Titicut Follies (1967)
D. Fredrick Wiseman

First-time filmmaker Frederick Wiseman's despairing cinema-verite (observational or objective) masterpiece, one of the greatest documentaries of all time, was about the horrid and abusive conditions ("painful aspects of mental disease") at the state-run Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Bridgewater, a prison-hospital asylum for seriously ill, heavily-tranquilized men (defined by authorities as "criminally insane" or "sexually dangerous"). The film's title referred to a mock-softshoe song/dance routine ("Strike Up the Band"), performed and acted out at the beginning and end of the film by the inmates and prison officers during an annual vaudeville/variety show (the 'Titicut Follies') performance at the institution.

The silent and passive camera witnessed the stripping, dehumanizing and humiliation of mental patients (who were treated like wild animals) by bullying guards, wardens and psychiatrists. One inmate, who was starving himself to death as protest, was force-fed through a rubber tube roughly inserted into his nostril - followed shortly by the image of his face as he laid in a coffin while being prepared for his funeral.

This highly controversial film (filmed in 1966 on black and white 16 mm. film over a period of 29 days) was barred from distribution and withdrawn from circulation from 1967-1992, by legal action launched by state authorities, because it was considered a violation of the rights of privacy of the prison inmates it filmed, and because it was considered obscene (the film showed male frontal nudity). It was only shown at the New York Film Festival in 1967, and had two limited runs in New York -- aside from a few screenings before film societies. [Note: Director Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963) similarly exposed the conditions in US mental hospitals.]

Rosemary's Baby (1968)
D. Roman Polanski

Polish director Roman Polanski's first American feature film and his second, scary horror film (following his first disturbing film in English titled Repulsion (1965)) - was about a young newlywed couple who moved into a large, rambling old apartment building in Central Park West, where the title character Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) experienced a nightmarish dream of making love to a Beast. Becoming paranoid and hysterical, she believed herself impregnated so that her baby could be used by an evil cult in their rituals. The creepy film ended with the devil's flesh-and-blood baby being cared for by the mother!

The film was one of the first with the theme of Satanism and the occult, before the onslaught of films such as The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), and Demon Seed (1977). Its most memorable sequences were the surrealistic dream sequence during which Rosemary was impregnated by Satan (husband Guy's appearance changed into a grotesque beast-like figure resembling the Devil, with yellowish eyes and clawed, scaly hands), and the final scene in which she discovered her Anti-Christ child in a black-draped crib.

The National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures reviled the film, condemning it for "the perverted use which the film made of fundamental Christian beliefs, especially surrounding the birth of Christ, and its mockery of religious persons and practices" - these criticisms were due in part to sequences depicting Rosemary's guilt over her lapsed Catholicism, anti-religious references to the Pope made by Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) ("You don't need to have respect for him because he pretends that he's holy"), the portrayal of Rosemary's pregnancy as a sexually-transmitted disease, and the film's view of Satanism as the birth of the Anti-Christ.

The incredible irony of the film was that the plot would be similarly played out a year later - Polanski's pregnant actress/wife Sharon Tate would be terrorized and murdered by the strange cult of Charles Manson followers in her Benedict Canyon home. A real-life tragedy also occurred when the Bramford apartment building (actually the Dakota apartments - the actual locale in the film) was where Mark Chapman shot John Lennon in 1980.

Midnight Cowboy (1969)
D. John Schlesinger

John Schlesinger's film was a major milestone although controversial at its time for its gay-related content and subject of male prostitution. Its title "midnight cowboy" referred to nocturnal cowboys in the big city - those who were hustlers. The ground-breaking film was the first (and only) X-rated (for adult-oriented, not porno) mainstream film (later reduced to R) to be voted Best Picture, with an A-list stars, at a time when the ratings system was first introduced. This Oscar-winning film, an exceptional, provocative, and gritty character portrait, was made on location in New York to portray seediness, corruption, and big-city anonymity, and was based on James Leo Herlihy's 1965 novel. It was unusual for its rating to be so high, since the unflinching film did not contain significant profanity, graphically-brutal violence, or frontal nudity, although it did portray some partial nudity and simulations of sex.

