Agency (1979)
Subliminal Advertising Brainwashing Thriller
Lee Majors starring thriller set around the 1970s fad over subliminal advertising. The film fails to generate much in the way of thrills.
Films of 1979
Alien (1979)
Alien Nasty on a Spaceship
One of the most influential films on this site, producing a host of sequels and making the careers of all involved. At heart, a simple monster on a spaceship film, it is made into a classic through Ridley Scott’s relentless suspense and H.R. Giger’s design work
Alison’s Birthday (1979)
Occult Conspiracy
Australian-made film about a heroine being drawn into occult conspiracies around her that only treads where Rosemary’s Baby went before
All That Jazz (1979)
Dance Choreographer's Self-Analysis/Angel of Death
Dance choreographer/director Bob Fosse makes an autobiographical film in which dance choreographer (played by Roy Scheider) reflects on his life to the Angel of Death
Americathon (1979)
Future Telethon/1970s Satire
This seems like it had all the elements to be a biting satirical crosscut of the 1970s in which the US President holds a telethon to keep the country from going bankrupt but flounders in a series of unfunny skits
The Amityville Horror (1979)
Haunted House/"True Story"
Based on a book that claimed it was true story (but was later proven to be a hoax), this haunted house tale was a considerable success and spawned a series of sequels and imitators that continue to this day
Animalympics (1979)
Animation/Talking Animal Olympics
From the director of Tron, an animated film produced to commemorate the 1980 Olympics, a series of skits with various talking animals participating in different Olympic sports
Arabian Adventure (1979)
Arabian Nights Adventure
This tries hard to be another The Thief of Bagdad but is never too much more than a run through the cliches of the Arabian Nights adventure rewritten for the post-Star Wars era
Being There (1979)
Complete Innocent/Satiric Fable
The penultimate screen role of Peter Sellers, a sublimely deadpan satire in which he plays a gardener with the blank innocence of a child whose simple-minded utterances are taken as words of great profundity
The Bermuda Triangle (1979)
Bermuda Triangle and Pseudo-Science Documentary
A documentary that purports to examine the mystery of the so-called Bermuda Triangle but soon dives off into an hilarious series of claims involving UFOs, Atlantis, time warps and The Philadelphia Experiment
Billion Dollar Threat (1979)
Spy Film
A TV movie that was released theatrically outside the US with Dale Robinette as a James Bond copycat with Dale Robinette up against villain Patrick MacNee who has weaponised the ozone layer
The Black Hole (1979)
Lost Spaceship/Mad Scientist/Journey into a Black Hole
Disney’s attempt to join the post-Star Wars SF boom proved a flop that flounders in bad writing and ponderous pretensions. On the other hand, it is almost worth watching for the stunning design and effects
Blue Holocaust (1979)
Man's Necrophiliac Obsession
Italian horror cinema of the 1970s/80s had some of the most extreme material put on screen. Here Joe D’Amato directs a film about a young man with a necrophile obsession and pushes the material to extremes that take you back
Blue Remembered Hills (1979)
Depiction of Childhood/Adults Play Children
I have said it before and will say it again – Dennis Potter was the greatest writer to ever work in television. This is his classic work depicting childhood where all the roles of the children are played by adults
The Brood (1979)
Mutant Children/Radical Psychotherapy
One of David Cronenberg’s great early films. Fueled by a messy divorce Cronenberg was going through, it is set around a radical psychological institute that encourages people to manifest their repressed angers through their bodies
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979)
Space Opera/Man Unfrozen in the Future
In the aftermath of Star Wars, the comic-book/serial hero was revived in this heavily Star Wars influenced remake that was released theatrically and then served as the pilot of a tv series
Cannibal Holocaust (1979)
Italian Cannibal Film
THE most extreme film covered on this site. The defining work of the notorious Italian cannibal genre, a pseudo-documentary work that features stomach churning tortures, guttings and actual animal mutilations
Captain America II (1979)
Comic-Book Superhero
Another of the mostly disastrous Marvel tv adaptations of the 1970s. Captain America is sidelined for much of the show. This does conduct the coup of casting Christopher Lee as the villain but criminally gives him nothing to do
Captain America (1979)
Comic-Book Superhero
Laughably cheap and dull tv pilot version of comic-book superhero, which emerges less the Captain America of Marvel Comics fame than Captain America imagined as Evel Knievel superhero
The Capture of Bigfoot (1979)
Bigfoot
From Bill Rebane, this was a cheap and dreary Bigfoot film, one of a spate of similar low-budget efforts made for drive-in audiences during the 1970s
