Best Stunt Work – 1975

My Nominations: Breakheart Pass. Death Race 2000. Graveyard Of Honor. The Hindenburg. The Man Who Would Be King. The Great Waldo Pepper. Rollerball. The Wind And The Lion.

Less car stunts this year, less disaster related too. This year sees Breakheart Pass – another fun Bronsan/Ireland vehicle with plenty of entertaining action culminating in some spectacular cliff scenes, train top fights, and canyon crashes. Death Race 2000 is a film I nominate purely because who else is ever going to nominate it for an Oscar? Cheap and cheerful as you would expect, it still has countless impressive stunts – natural for a film about a cross country car race where you get extra points for any pedestrians you knock over. Graveyard Of Honor by the great Kinji Fukasaku finishes with one of the most iconic stunts/shots in Japanese Cinema – one giant leap – but is rounded off with your usual Yakuza gunplay. The Hindeburg hits our disaster quotient, with fire, falling, and flailing, while The Man Who Would be King presents one of the great ropebridge stunts – it’s just a bit of a shame we don’t see it from another angle, though it’s still a terrifying fall.

As films with stunts and the notoriety of some stuntmen increased in the decade, we began to see certain films and shows based around the industry. The Great Waldo Pepper is one such entry, looking at aerial stunts or barnstorming with Robert Redford playing an ex military pilot who begins stunt performing to make ends meet. It has some of the best airplane scenes you’re likely to witness. Our final two films are packed with stunts – Sean Connery again getting in on the action with The Wind And The Lion featuring mostly horseback gags, while Rollerball creates a new physical, brutal sport and lets the performers crash into each other with as much force as they can stand.

My Winner: Graveyard Of Honor

Let us know your winner in the comments!