Great American Films of the '70s Quiz

Answer: The Deer Hunter

Three friends from working-class Clairton, PA, go to Vietnam and are changed forever. This powerful film, which was one of the first to depict the Vietnam War experience in realistic and highly personal ways, won five Academy Awards. The harrowing scenes of the characters playing Russian Roulette are hard to watch and even harder to forget.

Answer: The Conversation

A very private and paranoid surveillance expert struggles with the morality of his work and learns that things are not always as they seem. Although written in the 1960s, this film was produced shortly after the Watergate scandal broke, serving as a socio-political commentary on modern technology and the right to privacy.

The 2006 German film, "The Lives of Others", deals with the same theme in an equally provocative manner.

Answer: Young Frankenstein

Gene Wilder, who plays the American grandson of Dr. Frankenstein, moves back to Transylvania to finish his grandfather's work. There are so many funny and memorable lines in this hilariously original spoof of early horror films that I still find myself quoting it often. Who can forget Frau Blücher or Abby Normal?

Answer: Dog Day Afternoon

Based on actual events, this film recounts the story of a bank robbery gone bad during one long, very hot summer afternoon in Brooklyn. Pacino and Sarandon each earned an Oscar nomination for their breakthrough portrayal of homosexual lovers trying to scrape up enough money for one of them (Sarandon's character, Leon) to have sex reassignment surgery.

Answer: Five Easy Pieces

Although it won no major awards, this film remains an American classic. Nicholson plays the iconoclastic son of a rich family who returns to his quiet, uptight home with his ditzy girlfriend to see his very ill father. In its most famous scene, Nicholson's character orders toast from a rules-oriented waitress by asking for a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, but "hold the chicken... between your knees."

Answer: Mean Streets

Although it did not enjoy much success at the box office, this early Scorsese film is often considered one of his finest. On the "mean streets" of NYC, Keitel struggles between his faith, his Mafia ambitions, and his friendship with De Niro's character, Johnny Boy. Keitel and De Niro would appear together again in Scorsese's next - and more widely acclaimed - film, "Taxi Driver".

Answer: Straw Dogs

A very reserved and repressed American intellectual moves with his wife to her English hometown and unleashes his violent side in reaction to some local townspeople. As in most of Peckinpah's work, this highly controversial film deals with the nature of violence directly and realistically. It is most famous for a particularly brutal and disturbing rape scene.

Answer: Paper Moon

Set in Depression Era Kansas, this film tells the story of a grifter who reluctantly brings his young daughter into the business. Ten year-old Tatum O'Neal won an Academy Award for her portrayal of the precocious and adorable Addie. She remains the youngest Oscar winner of the 20th century.

Answer: Marathon Man

A student and runner becomes unwillingly involved in a search for diamonds and Nazis. Sir Laurence Olivier plays a Nazi in this film, but, ironically, portrays a Nazi hunter in 1978's "The Boys from Brazil". The unforgettable torture scene features Olivier's evil dentist drilling Dustin Hoffman's teeth, while asking repeatedly, "Is it safe?" Very eerie...

Answer: Eraserhead

This surrealistic film was made for a budget of only $20,000 and remains a cult classic to this day. With its dream sequences and strange characters, I could never figure out this film, but basically a man - Eraserhead - is left to raise his deformed baby in a post-industrial wasteland. The image of Eraserhead's baby is haunting, to say the least!