And here we are at the last year in which I do not remember going to the movies. I was three years old in 1979 and that was the year my family and I fled from the Pacific Northwest because I had terrible asthma and pneumonia nine times already. My doctor told my parents we would need to move somewhere with a drier climate or I would die. It is pretty wild to think about my family having to uproot themselves from the lush, green beauty of Oregon to go to the perpetually brown convection oven that is Southern Arizona.

It is worth mentioning that I do have memories around this time, one of which is related to media if not directly related to movies (unless you count a particular remake, but most people wouldn’t). One memory takes place just before the move in which my parents gave away my dog, whose name was my first word, and I have the image of her being carried away in the back of a pick up truck burned into my brain.

The second also involved the move to Arizona when my mom’s truck broke down on the freeway in LA and my dad and I were flagged down by motorcycle cops to let us know we needed to go back to help (My dad was a mechanic and my mom had told the officers that he could fix whatever was wrong, which was true). This incident is also burned into my brain because to this day, my memory tells me it was Ponch and John from CHiPS who helped us. I was obsessed with CHiPS, and apparently used to sit on a toy motorcycle with my dad’s bike helmet on wearing ridiculously oversized gloves to watch the show. Now I know that Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox were not the motorcycle cops who helped us that day, but that is 100% how I remember it. So, I guess what I am saying is that even at a time when I am not supposed to have memories, half of the ones I have are of filmed media. So, I guess that speaks to the sort of person I am with this stuff.

If you have not read the introduction to this exercise, I recommend you do so for context regarding what this all is. In short, be nice, these are my favorites based on how I encountered them in my life and what they mean for mean to me. This is not a list of objective best movies in their respective years and if a movie that you love or is considered great does not appear, it does not mean that I think it is shit or that I don’t love it. These are just my favorites for particular personal reasons. Feel free to let everyone know your favorite five for 1977 and why as well. It is also worth mentioning that there will be spoilers here for what are now 47-year-old movies. Let’s dig in!

1.Alien-Ridley Scott

Telling the story of a blue-collar crew of a commercial starship who answer a distress signal and are terrorized by an alien monster, Ridley Scott’s Alien is as iconic of a sci-fi horror movie as you can possibly get. Aliens terrorizing humans was not a new concept in movies as there are a litany of schlocky B-movies (an inordinate amount from Roger Corman) both before and since Alien’s release, but Alien changed the game in a meaningful way forever after.

Alien is a dark and nasty movie that puts otherwise normal people into an impossible situation fighting not only the relentless killing machine that burst out of the chest of one of their co-workers but also themselves, and the soulless corporation that is interested in harvesting the alien as a weapon and not at all in the crew’s survival. The paranoia in this movie is thick enough to climb up, and the tension is just as palpable. It is also a cautionary tale for cats about the importance of coming when called to escape a crisis situation.

So much of Alien’s gritty magic comes from the aesthetic. The alien and environmental designs from H.R. Giger are legendary and feel as transgressive as they do terrifying. The working-class, industrial feel of repurposed old-timey tech pushed the ‘used future’ conversation that Star Wars started even further. Even the characters were just basically space truckers trying to do a job and fulfill the company contract and had no business trying to survive a threat like the Xenomorph, a horrific monster with two mouths and acid for blood.

The cast is insane, with Sigourney Weaver in the lead and Tom Skerrit, Yaphet Koto, Ian Holme, John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, and Veronica Cartright filling out the rest of the crew. The chemistry of the crew is incredible even as they snipe at each other and get into pissing contests with one another, and, ultimately, are picked off one by one. Ian Holm’s Ash being a sociopathic android is unsettling and scary on a whole different level and Holm plays him to perfection. Boris (as well as three unnamed others) really nailed Jonesy the cat and I feel like he is one of the real standouts here.

