Saturday Night Fever (1977)Movies

In the Seventies, films were often gritty and downbeat—and still popular with the masses. In the closing minutes of Saturday Night Fever, the following events occur: A racist injustice, an attempted date rape, a gang rape, a horrific accidental death with an element of suicide, and (not least) a nighttime ride on the disco-era New York City subway. The film concludes with the hero getting rejected by his lady. Naturally it was one of the biggest hits of 1977. Baby Boomers jammed theaters to see Saturday Night Fever (which earned the equivalent of over $350 million in today’s dollars) and Gen-Xers (like me) either sneaked in to see its forbidden R-rated depravities or watched it later on HBO, where it popped up frequently in the early 1980s. Today,...