Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the American '70s

Charles Taylor

Jun 2017 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

About this ebook

“Movie criticism's Dostoyevsky . . . Taylor reveals a national identity forged from the innocence we claim to have lost but never had in the first place.” --Steve Erickson, author of Zeroville

When we think of '70s cinema, we think of classics like The Godfather, Taxi Driver, and The Wild Bunch . . . but the riches found in the overlooked B movies of the time, rolled out wherever they might find an audience, unexpectedly tell an eye-opening story about post-Watergate, post-Vietnam America. Revisiting the films that don't make the Academy Award montages, Charles Taylor finds a treasury many of us have forgotten, movies that in fact "unlock the secrets of the times."

Celebrated film critic Taylor pays homage to the trucker vigilantes, meat magnate pimps, blaxploitation "angel avengers," and taciturn factory workers of grungy, unartful B films such as Prime Cut, Foxy Brown, and Eyes of Laura Mars. He creates a compelling argument for what matters in moviemaking and brings a pivotal American era vividly to life in all its gritty, melancholy complexity.

Ratings and reviews

A chronicle of the greatest era in cinema. No major studio will make movies like these any more. A must read!

About the author

Charles Taylor has written on movies, books, popular culture, and politics for the New York Times, Salon, the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Dissent, the Nation, the New York Observer, Lapham's Quarterly, and others. A member of the National Society of Film Critics, Taylor has contributed to several of the society's volumes, and his work appears in Best Music Writing 2009. He has taught journalism and literature courses at the New School, the Columbia School of Journalism, and the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU. Taylor lives in New York.