12 Sleazy '70s Movies That Don't Care About Your Respect

Yahoo

19-06-2025

These 12 sleazy 1970s movies don't care about respect — they care about entertainment.
We aren't talking about movies with an X rating, which are their own category. And we aren't talking about movies like Serpico, The French Connection and Mean Streets that depict sleaze but are, you know, classy about it.
We're talking about movies that ruthlessly shock and pander for the sake of good clean — or not so clean — thrills. So here we go.
When Penthouse founder Bob Guccione set out to make a mainstream movie, the result was Caligula — a story of the indulgent Roman emperor with big names attached.
Led by rather fearless Clockwork Orange veteran Malcolm McDowell, the film stars Teresa Ann Savoy (above), as well as Helen Mirren and Peter O'Toole. But what it's best known for is its over-the-top sex scenes.
It was written by the very respected Gore Vidal, who disavowed it after director Tinto Brass substantially altered his script.
A gloriously shameless movie (starting with that title) that uses ickiness to its great advantage. It's one of the most effective and captivating horror movies ever made thanks to its hardcore atmosphere, oozing with sex and violence.
Filled with the sounds of animals and buzzing flies, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre makes clear from the start that it has no limits, even before we hear the first rev of Leatherface's chainsaw.
lsa, She Wolf of the S.S. affects high-minded ideals with a ridiculous opening card (see above), but it's all just an excuse to tell the story of Ilsa, an evil Nazi warden who wants to prove women are better at suffering than men, and should therefore be allowed to fight for Hitler.
Of course, she proves this through a series of "experiments" on women who are scantily clad, at best. Let's all say it together now: "They couldn't make this today."
A Canadian film by director Don Edmonds, it managed to get reviewed by Gene Siskel, who called it "the most degenerate picture I have seen to play downtown." We can't tell if that's a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Abel Ferrara has made some straight-up classics — including King of New York and Bad Lieutenant — but the Bronx-born director cut his teeth with The Driller Killer. (His debut was an adult motion picture in which he also performed.)
Ferrara also appeared in The Driller Killer (above) about a New York City artist who deals with his urban angst by going on a killing spree with a power tool.
The film made it onto the United Kingdom's list of "video nasties" criticized for their extreme content.
Look, we love Dolemite, but when the hero of the movie is a pimp, you're watching a sleazy movie.
Rudy Ray Moore's endlessly entertaining Blaxploitation icon sprang from his filthy standup comedy routines: He passed on stories of a streetwise hustler named Dolemite who explained, "Dolemite is my name and f---ing up motherf---ers is my game."
Dolemite was also a triumph of DIY, indie moviemaking — as spelled out in the recent Dolemite Is My Name, starring Eddie Murphy.
Widely regarded as one of the best exploitation movies ever made, this Swedish film by director Bo Arne Vibenius stars Christina Lindberg as as a mute woman who endures a series of unbelievable traumas — which Vibenius isn't shy about showing onscreen.
She eventually finds herself a double-barrel shotgun and goes on a revenge mission that she — and her targets — very much deserve.
We hate this movie, because it's so incredible effective. One of the most shameless 1970s movies of all, it has a handmade quality that makes it violence and cruelty feel all the more real.
Director Wes Craven made his debut with Last House on the Left — a story of abduction, brutality and vengeance, scored by eerie hippie music — before going on to create the classic Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream horror franchises. With all due respect to those films, they aren't remotely as scary as Last House on the Left.
Inspired by the writings of Marquis de Sade, this film by Pier Paolo Pasolini is about a group of fascists who round up a group of adolescents and do horrible things to them for 120 days. Just make a list of things that gross you out, and we promise they're in Salo.
Interestingly, Abel Ferrara, who you may remember from our Driller Killer entry, made a movie about Pasolini in 2014 about his life around the time he was making Salo.
It stars the great Willem Dafoe, a good friend and frequent collaborator of Ferrara's.
You probably remember the disco, but not the desperation.
Saturday Night Fever is a nuanced and gritty character study of Tony Manero (John Travolta, above) that unflinchingly depicts racism and sexual violence. Tony is deeply flawed, and no hero by today's standards, but the movie tries to win back our affection for him by the end.
For such a successful film, it's a very sleazy movie and a rough watch — but the dancing is fantastic, at least.
One of many killer-animals movies rushed to the screen after the blockbuster success of Jaws, Piranha — unlike, say, Orca, to use one example — made no pretense of respectability. And we respect that.
A Roger Corman production through and through, this movie existed to show swimmers get attacked by toothy fish, and we love that. It's the epitome of a B movie.
But it was also important to the careers of some great filmmakers, including Corman: Six years after Piranha, Joe Dante went on to direct the massive hit Gremlins. And Piranha co-writer John Sayles would go on to make films including Eight Men Out and The Secret of Roan Inish.
A movie we both love and respect, The Kentucky Fried Movie is a sendup of grindhouse and sleaze that is also, itself, pretty sleazy — but in a good way. It leaves no joke unturned, and parody-movie sendups go waaay further than necessary to satirize the things they're satirizing.
The Kentucky Fried Movie is one of funniest of all sleazy movies, and it led to more mainstream, less sleazy success for director John Landis and writers David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, who would later go on to make Airplane.
If you liked this, you might also like our list of Gen X Movie Stars Gone Too Soon.
And you might also like this behind the scenes look at The Kentucky Fried Movie.
Main image: The Kentucky Fried Movie. United Film Distribution Company
Related Headlines
12 Fathers Day Movies About Dads Saving Daughters
Ari Aster and John Waters on the Art of Not Compromising
12 Shameful Movies That Glamorize the Devil