Quiz: Can You Name the ‘70s Movie From the Fictional Town?

When it comes to movies, fictional towns become characters of their own. How well can you remember the names of those towns? Can you connect them to their 1970s movies? We have a quiz for you to test your knowledge:

If you got 8/8, then we want you on our quiz team! You’re a movie expert, and you never know when that knowledge will be useful. There are so many fictional town names that it’s not always easy to connect them to the right movie. Why not share this with your friends and see how they do? Compare your answers and use it as an excuse for a 1970s movie night.

The Era of Skepticism and Dread

The 1970s brought an era of skepticism and dread to movies. Up to this point, Hollywood mostly focused on the quaint small towns, highlighting how everyone was like a family and the safe element of everyone knowing each other. However, the 1970s turned that idea on its head.

Small towns have often been romanticized, and 1970s film was willing to focus on that. It turned the town itself into a plot point, a character of its own that lurked around every corner.

Out of all the fictional towns in 1970s movies, there is one that will always stand out. Amity Island transformed an idyllic vacation town into a nightmare in Jaws. However, it wasn’t the shark that brought the real horror to the screen. Amity’s people knew that horrific events would cause a downturn in tourism, so corporate greed meant trying to hide the truth. A town’s preservation took over human safety, and it created even more terror.

Then there are the communities that are deceptive, with The Stepford Wives bringing us an affluent Connecticut suburb. Everyone wanted to live there at first, but then the real horrors of the picture-perfect location were unveiled. It wasn’t the only movie of the 1970s to make it clear that small towns have a dark underbelly living just below the surface, with Westworld introducing something similar with its frontier town.

Then there are the small towns that become horror hotspots. Haddonfield, Illinois, looked like the perfect place for children to go trick-or-treating at first, but Halloween quickly debunked that, as Michael Myers roamed the neighborhood and killed anyone who got in his way. Middle-class safety can be shattered in an instant.

Love to test your movie knowledge? Make sure you bookmark the Mental Floss quiz page for fun challenges covering music, movies, TV shows, and more.