The China Syndrome (1979)
Nuclear Power Plant Accident
Strong and effective dramatic film released only three weeks before the real-life Three Mile Island nuclear accident. Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas play a tv camera crew caught in the midst of a nuclear reactor meltdown
C.H.O.M.P.S. (1979)
Robot Dog/Children's Film
Excruciating and unfunny live-action Hanna-Barbera film in which an inventor creates a super-powered robot dog
The Dark (1979)
Alien Monster
An absurd monster movie that was started by Tobe Hooper who walked off set whereupon it was completed by another director whereupon SF elements were added to sell it as a copy of Alien
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Zombies
George Romero’s successor to his cult hit of Night of the Living Dead. Romero creates a very different film, one that takes place in a mall and comes with a level of droll satire. A bigger budget allows him to push things to gore-drenched extremes
Demon Pond (1979)
Haunted Pond/Japanese Legend
Forgotten Japanese film about a man searching for a friend finding a village where a bell must be struck to prevents creatures escaping from a pond. Beautiful, bizarre and quite unlike any fantasy film you have seen before
Destination Moonbase-Alpha (1979)
Space: 1999 Movie
A two-part episode of the Gerry Anderson tv series Space: 1999 that was repackaged as a feature film to take advantage of the late 1970s post-Star Wars SF boom
Dr Jekyll’s Dungeon of Death (1979)
Dr Jekyll Film
Not a Jekyll and Hyde film but instead about Jekyll’s grandson who conducts a series of experiments in harnessing aggression. An almost sordid exploitation film
Don’t Go in the House (1979)
Flamethrower-Wielding Psycho
A film from the slasher era – the scenes of the psycho of the show incinerating victims with a flamethrower were the cause of censorship controversy. Less a slasher film and more a psycho film, this pushes into some disturbing headspace
Don’t Go Near the Park (1979)
Flesh-Eating Immortals
Another of the ‘don’t __’- titled entries of the 1970s. This is a bizarre bad movie about teenage runaways in L.A.’s Griffith Park who fall prey to flesh-eating immortals
Dracula (1979)
Dracula Adaptation
Lushly produced, big-budget adaptation of Bram Stoker starring Frank Langella that places much more of a romantic emphasis on the story than any other version. Here is the beginning of the darkly romantic vampire film
Dracula Blows His Cool (1979)
Vampire Sex Comedy
Excruciating West German-made vampire sex comedy (that doesn’t feature Count Dracula despite the title). Painful and agonisingly unfunny comedy routines directed by someone who has no idea how to set them up
The Driller Killer (1979)
Power Drill Psycho
The first film from Abel Ferrara, a seething, angry work about an artist who lets his frustrations out by randomly killing with a power drill. Listed as a Video Nasty and banned in several countries
The Evictors (1979)
Sinister Attacks
From 1970s exploitation director Charles B. Pierce, this charts similar territory to the Backwoods Brutality cycle in the claimedly true story of a couple who buy a house in the South and then experience a mystery assault
The Fall of the House of Usher (1979)
Edgar Allan Poe Adaptation
Maybe the worst Edgar Allan Poe adaptation ever, a version made for tv that fails utterly to project any of Poe’s gloom and despair, while a badly overacting Martin Landau is disastrously miscast as Roderick Usher
Fascination (1979)
Erotic Horror/Blood-Drinking Lesbians
One of the films from cult French director Jean Rollin whose works always contained an arty mix of horror and erotica. This concerns mysterious blood-drinking rituals among a group of women at a chateau
Galaxy Express 999 (1979)
Anime Space Opera
Classic anime space opera adventure made not long after Star Wars and filled with moments of glorious visual poetry including the conceptually absurd image of a spacegoing train
The Gendarme and the Extra-Terrestrials (1979)
Alien Visitors Slapstick Comedy
An entry in a popular series of French slapstick comedies with Louis de Funes as a comic gendarme. In this, the series sole genre entry, he goes up against alien visitors
The Great Alligator (1979)
Giant Alligator
A belated Italian-made attempt to jump aboard the bandwagon and copy Jaws with a giant alligator hunting people on an island
The Haunting of M. (1979)
Ghost Story
A dull and mannered ghost story that makes a good effort at period atmosphere but places almost nothing into attempting to produce anything spooky
The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (1979)
Psycho Film
A film from cult director Ray Dennis Steckler about psychos lurking around Hollywood Boulevard. Things get admirably twisted, while the work is a unique time capsule of the period
The Humanoid (1979)
Italian Space Opera
One of several cheap Italian copies that were made after the success of Star Wars starring Richard Kiel as a peaceful intergalactic police inspector who is mutated into a killer humanoid
