Best Stunt Work – 1974

My Nominations:Earthquake. The Towering Inferno. Gone In 60 Seconds. The Man With The Golden Gun. McQ.

We’re well and truly into the golden age of car stunts now, and in many ways this is the second age of movie stunts – the first being all those westerns of previous decades. The Eighties would bring in a new age of more spectacular work, but this is truly when the stunt profession hit its stride and maybe its peak of fame. Earthquake as the name would suggest contains a variety of stunts thanks to the massive quake which rocks LA and due to its epic scale set a new precedent for the number of stunt performers involved. Any time there’s a scene of carnage, the stunt guys are there making everything as thrilling as possible – the film has everything from falling and dodging gags to the higher drops and elevator crash. Similarly, The Towering Inferno has disaster oriented stunts – the elevator makes an appearance again, this time on the outside of the building – as well as lots of fire and height related fare, from crane work, dodging flames, and more water.

Gone In 60 Seconds is our first car-related stunt extravaganza, a film with a monumental chase sequence and famous for wrecking over a hundred vehicles. The film has many incredibly dangerous stunts and scenes, with several real accidents being incorporated – the carnage includes cars, trucks, flipping, cars jumping, skidding, crashing, and a final lengthy jump which remains incredibly impressive. The Man With The Golden Gun has a number of car gags too, its most memorable being that amazing corkscrew flip across a river – a stunt you never really see replicated anywhere. On top of this the film adopts martial arts thanks to the popularity of Bruce Lee with a number of basic fight scenes. McQ continues the theme of flipping cars and chases, while Stone does the same but with motorcycles replacing cars.

My Winner: Gone In Sixty Seconds

Let us know in the comments what your winner is!