The production Alien was somewhat rocky and in the story of how it was made, you really see how unlikely it is that any movie ever gets made let alone made well. It started as an idea from writer Dan O’Bannon coming off of John Carpenter’s Dark Star, and was originally titled Star Beast. Co-writing with Ronald Shusett, O’Bannon wrote the script which was passed around from studio to studio and filmmaker to filmmaker before landing with Ridley Scott and having rewrites by Walter Hill and David Giler. It probably never would have come together at all had O’Bannon not worked with Alejandro Jodorosky on that director’s aborted attempt at making Dune as a large portion of the pre-production crew, including H.R. Giger, came from that failed project. Hell, there is even a sliding doors version of this where Meryl Streep would have played Ripley. If any of these, and dozens of other, elements hadn’t come together just right, we would not have Alien and the sci-fi/horror landscape would have changed forever.

As is the case with a lot of movies around this time, I saw the sequel first. My parents could be pretty loosey-goosey when it came to things like R-ratings. They often played a justification game for what they would let me watch that felt Machiavellian in its intricacy. Sometimes it just boiled down to ‘We want to watch this and how bad could it be?’ which was the case with Aliens. I remember we went to a store called Federated which was sort of like if Best Buy also did VHS rentals (this was the where I bought my first Nintendo and also where the cover box for Sleepaway Camp gave me nightmares for weeks). They wanted to watch Aliens but it was rated R. I was standing there for the argument in which my mom said ‘yeah but there is a little kid in it, how bad could it be?’ this was also the same argument that allowed me to see National Lampoons Vacation well before common sense would have suggested.

So it came to pass that I was allowed to watch Aliens. Holy shit. I loved it. It felt like my life had changed. It started a life-long love of James Cameron that persists to this day. Aliens is a badass sci-fi movie with minor horror elements that set the stage for decades of adoration for things that fall into this sub-genre and I still name characters after the characters from Aliens in screenplays to this day. I wanted more. I knew there was a movie before this one and I wanted to see that. It was suddenly one of the most important things in the world to me and my mom gave me a resounding ‘NO.’ I asked why not and she said ‘it is rated-R.’ I countered with the brilliant ‘so was this and you let me watch it.’ She was stymied. She tried an appeal to logic. “It isn’t like this one, it is really scary.’ I countered with ‘But it is the same kind of alien and I am not scared of that. Besides, this had a lot of them and that only has the one (I paid attention to Ripley telling Weyland-Yutani executives that only one of these things wiped out her entire crew).” Moved by my staggering legal defense, my mom relented and the very next night I rented Alien from Federated. It terrified me and I spent weeks avoiding any air conditioning duct I came across.

I think my preference will always be for Aliens because it was my introduction and is empirically badass. But Alien is amazing and terrifying and without it, we would have missed out on a lot of other shit for which it paved the way. Hell, Resident Evil in particular and survival horror in video games owes everything to Alien. Sure, also Romero’s zombie films, but structurally, it is all Alien. This is probably why I, a veteran of horror video games, is too freaked out by Alien: Isolation to finish it. In space no one can hear you scream, but your neighbors sure can so try to keep that in mind.

2.Life of Brian-Terry Jones

The story of Brian, the guy born in the manger next to Jesus, is an irreverent send up of Biblical epics that only Monty Python could deliver. I was absolutely not allowed to watch it when I was a kid.

My parents were very religious and took that very seriously. I couldn’t listen to most music as a kid because my mom was convinced it was all satanic. Her closeted love of horror movies aside, my mom could be very strict about what I could watch and listen to such that the Beatles were banned in the house because John Lennon once said they were more popular than Jesus.  So, Life of Brian was right out.

I came to it after being introduced to Monty Python in high school and it was only after having seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail more times than I had had years on earth. I had seen all there other stuff first too. Flying Circus episodes, And Now for Something Completely Different, the Meaning of Life, and Live at the Hollywood Bowl all came first. I had the CD Monty Python Sings first even. As a matter of fact, it was hearing ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ on that CD is what ultimately made me finally watch Life of Brian. It seems weird to come to the biblical parody after having serenaded members of the chess team with the Penis Song and Sit on My Face, but such is life.

I love Life of Brian. It is not as canonized for me as Holy Grail nor do I quote it as much, but it certainly says a lot more. For a while, while I considered myself Christian, it was transgressive. Now, the commentary on how silly all of it is just makes a lot of practical sense to me. I kind of wish Python would have made more like this but I am just happy to have it.