It told an adult-themed story about a naive, swaggering, transplanted (and emasculated) dishwasher/stud - a displaced small-town "cowboyish" Texan named Joe Buck (Jon Voight) who struggled and aspired in the sordid 42nd Street area of NY to become a successful hustler or gigolo - while posing as a "macho midnight cowboy," although he eventually resorted to homosexual street hustling to survive. Upon his arrival in the big city, he vainly posed shirtless in front of his hotel room's mirror, and pasted up a beefcake poster of Paul Newman from Hud and a picture of a topless woman. His first 'trick' was fast-talking, brassy society girl Cass (Best Supporting Actress nominee Sylvia Miles) who out-hustled Joe for a cab-ride fee. In a comedic sex scene in which they humorously activated channels with the TV remote control beneath their bodies - the metaphoric climax came with the closeup view of the winning results of a slot machine jackpot - spewed-out coins.

Joe's first homosexual client was a religiously fanatical and homosexual Jesus-freak Christian named Mr. O'Daniel (John McGiver). During the encounter, Joe flashbacked to his disturbed and abused boyhood when he was baptized in a river (recalled as terrifying), and an incident when town rednecks viciously assaulted him and his former girlfriend "Crazy" Annie (Jennifer Salt) when they were having sex in a car. He was homosexually raped and she was traumatically gang-raped. Another homosexual client in New York was a bespectacled, geeky young student (Bob Balaban) in a dark movie theatre - while experiencing oral sex, Joe had memories of making passionate love with Annie (who promised him she was being faithful by telling him: "You're the only one, Joe," but who had a reputation for being a tramp), but the client ended up penniless.

The Texas stud was befriended by a limping and coughing homeless con artist named Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) and they experienced an unspoken homosexual relationship together which included frequent bickering. They both experienced the riches of the American dream when invited to a freaky Greenwich Village party by a "couple of fruity wackos" (Gastone Rossilli and Warhol's Viva), where they found free food, drugs, and opportunities for sex. Joe took stoned socialite Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro) to bed for his first successful heterosexual score with a paying female client ($20). At first, though, he suffered sexual inadequacy until angered when she teasingly suggested that he was gay: ("Gay, fey. Is that your problem, baby?") - and then he performed vigorously. Afterwards by phone, she recommended his studly services to an unhappily-married female friend.

Joe's final trick was with another homosexual - a middle-aged Catholic man named Towny (Barnard Hughes). Back at the man's hotel room, in the last sordid act of his street-life existence, things turned violent. Joe ended up in a rage, brutally attacking the self-loathing, mother-dominated, despicable man after receiving a St. Christopher's Medal and only ten dollars. He committed a horrible crime - he robbed the man of all his money and then brutalized the customer, probably killing him. He left after jamming the phone receiver into the man's bloodied, toothless mouth.

The Wild Bunch (1969)
D. Sam Peckinpah

Director/co-writer Sam Peckinpah's provocative, brilliant yet controversial breakthrough Western was shocking for its graphic and elevated portrayal of violence and savagely-explicit, orgiastic carnage, yet hailed for its truly realistic and reinterpreted vision of the dying West in the early 20th century (at a time when mass-produced murder was possible with the Gatling gun). The film opened with innocent village children intrigued by putting red fire ants and scorpions together and setting fire to the swarming pile.

The much-imitated, influential film was book-ended by two extraordinary sequences, both massacres. The gang of desperadoes were first assaulted in the film's opening ambush following a failed bank robbery in a Texas border town, and then brutally destroyed in the film's conclusion - as united comrades in a selfless, redemptive act - by a savage and vindictive Mexican warlord named Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) after a double-crossing arms deal. The two scenes included some of the bloodiest, most violent shoot-ups ever filmed. Peckinpah choreographed each of the film's two bloodbaths as a visually prolonged, beautiful ballet - a semi slow-motion, aesthetically breath-taking, non-gratuitous, lyrical, extreme celebration of bodies spurting blood and being torn apart by bullets. The slaughter of innocent bystanders (in a temperance parade), and the use of women as shields (in the all-male film) were served up as counterpoints to the media's honest display of violence during the late 60s, with the Vietnam War, assassinations, urban riots, and other events filling the airwaves.

Due to its violence, the film was originally threatened with an X-rating by the newly-created MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), but an R-rating was its final decision. A so-called 'director's cut' version of the film, threatened with an NC-17 rating when submitted to the MPAA ratings board in 1993 prior to a re-release in 1994, held up the film's re-release for many months.