’70s Sci-Fi Movies That Still Hold Up Today

In the 1970s, sci-fi was starting to evolve into the commercial genre it would eventually become. Thanks to the success of films like Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and George Lucas’ “Star Wars,” sci-fi transformed from an occasionally visited cinematic genre into a source of full-blown mainstream blockbusters. Throughout the ’60s and throughout the ’70s, though, some successful sci-fi franchises were already at work, squeaking open the doors that “Star Wars” would eventually kick. Multiple “Planet of the Apes” movies, for instance, were raking in money, while companies like Toho and Daiei found great success with their latter-day Godzilla and Gamera films in Japan. 

Meanwhile, there was also a lot of heady experimentation at work, no doubt inspired by the success of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” in 1968. A lot of 1970s sci-fi was bitter and pessimistic about the future, matching a lot of the cultural attitudes at the time. Lucas himself made the dour and cynical “THX 1138” in the 1970s, while Andrei Tarkovsky made slow-moving, melancholy sci-fi movies like “Solaris” and “The Stalker.” Charlton Heston, the star of “Apes,” also made two notable dystopian thrillers in the form of “The Omega Man” and “Soylent Green.” “Logan’s Run” envisioned a future wherein everyone over 30 is hunted and killed, and Saul Bass’ “Phase IV” posited that ants will soon evolve into our masters. Even John Carpenter’s low-budget comedy “Dark Star” ended with a sentient nuclear bomb going off. There wasn’t a lot to look forward to. Is it any wonder that the optimistic “Star Wars” was so successful as an antidote?

The following films are some of the better sci-fi films of the 1970s, and each one still holds up as either philosophical treatises or as bonkers, immortal entertainments.

Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel “Slaughterhouse-Five” was once a staple of high school kids everywhere. Vonnegut’s whimsical, blank style, paired with his oft-fantastical, genre-bending tales, created a unique style that is imminently readable, but that also gives way to idle, pragmatic philosophizing. The book begins with the phrase “All of this happened, more or less,” introducing the narrator as unreliable. The premise of the novel is that the protagonist — who is Kurt Vonnegut — becomes “unstuck” in time, suddenly living the events of his life out of order. He finds himself shifting to his past as a soldier during World War II, a time when he was held as a prisoner of war (something that actually happened to Vonnegut). Then, in a flash, he is in his own future, living on a distant planet called Tralfamador. The Tralfamadorians explain to Vonnegut that all moments are fated and cannot be changed, and that’s just the nature of things. 

In 1972, director George Roy Hill seemingly did the impossible and adapted “Slaughterhouse-Five” to the big screen. The Vonnegut narrator, named Billy Pilgrim, is played by Michael Sacks. Like the books, the events of his life are told nonchronologically. He is a soldier. He is on a distant planet. In the present, he is living a typical and boring suburban life with an inattentive wife (Sharon Gans) and raising two unremarkable children. He nearly dies in a plane crash, and his wife is killed in a car accident. He lives out his elder years having sex with attractive women on Tralfamador.

The movie skillfully blends Vonnegut’s penchant for both tragedy and whimsy. There are horrors in the world, but life is a slapstick adventure. Vonnegut is hard to adapt (see also: “Breakfast of Champions” or “Slapstick”), but Hill was equal to the task. 

Science fiction is a boundless genre, limited only by the imagination of the author. The genre allows one’s mind to flow out into the distant cosmos, pondering the infinity of space, and out into the distant future, pondering the endlessness of time. It’s a pity that so many sci-fi stories remain so frustratingly earthbound. Many have pointed out that, say, “Star Trek” only creates aliens that look like humans with rubber appliances on their faces. 

René Laloux’s 1973 film “Fantastic Planet,” using animation as its medium, breaks the imagination open and presents a sci-fi world — the planet Ygam — that looks and feels truly alien. This world is ineffable, almost beyond human understanding. Even the music sounds (by Alain Goraguer) like it came from another world. Laloux’s film follows the fate of a tiny, human creature called an Om. The little Om is named Terr, and it was raised by a giant, blue-skinned, red-eyed alien called a Draag. Terr’s Draag owner dotes on him, which annoys her parents. The Draags have reached an eerie form of enlightenment and frequently meditate until their bodies dissipate. Their minds project through the cosmos to distant worlds. Meanwhile, Terr discovers his owner’s automatic learning device and becomes more knowledgeable about his origins and the true nature of Draag society.

