven hour movie which attempted to investigate Hitler under the shadows of Wagner art and Nazi nationalism. This was followed by the expressionist movie Woyzeck (1969) by Werner Herzog.

Asian cinema of the 1970s catered to the rising middle class fantasies and struggles. In the Bollywood cinema of India this was epitomised by the movies of Bollywood superhero Amitabh Bachchan. These movies portrayed adventurous plots with car chase trying to imitate hollywood movies like The French Connection, presented music with Disco beats and also presented the young middle class man as an "angry young man". The women on the other hand were shown as ones who have adopted western values and outfits especially by heroines like Parveen Babi (who was featured on the cover of TIME for a story on Bollywood's success) and Zeenat Aman. However towards the very end of the 1970s, especially after the steep rise in land prices in urban areas and the decline in employment security, the heroines were seen more often as saree-women striving to have a prosperous middle class family especially heroines like Jayaprada and Hema Malini. In this way the cinema of Asian region becomes a sociological statement of the social-economic times of the region and its people.

Other movie industry of the region produced fine masterpieces like in Malayalam cinema. Adoor Gopalakrishnan made Swayamvaram in 1962, which got wide critical acclaim. This was followed by the movie Nirmalyam by M.T. Vasudevan Nair in 1963.

Hollywood

The decade opened with Hollywood facing a financial slump, reflecting the monetary woes of the nation as a whole during the first half of the decade. Despite this, the seventies proved to be a benchmark decade in the development of cinema, both as an art form and a business. With young filmmakers taking greater risks and restrictions regarding language and sexuality lifting, Hollywood produced some of its most critically acclaimed and financially successful films since its supposed "golden era."

In the years previous to 1970, Hollywood had began to cater to the younger generation with films such as The Graduate. This proved a folly when anti-war films like R.P.M. and The Strawberry Statement became major box-office flops. Even solid films with bankable stars, like the Pearl Harbor epic Tora! Tora! Tora!, flopped, leaving studios in dire straits financially. Unable to repay financiers, studios began selling off land, furniture, clothing, and sets acquired over years of production. Nostalgic fans bid on merchandise and collectibles ranging from Judy Garland's sparkling red shoes to MGM's own back lots.

More of the successful films were those based in the harsh truths of war, rather than the excesses of the '60s. Films like Patton, about the World War II general, and M*A*S*H, about a Korean War field hospital, were major box-office draws in 1970. Honest, old-fashioned films like Five Easy Pieces, Summer of '42, and the Erich Segal adaptation, Love Story, were commercial and critical hits. (Love Story and "Summer" remain, as of 2005, two of the most successful films in Hollywood history. "Summer," costing $1,000,000 USD, brought in $25,000,000 at the box office, while "Love Story," with a budget of $2,200,000, earned $106,400,000).

One of the most insightful films of the decade came from the mind of a Hollywood outsider, Czechoslovakian director Miloš Forman, whose Taking Off became a bold reflection of life at the beginning of the seventies. The 1971 film satirized the American middle class, following a young girl who runs away from home, leaving her parents free to explore life for the first time in years. While the film was never given a wide release in America, it became a major critical achievement both in America and around the world (garnering the film high honors at the Cannes Film Festival and several BAFTA Award nominations).

An adaptation of an Arthur Hailey novel would prove to be one of the most notable films of 1970, and would set the stage for a major trend in seventies cinema. The film, Airport, featured a complex plot, characters, and an all-star cast of Hollywood A-listers and legends. Airport followed an airport manager trying to keep a fictional Chicago airport operational during a blizzard, as well as a bomb plot to blow up an airplane. The film was a major critical and financial success, helping pull Universal Studios into the black for the year. The film earned senior actress Helen Hayes an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and garnered many other nominations in both technical and talent categories. The success of the film launched a slew of disaster-related films, many of which following the same blueprint of major stars, a melodramatic script, and great suspense.

Three Airport sequels followed in 1974, 1977, and 1979, each successor making less money than the last. 1972 brought The Poseidon Adventure, which starred a young Gene Hackman leading an all-star cast to safety in a capsized luxury liner. The film earned an Academy Award for visual effects (and Best Original Song for "The Morning After", as well as numerous nominations, including one for its notable supporting star, Shelley Winters. The Towering Inferno teamed Steve McQueen and Paul Newman against a fire in a San Francisco skyscraper. The film cost a whopping $14 million to produce (expensive for its time), and won Academy Awards for Cinematography, Film Editing, and Best Original Song. The same year, the epic Earthquake featured questionable effects (camera shake and models) to achieve a destructive 9.9 earthquake in Los Angeles. Despite this, the film was one of the most successful of its time, earning $80 million at box office. By the late seventies, the novelty had worn off and the disasters had become less exciting. 1977 brought a terrorist targeting a Rollercoaster, a 1978 Swarm of bees, and a less-than-threatening Meteor in 1979.

1971 brought a rebirth of the action film, three years after the influential Bullitt. The French Connection, starring Gene Hackman, brought suspense to new heights with an adrenaline-broiling car chase through the streets of New York City, while Get Carter featured gratuitous nudity and A Clockwork Orange featured much blood and gore to complement its complex story. African American filmmakers also found success in the seventies with such hits as Shaft and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, and more questionable films, such as Blacula and Blackenstein. Like other sequels in the seventies, Shaft went on to have two more adventures, each less successful than the last.

