Still only one (
Straw Dogs) from my list.
Walkabout was a film I saw in the '70s, but unlike
Don't Look Now and
The Man Who Fell to Earth, it was at a repertory theatre. The film came on, and almost immediately I was wondering what the hell was going on. Some guy had taken his kids out to the middle of nowhere and then started shooting at them! Later, when I watched
Diner, I had a moment of recognition in the scene where Steve Guttenburg watched
The Seventh Seal and was completely confused by what was happening. I thought I understood the Bergman flick, but the beginning of
Walkabout? Well, after the dad offed himself and the children had to fend for themselves, it settled into something like a beautiful, leisurely-paced nature documentary of the Australian Outback, and teenage Jenny Agutter (
Logan's Run, An American Werewolf in London) was easy on the eyes. Then David Gulpilil showed up as a teenage aborigine on his walkabout into manhood. [Gulpilil would become a favorite of mine, a familiar face amid strange, exotic happenings (
Mad Dog Morgan, The Last Wave, The Right Stuff all the way up to
Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Proposition, Ten Canoes)]. Well, it got more interesting with a sorta-sexual thing going on, but I still wasn't sure what it all meant. Years and multiple viewings later, I can enjoy it as a sensory experience with an ultimately tragic meaning, but it's not really a favorite.
I saw
Body Snatchers on a humongous screen a few times. Once again, my brother loved it. The opening credits began on another world and show the "aliens" coming to Earth - San Francisco to be precise. Kaufman plays up the beautiful location and initially, the comedy (both Donald Sutherland and Jeff Goldblum are excellent at playing up their slightly off-kilter looks for both comedy and eerieness). The cherry on top is the casting of Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) as a very human psychiatrist who tries to convince the first people who feel their loved ones have "changed" is an intimacy problem. Both Brooke Adams (wait till you see her do her bug eyes!) and Veronica Cartwright are excellent too at expressing ever-increasing tension. There are plenty of memorable scenes, including the bodies in the mud bath, the bed and the garden, "Amazing Grace", the dog and the ending. It's top-notch sci-fi and scary horror with a dose of social satire. If you like it, I recommend you watch Kaufman's next -
The Wanderers - the most intense, funny and crazed gang picture I've seen.