Year of Our Exploitation 1979: Part 1

The last 12 months in the greatest of all decades turns out to be greater than I remembered.

In my memory, 1979 reeks of shit, garbage, Jimmy Carter, Ayatollah Khomeini, and “Reunited” by Peaches and Herb.

It was also the year that Belushi and Aykroyd left Saturday Night Live, resulting in the first-ever “Worst. Season. Ever.” (the follow-up year, of producer Jean Doumanian’s Saturday Night Live ‘80, at least remains a legendary curiosity). The quality of SNL was crucial to my young happiness. And, yes, I did suffer severe childhood depression.

Music-wise, I most assuredly was not into homo-negro-dago-Latino dance-pop at that moment, either, when WKTU - “Disco 92″ - conquered NYC radio and, by extension, schoolyards and car speakers and the AM Top 40 radio stations.

The truly alternative rock was Zeppelin and Sabbath and I was still a mite too practicing a Catholic for that to go down devoid of guilt and/or terror.

Plus I got fat in 1979. After a spindly early childhood, at age 10 I grew “chunky” then “chubby” and then, by my 11^th birthday, I was a full-blown “fat boy” replete with water-balloon bosoms. They jiggled delightfully in my Our Lady Help of Christians Physical Education gym shirt twice a week.

I also had to start wearing eyeglasses. And not for any urban-legendarily fun reasons.

Worst of all, 1979 hit me as a wad-of-fuck comedown from 1978, where during the summer of Grease and Bat Out of Hell, I hung out with older kids - many even in puberty - and, at last, mentally put together the concept of penis-into-vagina while having peers with whom to obscenely joke about such doings.

The next time the warm weather months came around, though, I was mostly obsessed with how I was never going to get my own penis into any vaginas - and most especially not the one belonging to my pregnant teacher, Mrs. Green, who deserted me to give birth 2/3 of the way through the school year. Then she came back and taught us in sixth grade and was a sleep-deprived monster-bitch.

In 1979, my favorite form of relaxation was to tie my sister’s jump rope to a beam in the garage and then stand on a chair with if fastened around my neck into a noose.

But recently it occurred to me that both Caligula and Hardcore came out in 1979, two of the most seminal (in every sense) films of my life, along with Alien and Dawn of the Dead, which are two of the most seminal films of your life - and mine, too.

And Phantasm! And Rock N Roll High School! And The Warriors!

Plus Uncle Floyd ruled UHF at the height of his porkpie-crowned power, and Dr. Demento aired on New-Wave-flavored WPIX-FM, and my grandmother took me to Korvettes where, for the first time, I bought full-length music albums with my own money: Get the Knack by The Knack and Breakfast in America by Supertramp. Plus there was Live at Budokan and Dream Police. And “Music Box Dancer”, but maybe that’s one’s just for me.

Also, Solid Gold premiered with a two-hour, T0p-50 countdown special, Solid Gold 79.

So 1979 - dopey Smashing Pumpkins ditty or not - turns out to have been a banner annum. Just consider the celluloid evidence.

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ALIEN
First R-rated movie I ever saw with Moms McBeardo’s blessing. I got really, really scared before the lights went down in the theater. Then I just liked it. And I still do.

Seeing Alien during its big-screen re-release on Halloween weekend 2003, all I could think was: “Cripes, moviegoing was so much more enjoyable before Shaky-Cam.”

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AMERICATHON
From Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman, the funnymen at the heart and ganja-flambéd mind of Firesign Theater, whose albums I became familiar with by swiping them from my Uncle Bonko’s record collection came this Hellzapoppin-style descent into you-know-where.

While waiting for, I think, The Muppet Movie at the Middletown Multiplex, I asked people leaving the Americathon auditorium how they liked it. One cool-guy teenager rolled his eyes and said, sarcastically: “It was great. Especially all 30 seconds of Elvis Costello.”

A year or so later, ABC aired Americathon on a Friday night, and I noticed in the opening credits that it was based on a play.

The next day, my cousin Andi (who’s a year younger than I am) asked me if I saw Americathon on TV and I said: “Yeah, I saw it. It was okay, but the play was much better. Also, it sucked how there was only, like, 30 seconds of Elvis Costello.”

I was 11 years old and a dick.

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BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA-VIXENS

The Mightiest Maven of Mammaries‘ swan song - nobody could or should count Pandora Peaks - which I first noticed when it was released in New York on a double bill with Flesh Gordon (1974), ranks among his finest, even so, so, so very late in Russ Meyer’s game.

Uschi Digard as The Milkmaid is enough to insure that.

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CALIGULA
Who couldn’t write reams about the impact and enduring influential of this ancient Roman gotterdamerrung upon their lives? Well, probably anyone sane. And probably not too many other people aside from me.

My initial introduction to Gaius Germanicus aka Little Boots - “Caligula”, in Latin - came via John Hurt’s rip-roaring turn as the mad emperor on the Masterpiece Theater production of I, Claudius.

Moms McBeardo thought I could use a dash of culture and got me to watch every episode of the legendary Claudius by promising me it contained “orgies.” That lady knew her 10-year-old offspring well.

Orgies happened, as Moms promised, and I enjoyed the smattering of nudity on our black-and-white Zenith, so I was well versed on the ins-and-outs of Caligula once the Penthouse Films juggernaut hit one screen at an outlandish admission price - $7.50 I think - in winter 1979.

I read everything I could about Bob Guccione’s “folly,” which continues to turn enormous profits, and I chuckled hard over the movie’s tagline: “What would you have done if you had been given absolute power of life and death over everybody else in the whole world?”

That sentence is awkwardly strung together, to be sure, but the choice of the word “everybody” makes me believe Guccione belched it out himself, cocaine snot plastering his kisser, and would not allow a single letter to be touched.

And I find that, like the man himself (and his movie), charming.

By the end of summer, Caligula played for a week at the Colonial Theater in my summertime hometown of Keansburg, New Jersey, where it only cost $1.50 to get in, and the only age requirement was that you had to be old enough to hand the cashier $1.50.

My friend Mickey went to see it. I was scared. I made him tell me every fist-fucking, dick-slicing, head-chopping, baby-smashing, Longinus-tickling detail afterward, and I was glad I chose not to go.

I was 11 years old and a pussy.

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DAWN OF THE DEAD
Unlike Caligula, I did sneak into Dawn of the Dead with Mickey in early summer 1979, and I loved it. Well, I loved being there, and I loved what I did see of it. In truth, I spent most of the movie with my eyes closed. Either way, the Goblin soundtrack was awesome!

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GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS
To date, I have still not seen this romantic French comedy-drama, which was a very popular worldwide hit at the time.

Such an oversight is odd, because I tracked down and read anything and everything about Get Out Your Handkerchiefs for years - specifically the years between fifth and sixth grade.

The budding wordsmith in me was tickled by the title, and not even because I read any sperm-mop double entendre into it. I just thought it was a funny way to announce a tear-jerker.

In addition, the plot regarded a young boy seducing and/or being seduced by a significantly older woman, and I was maniacally in love with my significantly older, hugely pregnant fifth grade teacher.

This made Get Out Your Handkerchiefs personal. To me.

Writing now, I realize the reason I never caught the movie is because I never saw it available to rent on VHS, and I’ve never come across it on cable.

All I know are the Handkerchiefs clips at Mr. Skin and, for better or worse, had I been able to access this movie at the tender juncture of my life when it was released, my cock would have come off. Single-handedly.

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Next installment: Hardcore, H.O.T.S., In Search of Historic Jesus, Luna, and Mad Max.

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