3.Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Movie-Chuck Jones

The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Movie is my favorite collection of cartoons ever, full stop. I love Looney Tunes in general and while these are not the only cartoons I love in this series, these are my favorite. I used to rent this from the video store over and over and over. I still watch it now and I will never hear ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ without hearing ‘Spear and magic helmet!’ in my head.

There is just so much good stuff here. Duck Amuck is one of the best meta cartoons ever and deconstructs and torments Daffy in such a perfect way. The Robin Hood cartoon is probably my favorite ever. Duck Dodgers in the 24^th and a Half Century is sublime. As I think about it, I think maybe Daffy Duck is just my favorite cartoon character ever.

I am not sure what else there is to say about this movie aside from it being the most perfect collection of cartoons every and it isn’t close. There are other great collections and movies but this right here was peak Looney Tunes and I don’t think I will ever be convinced otherwise.

4.The Black Hole-Gary Nelson

I don’t know if I think Black Hole is a particularly good movie looking back. If it wasn’t Disney it would probably occupy a space just below Starcrash (1978). It is cheesy and goofy and looks like it was made with a $1.75 budget. But I love it.

I watched this movie all the time when I was a kid and I think it is like a lot of films of that time that were on cable or regular TV a lot. The more you watched them, the more they became a part of you and a part of who you were. I think this is why people get so defensive when things they loved as kids get fucked with. It isn’t just a story, it is a part of their identity. I am not saying that is healthy but for Gen x latchkey kids, it is often the case. That being said, it is no excuse for being insufferable dick bags when an adaptation they don’t like comes out. I just understand the emotional psychology behind it.

If Disney were to remake Black Hole today, I can’t imagine that I would hold it especially precious. It don’t love it the way that I love Transformers or Star Wars or Indiana Jones. But when I watch it now, it makes me feel how I felt when I was a kid and that is not nothing. I enjoy the cheesiness of the robots and the dated special effects. A number of years ago a friend of mine and I watched it together but separately. He was at his house and I was at mine but we were talking with each other online while watching it and we were riffing like it was an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was fun, but I came away just feeling happy about the nostalgia. I can watch that movie now and just enjoy it for what it is and it makes me feel good. Sometimes you go back to revisit something and the magic is lost or it will have aged so poorly it is hard to get past, but sometimes it is just as you remembered and feels awesome. That is what Black Hole is for me and that is why it is on this list.

5.Meatballs-Ivan Reitman

Just to piggyback on what I was talking about above, sometimes you revisit a movie that you remember fondly from your childhood and realize that it is really doesn’t hold up, which is what happened with Meatballs when I reconsidered it a few years ago. I find comedies of the 70s to be a bit of a challenge sometimes and I think maybe Meatballs falls into this category. Even still, this movie holds a great deal of significance for both me personally and movies in general.

Here we have the first movie directed by Ivan Reitman and Billy Murray’s first movie hot off of his success at SNL. Meatballs also provides the enduring template for summer camp movies to this day. Without Meatballs we wouldn’t have Friday the 13^th, Sleepaway Camp, the Burning, or any other summer camp slasher movie. We wouldn’t have Ernest Goes to Camp, Heavyweights, Camp Nowhere, and even Addams Family Values. And we definitely wouldn’t have Wet Hot American Summer, which is without question the funniest summer camp movie parody or otherwise.

There is also a genuinely touching relationship between Rudy (Chris Makepeace) and Bill Murray’s Tripper. Murray really shines here, especially given his trademark aloof presentation. As a kid who was shy and often felt left out, Tripper’s care and consideration for the shy and withdrawn Rudy resonated quite a bit with me. And it gives the movie a lot more heart that the generally irreverent humor would otherwise enjoy.

There is also a campfire story about the urban legend about the killer with a hook hand in here that scared the piss out of me when I was a kid and solidifies Meatballs indelibly in my memory. I have to be honest, I am looking forward to the point in which I became a horror fan so I can stop writing about all the things that scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. It is coming but sadly, not soon.