11.
HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973)

Clint was on a career high roll in the 1970’s. He followed up Dirty Harry two years later in 1973 with a genre-reinventing western called High Plains Drifter, which he starred in and directed. The film takes Clint’s man with no name archetype gunslinger character and puts it to fresh narrative use with supernatural overtones. The mysterious stranger arrives in a remote town and proceeds to torment the hell out of the residents. Within half an hour of his arrival he kills three men and assaults a woman in a barn. But the town has other things to worry about. Three previous residents who were jailed for apparently stealing a gold ingot are due for release and will soon return to take revenge on the entire town, likely killing a lot of people and probably burning the town to the ground. So the residents hire Clint’s stranger character to protect them, but can they trust him? And what other dark secrets are lurking in the town’s psyche?

High Plains Drifter is brilliantly crafted. It’s the peak of Clint’s directorial skill and is also, for me, his most enigmatic performance. The rest of the cast are all excellent. The musical score is a unique combination of western and horror tropes.

What makes this film so rewatchable for me is the vague identity of the lead character, the complex hidden history of the town and the complex philosophical implications of how the story unfolds.

12.
THE EXORCIST (1973)

Sticking with the year 1973 we have The Exorcist, which took the vague concept of spiritual possession and gave it a face and a voice through a demon-possessed twelve year old girl named Regan. The film managed a double slam dunk of being both more subtle and more brutal than just about any horror movie that came before it. The subtleties can be found in the memsmerizing Iraq sequence at the start of the movie (see my video on the subject below) along with other subliminal build up scenes scattered throughout the first half of the movie, which also collectively carry hidden plot details that some viewers don’t discover at all. The brutality is found in the sheer evil of the demon character’s actions. It physically and mentally tortures its child host, commits murder, manipulates the key events of the film with precision and psychologically torments everybody in the house.

Adding to all this there’s the personal dilemmas of the human characters. Regan is at the age of puberty and the psycho-sexual chaos of that age is played upon by the demon. There’s family break up trauma themes. There’s a priest who’s lost his faith. There’s doctors struggling and failing to identify what is wrong with Regan. And then there’s all the existential questions posed for the audience.

Cinematography, editing and sound design are all excellent. Friedkin’s direction is on the money, as are the acting performances. And there’s lots of visual symbols and metaphors scattered throughout the story.

Check out my many studies of the film on the Film Analysis page.

13.
MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

Jumping ahead two years to 1975 we have Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This is, for me, the greatest comedy ever made. It makes a total mockery of ridiculous Arthurian legends and the snobs that buy into it. The number of classic scenes is staggering – Sir Lancelot’s bloody attack on Swamp Castle, the Knights who say Ni, Brave Sir Robin and his Minstrels, Arthur vs the Black Knight, “Bring out your dead”, the Killer Rabbit, the Bridge of Death … too many to name them all. Most of the runtime is one classic scene straight after another.

It’s also intelligent and packed with sharp social commentary on a variety of subjects. And it breaks almost every rule of feature film making. There’s a scrambled mockery of a title sequence and no end credits at all. Characters refer to events by scene number and blatant modern world details are placed at various points in the film to mismatch the supposed historical setting.

The film lays on the jokes and hidden details so thick that there’s always something new to discover in a rewatch.

14.
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)

Another 1975 film makes the list, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Social and bureaucratic truth bombs are dropped left, right and centre in this movie as Jack Nichsolson’s character Randall McMurphy rocks the boat on a mental health ward. The film challenges perceptions of what constitutes being crazy, whether the staff in such institutions are crazy themselves, what kind of therapies do and don’t work, and whether the mentally ill should be locked up at all. Even male / female gender relations are a major issue in the story. The issues are complex and the film is a bit one-sided in places, but those issues needed to be raised and most of them are still relevant today. 

Rather than lecture the audience, this film uses humour and irony to make its case. A selection of off-the-wall crazies on the mental health ward each bring their own brand of entertaining shenanigans, all played expertly by a superb cast. Louise Fletcher near enough steals the show as Nurse Rachid. Along with Nicholson’s  presence they pack the film with so much character it’s hard to take it all in in one viewing, hence the great rewatch value.

Between the humour Cuckoo’s Nest has plenty of serious drama to boot and the film has one of most bitter sweet endings in cinema history. A first rate example of how to educate and entertain an audience in equal measure.

I've got three longform studies of this film, all available on my Film Analysis page.

15.
STAR WARS (1977)

Moving two years forward to 1977, it had to be on the list … Star Wars, the ultimate blockbuster. George Lucas had already gone the art house sci-fi route with his excellent THX-1138, but it was too artzy to make a lot of money. So Lucas says, to hell with it, and goes all in for the entertainment value. He blends educational historical allegories with every bit of entertainment he can cram into the runtime … aliens, monsters, robots, spaceships, wizards (Ben Kenobi), cowboys (Han Solo), a princess (Leia), dogs (Chewbacca), samurais (Darth Vader), even exploding planets. As if that wasn’t enough, Star Wars was the ultimate special effects movie of its time. Light sabres were a new cinematic invention. The story structure and editing were tight and rapid with no filler. The score was explosively bombastic. The sound effects were epic – check out those light sabre swipes. Mr Lucas denies us the opportunity to be bored. How could anybody not like this film?