The Killer Nun (1979)
Psychopathic Nun
Notorious Video Nasty, a key work in the Nunsploitation genre with Anita Ekberg as a drug addicted nun who kills her patients. Apparently based on real life
Licensed to Love and Kill (1979)
Spy Film
One in a series of British spy films made in imitation of the James Bond series. As evidenced by the alternate title The Man from S.E.X., this takes things further than the Bond films do
The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe (1979)
Animation/Epic Fantasy Adventure/Magical Otherworld
Earlier less well known adaptation of the C.S. Lewis book made for tv. This is faithful to the book but is badly hampered by primitive animation and an exceedingly simplistic rendering of the story
Love at First Bite (1979)
Dracula Spoof
Genial and very likeable spoof of Dracula and the vampire film that succeeds where other works have failed and is very funny. George Hamilton steps into the role of Dracula with debonair charm
Mad Max (1979)
Near Future Road Rage
The first of the Mad Max films and a considerable jolt if one comes to it after any of the sequels. This is an altogether different film – a grim and violent road movie more in the vein of Death Wish
The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979)
Man Builds an Atomic Bomb
An anarchic Japanese film where a school teacher builds an atomic bomb and then begins blackmailing the authorities with his demands
Meteor (1979)
Meteor Collision/Disaster Movie
An effort from the heyday of the 1970s disaster movie that was a big flop when it came out. Widely ridiculed for its bad special effects, it is a film I am partially prepared to defend, it setting aside the usual soap opera dramatics of these films to make an interesting parable about Cold War tensions. It also prefigures Armageddon with its plot of trying to divert a meteor on a collision course with Earth
Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack (1979)
Battlestar Galactica Movie
Episodes of the original Battlestar Galactica tv series that were recut and screened theatrically for international audiences
Monster (1979)
Monster Movie
Obscure 1970s film about a monster emerging from a Colombian lake. The film taps a bunch of subplots and cliche themes but fails to make any of them even remotely interesting. The entire show though is plunged into bad movie stakes by the emergence of the ridiculous monster at the end
Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (1979)
Accidental Messiah Absurdist Comedy
The Monty Python team’s finest hour, a wickedly irreverent spoof on Christianity that contains some of their most side-splitting gags
Moonraker (1979)
James Bond in Space
The eleventh James Bond film and one that sees that series trying to compete with the success of Star Wars and taking Roger Moore into orbit. One of the most spectacular productions of the series, it is also killed by a cartoonish unserious tone
The Muppet Movie (1979)
Muppet Movie
The first and best of the Muppet films where Jim Henson spins them off onto the big screen with charm and sly humour
Murder By Decree (1979)
Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper
A lavish and ambitious production that has the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes solving the real-life Jack the Ripper murders, even if the eventual resolution opts for one of the more far-fetched theories about The Ripper’s identity
Nightwing (1979)
Killer Vampire Bats
Adaptation of a Martin Cruz Smith novel about an Indian reservation under attack by hordes of vampire bats. The Nature Amok theme suffers terrible effects and plays subordinate to a polemic about the state of the modern Indian
The Ninth Configuration (1979)
Military Asylum Black Comedy
The directorial debut of William Peter Blatty, the writer of The Exorcist, a strange and unclassifiable black comedy set in a military asylum. Imagine One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest directed by Robert Altman
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
Dracula Adaptation
Werner Herzog conducts a remake of the silent German classic with Klaus Kinski as Dracula. A very different film to the original but quite unique in Herzog’s individualistic way
Outer Touch (1979)
Alien Women Abduct Men/Sex Comedy
Bizarre attempt to mix the 1970s SF film with the British sex comedy as a group of people are abducted by three alien women who are ignorant about sex
Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979)
Secret Cloning Program
This had its entire plot ripped off as Michael Bay’s The Island. Without Bay’s action overkill, this is by far the better film, working as a fascinating mystery set-up that leads to an ingenious twist
Phantasm (1979)
Dream Horrors/Other-Dimensional Grave Robbers
Cult film from Don Coscarelli that takes place in a funereal twilight world and is filled with images of wild surrealism. Not a lot makes sense but the film is meant to operate on the logic of a dream. Several sequels followed.
