Released six months after Annie Hall catapulted Diane Keaton to permanent icon status, this adaptation of Judith Rossner’s 1975 true-crime novel finds Keaton complicating her kooky persona while remaining no less zeitgeist-y. She plays troubled schoolteacher Terry Dunn, newly living alone in the big city, who spends her days working with deaf children and at night haunts pickup bars for semi-anonymous sex, unsure whether she’s finding liberation or indulging a self-destructive compulsion.

The film's title refers to one of the nightclubs, but also the proverbial uncomplicated stud in which validation can be found. Writer-director Richard Brooks (In Cold Blood), though wrenching the source material rather hamfistedly, also imbues the film with a moral ambiguity and an extremely slippery gaze, recalling at times the work of art-trash iconoclasts like Catherine Breillat or Paul Verhoeven. The movie also features strong supporting turns from Tuesday Weld, Richard Gere (in one his earliest screen appearances), and an unforgettable Tom Berenger. Notable too is the film’s dense soundtrack—not a curated Saturday Night Fever-style behemoth but a messy, broad time capsule of the high disco era, capturing a time when dance music first dominated the pop charts and became a form of keyed-up, druggy aural wallpaper that would eventually seep into all aspects of public life. Chicagoans take note: Looking for Mr. Goodbar also offers enthralling glimpses of the old (pre-yuppie) Rush Street, amid whose seamy nighttime dives several scenes were filmed on location. – Gabriel Wallace