An adaptation of a Mario Puzo novel, The Godfather, became one of the best-loved and most respected works of cinema upon its release in 1972. The three-hour epic followed a Mafia boss, played by Marlon Brando, through his life of crime. Beyond the violence and drama were themes of love, pride, and greed. The Godfather went on to earn $134 million at American box office, and $245 million throughout the world. It won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay. Its director Francis Ford Coppola was passed over in favor of Bob Fosse and his musical, Cabaret, which also earned an Oscar for its star, Liza Minnelli. The Godfather: Part II followed in 1974, with roughly the same principal cast and crew, earning Oscars for star Robert De Niro, its director, composer, screenwriters and art directors. The film also earned the Best Picture Oscar for that year.

Sean Connery returned to the role of James Bond in 1971 in Diamonds Are Forever after having George Lazenby fill in for one outing in 1969. Roger Moore succeeded Connery in 1973 with an adaptation of Ian Fleming's Live and Let Die which was the most successful of his Bond films in terms of admissions. Live and Let Die was followed by an adaptation of The Man with the Golden Gun in 1974, which at the time garnered the lowest box office taking of any Bond film before it. After its release Harry Saltzman co-owner of Danjaq with Albert R. Broccoli sold his half to United Artists causing a 3 year gap until the next Bond film, the longest gap since the start of the franchise in 1962. The series picked up again in 1977 with The Spy Who Loved Me and ended the decade with Moonraker in 1979, which was the highest grossing Bond film (not adjusting for inflation) of all time until GoldenEye in 1995.

Other massively successful films would soon take Bond's place in the seventies. It was at this time that the blockbuster was born. While the 1973 horror classic The Exorcist was among the top five grossing films of the seventies, the first film given the blockbuster distinction was 1975's Jaws. Released on June 20th, the film about a series of horrific deaths related to a massive great white shark was director Steven Spielberg's first big-budget Hollywood production, coming in at a cool $9 million in cost. The film slowly grew in ticket sales and became one of the most profitable films of its time, ending with a $260 million dollar gross in the United States alone. The film won Academy Awards for its skillful editing, chilling score, and sound recording. It was also nominated for Best Picture that year, though it lost to Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (which also won acting awards for Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher).

The massive success of Jaws was eclipsed just two years later by another legendary blockbuster and film franchise. The George Lucas science-fiction epic Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (at the time called simply Star Wars) hit theater screens in May of 1977, and became a major hit, growing in ticket sales throughout the summer and the rest of the year. In time earning some $460 million, the good versus evil fantasy set in space was not soon surpassed. The film's breathtaking visual effects won an Academy Award. The film also won for John Williams's uplifting score, as well as art direction, costume design, film editing, and sound. A New Hope effectively removed any specter of studio bankruptcy that had haunted the studios since early in the decade. When a television film, The Star Wars Holiday Special, was released as a spin-off from A New Hope in 1978, it failed to receive the status of the original film, and was deemed a flop. It would be two years until the Star Wars series would be revived with The Empire Strikes Back. Another success in visual effects came the same year as A New Hope, with Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, another blockbuster and alien contact set in the wilderness. For the picture, Spielberg received his first Oscar nomination for directing.

Throughout the seventies, the horror film developed into a lucrative genre of film. It began in 1973 with the terrifying The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin and starring the young Linda Blair. The film saw massive success, and the first of several sequels was released in 1977. 1976 brought the equally creepy suspense thriller, Marathon Man, about a man who becomes the target of a former Nazi dentist's torment after his brother dies. The same year, the Devil himself made an appearance in The Omen, about the spawn of Satan. 1978's Halloween was a precursor to the "slasher" films of the eighties and nineties with its psychopathic Michael Myers. Cult horror films were also popular in the seventies, such as Wes Craven's early gore films Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, as well as Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

In the mid-seventies movies began to reflect the disenfranchisement brought by the excesses of the past twenty years. A deeply unsettling look at alienation and city life, Taxi Driver earned international praise, first at the Cannes Film Festival and then at the Academy Awards, where it was nominated for Best Leading Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Score (Bernard Herrmann), and Best Picture. All the President's Men dealt with the impeachment of Richard Nixon, while Network portrayed greed and narcissism in both American society and television media. The film won Oscars for Best Actor (Peter Finch), Best Actress (Faye Dunaway), Best Supporting Actress (Beatrice Straight), and Best Screenplay (Paddy Chayefsky). Thanks to a stellar cast, experienced director, and a poignant story, Network became one of the largest critical successes of 1976.

Another film, Rocky, about a clubhouse boxer (played by Sylvester Stallone) who is granted a world championship title fight won the Best Picture Academy Award that year. The film also became a major commercial success and spawned four sequels through the rest of the seventies and eighties with a fifth sequel in the making, opening at theatres Christmas 2006. 1978 brought the successful sequel, Jaws 2, which featured the same cast, but without Steven Spielberg. Another tailor-made blockbuster, Dino de Laurentiis' King Kong was released, but to less than stellar success. King Kong did mark the first time a film was booked to theaters before a release date, a common practice today.

The success of Woody Allen's Annie Hall in 1977 stirred a new trend in moviemaking. Annie Hall, a love story about a depressed comedian and a free-spirited woman, was followed with more sentimental films, including Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl, An Unmarried Woman starring Jill Clayburgh, the autobiographical Lillian Hellman story, Julia, starring Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, and 1978's Heaven Can Wait and International Velvet.

Younger audiences were also beginning to be the focus of cinema, after the huge blockbusters that had attracted them back to the theater. John Travolta became popular in the pop-culture landmark films, Saturday Night Fever, which introduced Disco to middle America, and Grease, which recalled the world of the 1950s. Comedy was also given new life in the irreverent Animal House, set on a college campus during the 1960s. Up in Smoke, starring Cheech and Chong, was another irreverent comedy about marijuana use became popular among teenagers. The new television comedy program, "Saturday Night Live," launched the careers of several of its comedians, such as Chevy Chase, who starred in the 1978 hit Foul Play with rising star Goldie Hawn. Blockbusters like Superman: The Movie, starring former