Prophecy (1979)
Mutant Bear Amok
The once celebrated John Frankenheimer flopped with this monster movie about a mutant bear with laughable effects and inflated pretensions to message making
The Psychotronic Man (1979)
Psychic Powers
A film about psychic powers. The one distinction the film has is that its name inspired Michael Weldon in the creation of the psychotronic film cult. The actual film proves a major letdown
Quatermass (1979)
Alien Megalithic Artefacts Reactivated
The fourth and final of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass stores, which shows the professor as an old man in decaying future Britain trying to deal with an alien force manifest through ancient megaliths. A surprisingly bleak and cynical end to the saga but still with the greatness of Kneale’s writing
Quintet (1979)
Frozen Future/Enigmatic Game
The great Robert Altman’s most frustrating film set around an enigmatic dice game in a frozen future
Ravagers (1979)
Post-Holocaust
A post-apocalyptic film that predates Mad Max 2, which set the benchmark for the genre a couple of years later. This is watchable but hat you notice in comparison is that this is lacking the action element.
Salem’s Lot (1979)
Town of Vampires/Stephen King Adaptation
One of the best Stephen King adaptations made as a tv mini-series concerning a town overrun by vampires. Director Tobe Hooper excels himself, staging the book in terms a series of captivating set-pieces
Salvage (1979)
Junk Collector Mounts a Trip to The Moon
Pilot for a forgotten short-lived tv series starring Andy Griffith as a junk dealer who decides to mount his own expedition to The Moon. Snappily written and pulls its premise off with a reasonable degree of plausibility
Screams of a Winter Night (1979)
Horror Anthology
Obscure horror anthology from the great era of regional drive-in cinema. The stories lose any potential due to incredibly dreary direction
The Shape of Things to Come (1979)
Space Opera
Shoddy low-budget Canadian-made attempt to jump aboard the Star Wars fad, this promotes itself as a bogus sequel to the H.G. Wells classic
The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid (1979)
Child Alien Visitor Slapstick Comedy
The late Bud Spencer and his compatriot Terence Hill appeared in seventeen badly dubbed, slapstick comedies in the 1970s/80s … Spencer went it alone for this excruciating slapstick take on Close Encounters of the Third Kind in which that film’s kid Cary Guffey is an alien found by Spencer’s sheriff
The Silent Scream (1979)
Slasher/Family Secrets
Halfway reasonable entry in the 1980s slasher cycle that sits with one foot in the Old Dark House genre. This also comes with a great cast of genre veterans.
