The Wacky 70's

[Allhallowsday]

Home movies and photographs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL1Udm8OSGY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAQpwwYCnpc&feature=related 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glns5nrznys&feature=related

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

Oh man...the things this thread brought back for me! 

I remember the banana seat bike my next-door neighbor Tommy had (that I wound up with when he moved.)   

And, just about anything else that was mentioned in this thread too!  I remember the declining availability of Aurora monster kits of which I had my share.

The rise of car model kits from Revell and Monogram...

The Atari VCS

The coin op games from Japan like Pacman and Space Invaders

The curly-perm hairdo that went unisex and made The Brady Bunch look like they were all copied from the same material

The 70's era car chase movies, like the original  Gone In 60 Seconds and the Black exploitation movies that were a dime a dozen, but entertaining as all get-out..

Bruce Lee and the movie that made him the household word he is today, as well as the legend he is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgCwyHr7Fzs

Late night horror movies!  One of the greatest things about the whole decade!  Every Saturday night in the Tri-State area was....Fright Night

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEvR9jZ5O6o

So many wonderful memories that made my early teen years so much fun, and a time I'm sure many of miss dearly.  The 70's were rockin', baby!

[AndyC]

Radios small enough to wear.


Lightweight, portable video cameras, that connected to VCRs you could carry with a shoulder strap.


Electronic equipment that still came in wooden enclosures.


And a growing use of plastic... that frequently tried to look like wood.


And other pecular blends of old and new technology, like rotary phone dials that could be made small enough to fit in the handset.

[Couchtr26]

I remember some of the things mentioned but was sadly born in the last year of the 70's.  I remember my first TV being in a wooden cabinet not to mention several pieces of radio equipment.  I remember the old school top loading VCRS.  I remember the pong consoles and even the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 (I think they were actually like '79 - '80 but I am too lazy to check the years).  I remember lots of old electronics.  My grandfather was what you would now call an electrical engineer at AT&T and tech was always around.  However, I do feel a little out of place as he would buy lots of old electronics and you would be stuck wondering why things looked the way they did as a young kid.  Speaking of TVs: rotary dials. 

[retrorussell]

Otter Pops!  I hated 'em, personally..

Pay Day! (the board game)

This was a good candy bar (chewy chocolate and caramel):

So was this:

Got this toy for Christmas in '79:

My neighbor down the street had this.. I played it often at his house.  It had the worst controllers though..

[retrorussell]

And 34 years later, this cereal is still bad@$$..

[Allhallowsday]

I have been looking at online calendars.  I think Saturday, October 31, 1970, Creature Feature was on channel 5 out of New York shortly after noon and they showed FRANKENSTEIN (1931).  This could be easily confirmed... but how?  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJe0iVo8y3A

[RCMerchant]

As Flip Wilson once said -"The Devil made me do it!" The occult craze!
Anton LeVey and Rosemary's Baby kicked it off in the 60's...but it went all out in the 70's!

Movies like-
.The EXORCIST of course,and ABBY,the DEVIL in MISS JONES,ASYLUM OF SATAN,The OMEN,BLOOD on SATAN'S CLAW,BEYOND THE DOOR,and waaaay too many to list at his moment!

BEYOND THE DOOR tv ad-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bDdncqvtfQ

It was everywhere-magazines,books,comicbooks!



















ASYLUM OF SATAN trailer-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN7YZwp_o58

[Jack]

My Dad had one of these back in the '70s:



(That's not my Dad, that's Ricardo Montalbán.)  It probably had thicker sheetmetal than your average Light Armored Vehicle these days   

I also had a CB radio.  I don't think I ever heard anyone say anything interesting on it, but oh boy was it ever exciting to have one!

I remember on our local TV station, they actually had a young couple demonstrating a disco dance move during commercial breaks.  So you could practice them at home during your evening TV viewing.

And the bicentennial - bicentennial quarters, all sorts of TV infomercials.  It started in earnest a good year before 1976.

And the Polaroid SX70



It was like something straight out of the future!

[The Burgomaster]

Left to right-My Uncle Ronny (yes-I was named after him-he named his son Ronny too!),my Uncle Doug-he was a TV repair man,Grandpa Hammer (my Grandpa Merchant died before I was born-of alcholism),my Dad, and some kid-who has the only NORMAL looking pants of the bunch!

I think every adult male in the United States around that time had the exact same outfit as Uncle Doug.  By the way, my dad was a TV repair man, too.  He's happily retired now.

[AndyC]

My Dad had one of these back in the '70s:

A friend of mine owned an old Cordoba around 1990. We had a lot of fun with that Chrysler 360. We'd go on a road trip just about every weekend, to some place we picked at random, usually two to four hours away. Get that thing on a really hilly back road and step on the gas, and it would launch itself, Bullitt-style, over each crest. Lots of fun until one of the leaf springs punched through the bottom of the trunk. Bit rusty, that car. He replaced it with a Roadrunner, and the fun continued.

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

I have been looking at online calendars.  I think Saturday, October 31, 1970, Creature Feature was on channel 5 out of New York shortly after noon and they showed FRANKENSTEIN (1931).  This could be easily confirmed... but how?  

Here's a place I consider one of the authorities on WNEW 5 Creature Features:
http://www.dvddrive-in.com/TV%20Guide/creaturefeaturesarticle.htm

This page should definitely help. I've gone there for years now and enjoy reading the memories of the owner just for the heck of it. 

I too remember Creature Features and "The Creep" very fondly. It's one of the things I miss.  One movie CF always played was House On Haunted Hill. I could go on indefinitely about my Creature Features memories, but there's not enough bandwidth, lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJe0iVo8y3A

I was so in love with Sissy Spacek the way she looked in Carrie.

That beautiful and thick red hair, those frosty blue eyes, that cute little button nose,
and that down to earth, girl next door look. And that little smile she occasionally cracked...
She was so pretty 

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

As Flip Wilson once said -"The Devil made me do it!" The occult craze!
Anton LeVey and Rosemary's Baby kicked it off in the 60's...but it went all out in the 70's!

Movies like-
.The EXORCIST of course,and ABBY,the DEVIL in MISS JONES,ASYLUM OF SATAN,The OMEN,BLOOD on SATAN'S CLAW,BEYOND THE DOOR,and waaaay too many to list at his moment!

BEYOND THE DOOR tv ad-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bDdncqvtfQ

OMG...this movie scared the living sh*t right out of me. I had nightmares about it for years after.  Not to mention the fact that as a younger kid before I'd seen it, that WPIX 11 and other stations would run this commercial just before bedtime during 10 o'clock news station breaks!   

You'd go to be with "whoooooo-arrrre-youuuuuuu"   and the image of Juliet Mill's face fresh in your mind before bed....

Of the possession movies that played, this one got more TV spots than most.  Not so scary now considering the REAL horrors we wake up to everyday, but a very competent and horrifying film despite it's talkiness in some spots.

[Raffine]

My dad bought a 1972 Mazda RX2 - complete with rotary engine. It sounded something like a big sewing machine when you gave it the gas.

I inherited it in 1979 as my 'first car'. I had it one week before it caught on fire and burned on the side of the road.

It had a very cool feature - it had a automatic electric radio antennae you could raise or lower with a flip of a switch.

[retrorussell]

K-Tel and Ronco, though they were originally started in the sixties, put out boatload after boatload of comp albums in the 70s.


And those wonderful "Sessions Presents...!" albums.