I am trying to find some I haven’t watched, yet. Which ones do you suggest?
To give you some examples what I am looking for:
The Conversation
Marathon Man
The Parallax View
Three Days of the Condor
and maybe
The Day Of The Jackal
what else is there?
It’s a little earlier, but The Ipcress File sort of fits that bill.
Well, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966) is a masterpiece, and influenced The Conversation (which is tremendous, obviously, and on your list) and Blow Out (1981), an homage from Brian DePalma that is uneven but worth seeing.
Black Sunday (not the 1960 horror movie) got mixed reviews when it came out in 1977, but few directors in Hollywood history knew their way around a paranoid thriller the way John Frankenheimer did. It’s aged fairly well, and the terrorism plot for mass destruction that was considered far fetched 40 years ago is sadly very au courant now. Early screenplay/book adaptation by Thomas “Silence of the Lambs” Harris.
Speaking of Frankenheimer, there is no greater paranoid thriller in Hollywood history than the original Manchurian Candidate. It’s earlier than '77, but if you’ve not seen it, you just gotta.
Marathon Man is the great movie about Nazi survivors in the new world and you rightly have it on your list, but Boys From Brazil has a nice cast (Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, and James Mason) and scratches the same itch. Screenplay by Ira Levin (Rosemary’s Baby), directed by Franklin Schaffner, he of Patton and Planet of the Apes fame.
And if you can’t get enough 1970s movies about Nazi paranoia, The Odessa File with Jon Voight is a solid pick.
Finally, it’s way after your timeline but Ronin from 1998 feels a lot like an aging Frankenheimer trying to capture the same spirit as Day of the Jackal and those kinetic 1970s thrillers.
You got the best ones but Klute (1971), Winter Kills (1979), The Odessa File (1974), Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977), and Executive Action (1973) are worth seeking out to various degrees.
And if we’re playing fast and loose with genre definitions: Marathon Man (1976) and Night Moves (1975),
I found these European examples
I… comme Icare (1979) … it is basically the JFK assasination in a fictional country, “Jim Garrison” is played by Yves Montand
Z (1969) by Costa-Gavras … not a Zombie movie but:
“Following the murder of a prominent leftist, an investigator tries to uncover the truth while government officials attempt to cover up their roles”
Again, much later, but full of paranoia:
John Carpenter’s The Thing is pretty much all about paranoia.
The French Connection also comes to mind. I’ve probably strayed too far with all of these.
I wanted to add something here but you guys have covered all my bases. Nevertheless, this is a great list of movies to work watch (or watch again, as is the case with many of them).
One of my favorite scenes from Three Days of the Condor (pretty sure it’s from that movie) is where Robert Redford kidnaps Faye Dunaway. He’s got her tied up and gagged in the bathroom. He takes off her gag while explaining to her that he had to grab her for her safety. She’s boiling mad, however, and will have none of it. She’s flustered and can’t get words out but finally she blurts out the worst thing that 70’s movie can say: “You… you… you… CREEP!”
The fact that it’s such a build-up to a relatively benign insult never fails to crack me up. I think it encapsuates movies in the 70’s so well.
Anyway, great list!
my favorite scene in Condor is when Redford goes out to buy some coffee and when he is back all collegues are shot dead… I am totally prepared for this situation whenever it will happen in real life.
Does Sorcerer count?
1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers leans more on sci-fi than other titles in this list, but I think it’s a quintessential paranoia movie. Leonard Nimoy, Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, and Jeff Goldblum wrapped up in new age psychotherapy, conformity, and government oppression.
A few more:
This is later, but…
If we go horror/scifi than we have
Rosemary’s baby (her paranoia was justified I suppose)
The Stepford Wifes (1975)
THX 1138
but I think I had more political paranoia movies in mind. Judging from this list so far, there have been a lot in the 70s…
I haven’t seen The Falcon and the Snowman (80s) but it is from John Schlesinger (Marathon Man), I heard good things about it…
All The Presidents Men … how could we forget?
I think what I love about those movies is, that in order to create paranoia in the viewer, they are very conscious about using sound, editing and often a lack of music… maybe that was a thing in the 70s, but if I recall some of the above movies, I think they had set pieces, montages without music… I remember the Paris scene in Marathon Man, Day of the Jackal had a long sequence at the end (the assasination), where they only used sounds that happened to be there…
Also the Conversation was all about incidental sounds…
This bleeds into the 80’s, but Prince of the City from 1981 certainly qualifies as a paranoid crime thriller.
Also check out The Offence…Brit crime thriller with Sean Connery and Trevor Howard, directed by Sidney Lumet. Not exactly a “paranoid thriller”, but the main characters is certainly paranoid. Anyhow, I just saw it recently and liked it a lot and it kind of fits. Plus it’s topical with current events as the plot centers on police brutality.
Brazil from 1985 kind of fits the bill
The Andromeda Strain
DePalma’s Blow Out (early 80’s)
The Boys from Brazil
Hopscotch for a comedic take in the early 80’s
A Clockwork Orange
just watched a german dubbed version on youtube. I cannot recommend it enough. It had it all: an assasination, a conspiracy, politics, paranoia…
I almost forgot the most important one, newbrof!
Holy crap. I have never heard of the The Day of the Dolphin but I must have that poster.
What about Network? It’s prescient, steeped in 70s despair and paranoia, and deeply cynical. Plus, you know, Howard Beale.
Coma and Silkwood (early 80’s)