Snapshot (1979)
Stalker Psycho-Thriller
Trashy Australian psycho-stalker film set in the world of fashion modelling that was bizarrely passed off as a copy of Halloween in the US
Spare Parts (1979)
Missing Person/Organ Harvesting Scheme
A German thriller about a newlywed couple in the US where the husband is abducted and the wife’s attempts to find him take her into the midst of an illicit organ harvesting operation
Spider-Man Strikes Back (1979)
Comic-Book Superhero
The 1970s Spider-Man tv series was a miserable failure at live-action superheroics, little more than a crime show with a costumed hero. This was the best of three theatrically released films edited from it with the plot of students building an atomic bomb has an undeniable real world credibility
Stalker (1979)
Alien Affected Zone
One of the greatest of all SF films from Andrei Tarkovsky about a mysterious zone filled with enigmatic alien phenomena at the centre of which exists a room that can grant one’s heart’s desire
Star Trek – The Motion Picture (1979)
AI Encounter
Long-awaited revival of the tv series on the big screen. While this has a mixed fan reception, it is well worth re-evaluation. It is the only one of the Trek films that reaches for epic, mind-expanding places to find something of a 2001: A Space Odyssey
Stone Cold Dead (1979)
Detective Thriller/Serial Killer
A dull Canadian-made police procedural with detective Richard Crenna on the trail of a sniper that is killing prostitutes
Supersonic Man (1979)
Superhero Film
A cheap Spanish-made copy of the first Christopher Reeve Superman film
Taro, The Dragon Boy (1979)
Anime/Young Boy's Adventures
Likeable and charming Japanese anime for children about a young boy of hubris who sets out on a series of adventures
The Tempest (1979)
Shakespeare Adaptation
Derek Jarman’s take on Shakespeare’s play filled with weird imagery and staged like a journey through a haunted house where all the players are verging on madness
Test Pilot Pirx (1979)
Soviet SF/Android Saboteur Aboard a Space Mission
Soviet era science-fiction adapted from a work by Stanislaw Lem, the original author of Solaris. This heads into rather fascinating Philip K. Dick territory, becoming a whodunnit as the title hero tries to work out who aboard a space mission is an android saboteur
Thirst (1979)
Medical Vampires
Modest Australian film where Chantal Contouri is introduced to a secret vampire society that keeps human beings as cattle
Time After Time (1979)
Time Travelling H.G. Wells vs Jack the Ripper
A clever and ingenious film from Nicholas Meyer in which H.G. Wells builds his own time machine and pursues Jack the Ripper through time to present-day San Francisco. Lots of witty play around Wells’s cultural bewilderment and some great performances
The Tin Drum (1979)
Boy Who Refuses to Grow Up/Nazi Allegory
Volker Schlondorff’s adaptation of Gunther Grass’s darkly funny book about a young boy in Nazi Germany who refuses to grow up
Tourist Trap (1979)
Psychokinetic Psycho
An early Charles Band film with Chuck Connors psychically bringing a collection mannequins to life. A fine little film that develops a eerie strangeness all of its own
The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan (1979)
Time Travel Romance
Classic tv movie in which Lindsay Wagner travels back to the 19th Century to romance Marc Singer. Classic what is the question – what we have is a weepy romantic version of a time travel film that eliminates any of the interesting things like culture clash, advanced knowledge and time paradox
Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979)
Astronaut in King Arthur's Court/Disney Comedy
A Disney version of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court where the story of a man thrown back in time to Camelot is dragged into the era of Star Wars with the addition of space shuttles and androids
Up from the Depths (1979)
Killer Fish
A Jaws copy made by regular Roger Corman scriptwriter Charles B. Griffith. Shot on the cheap in the Philippines and featuring a fish of unidentified species attacking a holiday resort, this is one of the most miserably cheap Jaws copies that came out during this era
Vampire (1979)
Modern-Day Vampire
A vampire movie from the creators of Hill Street Blues, the greatest tv cop show ever made??? The mind boggles as to the possibilities and wonder what amazing creative possibilities they could put on it – alas, the show only ends up staying with the tried and true
The Visitor (1979)
Satan is an Alien/Impregnation
Head-scratchingly strange Italian film that seems made as a crosshatch of 1970s Devil Child films and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Makes no sense in terms of story but worth watching for the bizarreness of its imagery
Vlad the Impaler (1979)
The Historical Dracula
Romanian-made film about the real-life historical tyrant Vlad Tepes who loaned his name to Bram Stoker’s Dracula
When a Stranger Calls (1979)
Babysitter Stalker
The original babysitter stalker film based on a short film that was then expanded out to feature-length following the success of Halloween
Zombie – Flesh Eaters (1979)
Italian Zombie Splatter
Italian film conceived as a quickie copy of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead with the focus on gore scenes. This made the name of cult Italian splatter director Luci Fulci.