And it’s far from shallow. References and hints to character histories and unseen events are all over the film and quite a few set ups are made for sequels. The word Vader literally means Father. This has been debated as to whether it was intended, but the film certainly has enough other sneaky references for the Vader / Father reference to be plausible too. "He (Luke) has too much of his Father in him ... That's what I'm afraid of."

Today, in the age of CGI overload, Star Wars still has the power to brush aside all comers because it has other magic tricks up its sleeve that CGI can’t do – relatable and charismatic characters who we actually care about, actors who are actually good at playing their roles, and jokes that are actually funny.

It changed cinema forever, paving the way for a new breed of movies in the late 70’s and 80’s that would take sci-fi, horror and action to new levels of pure entertainment. We owe a lot to Star Wars.

Check out my studies on the original Star Wars trilogy here.

Star Wars Tie-Fighter scene

16.
SUPERMAN (1978)

Just one year after Star Wars, Superman came along and did the same for the superhero genre. Superheroes were generally considered to be childs’ play. The old superhero comics had their adult fans, but general adult audiences were indifferent until this movie smashed its way onto the screens.

Of course to achieve such a feat required the best practical special effects techniques of the time. The film delivered on that front, but the achievement went way beyond special effects. The script was a beast. It packed in a ton of drama. The first hour alone is deeply tragic to the point where we are begging for Superman to show up and bring some positivity. Very clever reverse psychology … fill the audience with deep melancholy THEN give them the superhero antidote.

Superman himself is written and played to absolute perfection. Despite his early life trauma he’s always charming, polite and positive. And he has faith in humanity even though he isn’t technically human. Christopher Reeve embodies these traits to the point that I still have been unable to accept any other actor in the role. As they say Christopher Reeve IS Superman and always will be.

The remaining cast get a bit overshadowed to say the least but they’re great as well. Margot Kidder is fabulous as Lois Lane and Gene Hackman has been incredibly underappreciated for his hilarious version of Lex Luthor. And then there’s Marlon Brando, who single-handedly infuses the film with Shakespearian sophistication in the first twenty minutes. His character dies, but his ghost lives on throughout the story. His farewell speech to his baby son puts a lump in my throat every time I see the film.

On top of all that Superman is an extremely funny comedy, when it’s not pulling at our heart strings. Lex Luthor and his two side-kicks are the type of crowd you could have a crazy night on the town with. And, as if Reeve hadn’t done enough in his portrayal as Superman, he also smashed it with the humour as the fumbling, but loveable goon Clarke Kent.

The icing on the cake is the gorgeous cinematography, epic at every turn, and John Williams’ heavenly score. He’d just produced the score for Star Wars a year before and then he hit the same heights of brilliance again for this film.

Superman was, and is, the best superhero ever made. Nothing else comes close for my money. Not even the second film, as brilliant as it was in its own right.

Check out my 63 min video Setting Up Superman for a deep dive on the first hour of the movie - available on my Film Analysis page, and watch my half hour study Superman and Lois Lane's subliminal sex scene ...

17.
THE WARRIORS (1979)

One year after Superman was tearing it up in 1978, a very different type of movie was hitting home runs in 1979. That movie was Walter Hill’s urban violence masterpiece The Warriors. Set among the poverty-stricken street gangs of New York, this movie tells the tale of a particular gang who get falsely blamed for the killing of a widely respected gangland boss called Cyrus. This gang, The Warriors, have to fight their way across the city to get home until their name is cleared. Naturally, there are epic battles with rival street gangs.

The Warriors themselves are a potent mix of memorable characters from the quiet slickness of their new leader Swan to the fearlessness of Ajax to the wisecracking humour of Vernon and the tribal cool of Cochise. They’re all great. And the villains are just as good. The deadly serious leader of the Riffs looks and acts like The Terminator, Cyrus is given a magnificent presence by a little known actor named Roger Hill, and a personal favourite of mine is David Patrick Kelly as the hilariously psychotic Luther.

Thanks to the mix of varied characters, this film has a wide-range of interesting sub-plots, including a very unusual love story, Ajax stupidly getting himself arrested, and a female gang honey trap. The fight scenes are short but frenetic. The cinematography and editing manage to make the rough streets look poetic. There’s a kick-ass soundtrack, fusing rock, funk and electronica.

All this is packed neatly into a runtime of just 92 minutes, yet we come away from the film feeling like we’ve explored an entire world.

I've got a handful of videos available on The Warriors, including a character analysis of Ajax ...

18.
ALIEN (1979)

Another 1979 classic is the incredible Alien. Where do we start with this multi-layered masterpiece? The basic plot seems to be very simple. Space truckers encounter an alien species and it kills them one by one. But it delivers so much more plot-wise … crew politics, a derelict alien vessel carrying a bioweapon, corporate conspiracy, an android in hiding, failed leadership, a nuclear detonation and an emergent female hero who is actually believable (no 90 pound women beating up 250 pound aliens in this movie).

