The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971)
Howard Alk’s 1971 documentary starts as a profile of the leader of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party.
It follows the 21-year-old Fred Hampton as he advocates both non-violence and armed militancy, building a coalition to tackle poverty and fight police brutality.
But during production, Hampton and fellow Black Panther Mark Clark were killed by police, and so Alk turned his camera onto the crime scene to investigate their deaths.
The finished film would contradict the official version of the shooting, exposing police cover-up.
“A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984)
Wes Craven had already made a name for himself in the horror genre with “The Last House on the Left,” “The Hills Have Eyes” and “Swamp Thing,” when he directed this imaginative slasher film about a child killer murdered by neighborhood vigilantes. Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) would then reappear, armed with quips and razor-blades, in the dreams of victims to exact his revenge.
With a cast that included Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley and Johnny Depp, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was a smash that scared up a stream of sequels, while establishing Freddy as a true icon of horror cinema. He even went toe-to-toe with another horror franchise star, Jason of “Friday the 13th,” in a 2003 matchup.
“Pink Flamingos” (1972)
Not all entrees in the National Film Registry are what you would call in good taste. In fact, Baltimore filmmaker John Waters would run from such a description, as his 1972 underground cult comedy is a celebration of really bad taste, exhilaratingly so. “Pink Flamingos” tells the tale of Babs Johnson (played by the drag queen Divine), who has been named “the filthiest person alive” by a tabloid paper, and about the other aspirants to the title who scheme to dethrone her. But as the film’s final, scatalogical scene demonstrates, no one can out-filth Babs. You have been warned.
