Disco’s dead or so they say, but once in the 70s, it was a big part of the dominant subcultural landscape at the time. There were roller discos, discotheques, and the hypnotizing rhythm of the P-funk had permeated the very essence of the earth. After the tumultuous end of the 60s and the death of the hippie subculture, the era of disco and funk presented a radical change to the nature of music at the time, with the young people trading in acoustic guitars and LSD for bass guitars and a whole lot of glitter.
But what movies capture this time in the most profound way? And which are actually just terrible? Lace-up your gogo boots and get those bell-bottoms on.
Worst: Can’t Stop The Music (1980) - 4.1
A mythologized retelling of the autobiography of The Village People (confusing, isn’t it?) Can’t Stop The Music is a musical comedy released in 1980, the film tells the story of a man who had composed a bunch of dance hits that were just waiting to be unleashed on the public.
Luckily, this composer finds 6 “Macho Men” with a strange preoccupation with the YMCA to help him in his quest. The rest, as they say, is history.
Best: Saturday Night Fever (1977) - 6.8
Saturday Night Fever was the film that most likely put the hugely famous John Travolta into the sphere of the public consciousness in 1977. Directed by Jon Badham, the film tells the story of our protagonist Tony Manero, an Italian-American in Brooklyn who’s struggling to find a sense of identity while facing a post-high-school crisis at the age of 19.
Completely unsure of what to do with his life, he decides to frequent a local disco where it doesn’t matter who he is since he quickly becomes one of the best dancers and most popular people in the scene. While it might not be the best on this list as far as rating goes, it’s definitely a favorite for its depiction of the flashing lights and loud music of the 70s.
Worst: The Disco Exorcist (2011) - 4.1
Unfortunately for both this list and the movie itself, this film came out exceedingly late for it to make any sense, considering no one’s really cared about disco for like 40 years now, and about 30 when it came out in 2011.
The Disco Exorcist, a film directed by Richard Griffin tells us the story of exactly what it sounds like it does. A disco exorcist, whatever that is. After leaving a black-magic sorceress by the wayside after a one night stand, the protagonist named Rex must go on a quest to stop her rampage and get the soul of his newfound romantic flame back.
Best: Blow (2001) - 7.6
Despite receiving much lower scores pretty much everywhere else aside from IMDb, next on our list is Blow starring Johnny Depp and directed by Ted Demme from the year 2001. It tells the story of George Jung, Pablo Escobar and the people surrounding them. George was a smuggler who got mixed into the drug game after meeting a small-time marijuana dealer and then eventually being introduced to Escobar and becoming a cog in the machine that is Pablo’s complicated operation.
While it did well on IMDb, it also hasn’t gotten the greatest marks from most critics who say essentially that George Jung is too stupid and not interesting enough to have a film made about him, and that Johnny Depp’s suave performance is the only reason to watch the film.
Worst: The Disco (1983) - 4.0
The Disco from 1983 stars Nino D’Angelo as a disco dancer living it up in the Italian disco scene. Not much is known about this film since no one really wants to write about it unsurprisingly, but the entire thing was available on YouTube for a while until the profile that uploaded it had their account terminated, most likely for copyright infringement.
From what we can gather, it’s mostly just a clone of Saturday Night Fever but made with Italo Disco rather than American disco music. That being said, the soundtrack is getting some attention for being surprisingly decent, so there’s that.
Best: Airplane! (1980) - 7.7
While The Zucker Brothers’ Airplane! might end up on one of our “Didn’t age well” lists pretty soon in the near future, it’s done a great job for satirizing the disco movie influx of the late 70s in a really timely way, in addition to being a parody of tons of other genres, namely the incredibly popular disaster movies of the time.
Leslie Nielson’s deadpan performance is probably the highlight of the film.
Worst: The Stud (1978) - 3.9
In 1978’s The Stud, we see Fontaine, the wife of a man named Benjamin spending exorbitant amounts of money on her nightclub and parties. She hires her manager Tony to run her club in return for his… um… services. After he falls in love with her daughter instead, the two of them use a tape of Fontaine cheating on Benjamin to blackmail Fontaine and get back at her.
Best: C.R.A.Z.Y (2005) - 7.9
While not explicitly a disco film, 2005’s C.R.A.Z.Y. takes place during the late 60s and early 70s during the birth of the disco era. It follows the lives of Zac and his four brothers who live under the rule of conservative parents. Since Zac is a young gay man and he’s surrounded by homophobia, his family life is difficult and he seeks an escape from all of that, which he finds in drugs and music.
Since we don’t want to spoil the end of the film we’ll just leave it there, but the film does have the honor of being voted one of the best Canadian films of all time for a reason.
Worst: Superchick (1973) - 3.5
Somehow doing worse than a film on our list that’s 30 years too late is the timely Superchick from 1973. It’s about the life of a flight attendant with a man in every different city she travels to. An old rich guy, a rock musician about to transition to rockstar, and a man with a gambling problem.
The third man, Johnny is in debt to a mysterious and shadowy villain who enlists the titular Superchick Tara to help him rob Johnny while they’re on a plane. But will she go through with the plan or will she save the day? Who cares?
Best: Boogie Nights (1997) - 7.9
Boogie Nights is a Mark Wahlberg film that came out in 1997, directed by the very well-respected auteur Paul Thomas Anderson. The film covers the life of Jack Horner, a man working in the adult film industry in the late 70s and early 80s. He recruits a young busboy in a local restaurant named Eddie to star in some of the films he’s working on. He takes the stage name Dirk Diggler and starts winning award after award, quickly becoming one of the most sought-after talents in the industry.
As he gets sucked into the nightlife around him descending into a spiral of drugs and inflated ego, he quickly realizes that fame can dissipate into nothing.