The Draags aren’t all that enlightened, however, as they still keep humans as pets and regularly exterminate them like vermin. If sci-fi is meant to expand our perspectives on the world, then “Fantastic Planet” is a rousing success. It’s visually fascinating, strange, and sometimes off-puttingly confusing. The flora and fauna of Ygam do not operate by any known rules, and the Draags are more than mere giants. They are truly alien. 

Ever since the invention of the nuclear bomb in 1945, the clock has been ticking on humanity. How long before someone decides to use one to wipe out all life on Earth? Nuclear fear has been a preoccupation of sci-fi ever since 1945, with many movies made about how we are teetering on the brink. Some even envisioned what the Earth might look like after a nuclear war, and post-apocalyptic narratives became common. 

One of the more amusing apocalyptic movies of the decade is L.Q. Jones’ comedy “A Boy and His Dog.” Based on a story by Harlan Ellison, “A Boy and His Dog” takes place in 2024, after the world has been reduced to rubble. The main character is a horny teenager named Vic (Don Johnson) who scours the wasteland looking for food, shelter, and supplies. More than anything, though, he just wants to have sex. Sadly, there aren’t a lot of potential sex partners in the post-apocalypse. Vic has no morals and no compunctions. Joining him on his journey is his dog, Blood, who also tries to serve as his conscience. Blood, you see, has become psychic and can communicate with Vic telepathically. We hear Blood’s voice, sounding like actor Tim McIntire. 

Eventually, the pair will find an underground utopia which, perhaps predictably, isn’t all that utopian. The ending is as amusingly bleak as one can ever hope to see. “A Boy and His Dog” is hilarious in how dark it is. The world is at an end, morality has withered, and humanity will likely die out soon, but that won’t stop a teenager’s stupid libido from raging. 

Michola Meyer’s 1979 time-travel film “Time After Time” has a marvelous premise. It seems that author H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) didn’t just write a novel called “The Time Machine,” but actually knew how to build them. In the year 1896, Wells is hosting a dinner party, showing off his time machines, when the police burst in. One of his guests is — get this — Jack the Ripper. Jack hijacks a time machine and takes it into the distant future of 1979. Wells, equipped with a secondary machine, follows him to apprehend him. Jack the Ripper is played by the immortal David Warner. A great deal of the appeal of “Time After Time” is the thought of seeing two British acting giants like McDowell and Warner playing off one another. 

Wells finds 1979 to be dizzying and off-putting. He is, however, determined and tries to adapt to the future as best he can. He felt that humanity was headed for a utopia in the 1890s, and was shocked to find that’s not the case. Wells finds help from a woman named Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen). Readers of Wells will know that Amy Robbins married Wells in 1895, so everything is fated to happen in a certain way. 

Jack the Ripper, meanwhile, loved 1979, feeling that his nihilistic philosophies of degraded morals, open murder, and brazen crime had finally come to pass. Meyer wrote a tidy little moral into his film. Meyer would go on to direct “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” and “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” which were both hits and often called the best “Star Trek” movies. His true passion, however, was with detective fiction, Sherlock Holmes, and other adventure stories. “Time After Time” is Meyer at his best. 

Giulio Paradisi, using the name Michael J. Paradise, directed “The Visitor” in 1979, and it’s still baffling audiences to this day. “The Visitor” is perhaps the wildest, strangest, most unwatchable sci-fi film of the 1970s, and this was a decade that gave us “Zardoz.” “The Visitor” is a sci-fi Messiah story that combines elements of “2001” and “The Omen,” mixing aliens and demons into a hallucinatory mishmash that can only lead to madness. If you’re the right age, and it’s legal in your area, be sure to pick up some booze or mind-altering edibles before you watch “The Visitor,” because you’re going to need it. 

The story follows two rival cults. The Messianic cult is watched by a grandfatherly John Huston and led by his friend, the Christ-like Franco Nero (!). It seems that Earth is caught in the middle of an eternal conflict of cosmic good and evil, with demons and Messiahs constantly manipulating the world to produce a Christ or an Antichrist every so often. The “good” aliens are overseen by Yahweh, a.k.a. God, while the evil ones are overseen by Zatteen, a.k.a. Satan. The godly aliens do interpretive dance on rooftops, while the satanic ones meet in big boardrooms around giant tables. A little girl has been born to an ordinary housewife named Barbara (Joanne Nail), and both cults rush in, hoping to influence the baby into becoming a savior or a destroyer. Zatteen seems to have the upper hand when she gets a gun for her eighth birthday and shoots a guest (!). 

Legendary director Sam Peckinpah is in the film, but evidently, he was so drunk, they had to dub all his lines. 

“The Visitor” will turn your mind inside-out. It’s still powerful. Seek it out immediately.