But even all that is only scratching the surface. Alien has one of the most memorable and fascinating creature designs in film history. Frome giant egg to facehugger to chestburster to full sized adult, the film keeps its creature novel and unpredictable. And then there’s the incredible visual designs of the creature and the derelict ship it came from. The dead space jockey is one of the greatest props in film history.

And still there’s more. The film is jam-packed with hypnotic subliminal communication and unspoken psychological themes … birth trauma (from both the parent and child point of view), Nostromo interiors that mimic physical features of the alien, foreshadowing, our natural fear of insects, existential dread in a hostile universe, even the philosophical misery of hard determinism is fused into the story.

Add to all that the film has sublime cinematography throughout, incredible editing by Terry Rawlings, some of the best sci-fi sound effects you’ll ever hear, and Jerry Goldsmith’s captivating score, which hits all the right notes.

The result is an endlessly rewatchable movie that Hollywood has endlessly tried and failed to live up to with its sequels, prequels and spin-offs. Over forty-five years later Alien still towers over its cheap imitators.

This is also one my most studied films.

19.
STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979)

We’ve already had two 1979 movies on this list and here’s another one, the criminally underrated Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It doesn’t have bug-eyed aliens, laser battles, explosions and chase scenes because it doesn’t need them. TMP is one of the most imaginative, intelligent and awe-inspiring sci-fi stories ever put on screen. Its concepts are as epic as you can get. An alien vessel millions of times bigger than the Enterprise ship itself and surrounded by an energy field larger than our own sun is on its way through deep space with a destination of Earth. Who or what inhabits this ship and what do they want from Earth? The mostly retired crew of the Enterprise are drafted to intercept using a redesigned ship and all the politics involved with integrating with new crew members.

I won’t tell you the plot conclusions here, but let’s just say it all involves deep philosophical issues related to human evolution, the role of technology in our future, the roles of logic and emotion in the human psyche itself, the difficulties in communicating with a vastly more advanced alien intelligence and a few other things.

Totally unlike any other Star Trek film TMP is very moody and imposing, it’s virtually an existential horror film actually. The visuals are darker and more clinical than in the other films of the series. The dialogue and acting is better than any other Trek film. The musical score is easily the best of the entire series. The practical special effects are grandiose and terrifying.

TMP is a work of art that steps way beyond the more juvenile elements of the TV series that spawned it. Some were willing to take the psychological leap forward into its new territory. Others weren’t. I’m one of those who wholeheartedly embraced its new concepts and so, it remains for me one of the most enjoyable and rewatchable films of all time.

20.
MOONRAKER (1979)

As if we didn’t have enough sci-fi brilliance in 1979 already, we have one more film from that year that makes my list here and it will likely be one of the most controversial on this list, given how many people mistakenly hate this film … and that is Moonraker, the best James Bond film ever for my money. Not Goldfinger or Casino Royale or any of the others. Moonraker !!! But why, Rob? Why? Lots of reasons …

This film is way ahead of all the other Bond films in terms of grand concepts. For starters it’s the only time the series took James Bond into space. And it does it in an epic style that combines the awe-inspiring wonder and technical realism of 2001: A Space Odyssey with the adventurous fun of Star Wars. It even showed off NASA’s space shuttle in action more than a year before the real thing made its first flights. The technicalities of space exploration bring us unique elements like an attempt to kill Bond in a take-off simulator, a majestic space flight and docking sequence, a visually unique space station, Bond thwarting his captors by switching off the artificial gravity, a space laser battle unlike anything else in the sci-fi genre, and a hot atmosphere skimming race to destroy germ warfare carrying globes. All of these elements alone make Moonraker stand out as both a unique sci-fi film and a unique Bond film. And there’s lots more …

The skydiving opening was a first in cinema and did it twelve years before the movie Point Break followed in its steps. The cinematography and musical score are better than anything else in the entire Bond franchise.

The plot itself is more epic, terrifying and visionary than anything else in the series. Billionaire space exploration investor Hugo Drax plans to wipe out humanity with a satellite distributed nerve gas, while he and his cult of followers hide safely on an orbiting space station until it’s safe to return to Earth and build their draconian paradise. To that effect it takes massive inspiration from Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. The film also was socially visionary in that it shows how a Nazi-like leadership can re-emerge in the modern world, while masking itself in a cloak of multi-culturalism. Hardly any movies, then or since, have had the balls to tackle that hot potato subject.

All this is presented in a very good spy story structure. And near enough all of it has been deliberately ignored by critics who hate Roger Moore and hate the film’s playful sense of humour, while they rave on the pretentious fake seriousness of the Craig-era Bond films, which made the criminal mistake of shutting children out of the viewing experience. Moonraker is smarter, bolder and a lot more fun. It tackles multiple political and technological issues without preaching, and it does it in a way that can be enjoyed by the entire family.

Moonraker - the Kubrickian James Bond movie