“It just doesn’t matter.” – Meatballs
Those are some large balls.
Going back through the list of movies that came out in 1979, you could see the excellence that would come in the 1980s, but it wasn’t, for the most part, there yet. The formula wasn’t quite right. Some movies left off the list like The Villian, for instance, should never have been made. I love slapstick. I love satire. But The Villian was just horrible in the way it executed both – it had less character development than a Roadrunner cartoon.
On the flip side, some of the movies below are classics that are far better than anything being made today. A great, classic movie that hits all the beats and isn’t a sequel is possible. Also of note, there just weren’t a lot of sequels made in 1979 – Hollywood® still felt it had ideas.
Many of these I saw either on video or on HBO® later and not as releases in the theater. Also, as always, the list is in no particular order and excludes sequels.
In a city where 10,000 of Trump’s ICE are on their tail, they’re just trying to get home to Oaxaca.
The Warriors – “Warriors . . . come out to play . . . Warriors . . . come out to pla-ay . . . .” The 1970s were a darker time in the country, and I think folks generally looked around and wondered if it was really the end. Gangs and crime were top news in major cities, especially New York where The Warriors was set. On a re-watch a few years ago, it wasn’t nearly as well done as I had remembered, but did okay telling the story of a gang (the eponymous Warriors) who had to make it to their home turf, after falsely being accused of killing the guy who was trying to unite the rest of the gangs to take control of New York City. Violence was okay, but the movie was sadly missing in hot chicks.
I can imagine The Tall Man as a Tall Cat. Quite a bit less threatening.
Phantasm – It’s 1978, you’re 28 and somehow you’ve scraped together $300,000 bucks, and have a script you wrote. So, why not direct. And be the photographer, too? That’s Phantasm. It has all the hallmarks of a huge failure, but it turned into a very well-made horror movie for the budget, including some very inventive effects. I first saw this one as a late night movie on some cable network (The USA® Network??) and really enjoyed it. I give it four spiked silver balls out of five.
Hey, it’s almost like something is missing from this picture. Oh, yeah, it’s his dead father.
The Champ – Okay, technically this is a remake, and not a sequel. I only saw it once, and that was in the theater. Why did we go? Ma Wilder wanted to see it, because she had seen the original when she was young. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know that, apparently in the last few minutes of the film, it gets really dusty: out of 250 film clips shown to 500 people, the last three minutes of this movie were judged the saddest by a majority.
What is he holding, exactly?
Mad Max – This is the movie where I first saw St. Mel the Gibson. It was on HBO™ late one night and I watched it again and again. Every Mad Max® sequel looks like this movie – the fast-paced shots and the impossibly quick kinetic action on screen. The dialogue is good (well, action movie good), and (like The Warriors above) takes place in a world that is slipping away.
Where’s the egg? Stupid A.I.
Alien – This movie is a classic, and created a new genre that people have been trying to copy since it appeared on screen. Mostly with poor results. Even James Cameron wisely decided to avoid trying to emulate Alien and instead went and created the classic military science fiction film. The film is simple: it’s a haunted house, but in space. Where no one can hear you scream, but that’s not exactly true because I saw it in a movie theater and there was tons of screaming and most of it was in stereo.
Old Bill Murray makes it a thousand times creepier.
Meatballs – Again, seen on HBO™. I bought a DVD to watch it again around 2010, since I remembered it as a version of “Rocky Balboa, but he’s a kid at a summer camp, and he runs instead being a boxer”. Then I re-watched it. Oh, my, this movie is beyond cringe, and the sexual innuendo involving young teens was more creepy than watching Biden around eight-year-olds. The plus side? Bill Murray developing into the comic genius that would steal the show in Ghostbusters.
ApocaPEZ® now? Why didn’t Brando shave like he was supposed to?
Apocalypse Now – There are some really great parts to this film, but as a complete film I think it’s a failure – the odd scenes with Brando and Sheen detract from the rest of the film. Brando was awful and I think his performance would have been better if he had not even shown up and been replaced by a one-legged kangaroo. This movie, I think, more than anything (thankfully) killed the experimental films of the 1970s. I saw this one on the television for the first time, so it was obviously very heavily edited. I’ve seen a couple of versions since, and maintain that there is a good ending hiding in there somewhere in the original script Coppola bought from John Milius (Dirty Harry, Red Dawn). Sadly, Coppola never found it. I’m likely alone in this opinion.
Skol!
Monty Python’s Life of Brian – The local college played this movie one afternoon much later than the original release date. Since it was meant for the students, admission was absurdly low, $0.50. Two quarters. But the film? Hilarious. Even though it’s a touchy subject, Monty Python made it clear that Brian was not Jesus, since there were several scenes depicting an intersection with some of the miracles of Jesus. What’s hilarious from 2025 is how it mocked the GloboLeftist movement, “Where’s the fetus going to gestate, in a box?” A nearly perfect comedy.
Skol!
10 – There are some genuinely funny moments in 10, but they are few and far between. The plot centers around Dudley Moore wanting to bang someone’s new wife. Not his new wife, but some other guy. The only reason teenage John Wilder really wanted to se this movie was, well, let’s say there were two reasons. The movie, though, was very much in keeping with Hollywood’s increasing use of film to spread the “anything goes” sexual propaganda of the era.
And now for something completely different.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture – When Star Wars made it big at the box office, absolutely everyone wanted to recreate it. They stuffed Gene Roddenberry full of money, and took a script from an abandoned television show (Star Trek: Phase II) and fluffed it out to a movie that lasted 36 hours. I kid. It only lasted 18. It made a bunch of money because people missed Star Trek enough to spend six days of their lives watching this this very lovingly crafted movie that consisted mostly of people talking in rooms. At the end, one person has space sex with the computer-possessed body of a bald woman and everything is solved.
I told the A.I. I wanted Manet, not Monet. Stupid A.I.
The Jerk – Steve Martin was at the top of his standup comic success and decided that movies would probably be easier. The result? One of the funniest movies ever – The Jerk. It’s about a poor black child (Steve Martin) that goes from rags to riches to rags to much improved rags.
The Mouse is now public domain, baby.
The Black Hole – This one I saw in the theater, and it certainly was one of the causes of the death of Disney®. The Black Hole was stupidly expensive, aimed at eight-year-olds, and mixed science fiction with ghosts and religion, but in a really bad way. Very, very bad. What could have saved it? Not filming it.
Deleted due to length: 1941 and Being There.
There is an amazing drop off in quality in just a single year. 1980? Some good films. 1979? The lingering effects of the doom from Jimmy Carter’s Bidenesque presidency dominated. We were a defeated nation, filled with inflation, embarrassed by what went on in Afghanistan and Iran, and overrun with the GloboLeft.
What a difference a year makes.
This post has been blessed by St. Mel.
“……it had less character development than a Roadrunner cartoon.”.
You should retract that statement and apologize to your readers as Wile E. Coyote is a beloved character actor and the patron saint of mechanical engineers. He’s got plenty of depth on screen ranging from happy when he thinks about eating the roadrunner, to angry, when he gets foiled by the roadrunner, and even an amazing portrayal of surprise when gravity catches up to him after he goes over a cliff.
He can act circles around any Kardashian…
And besides, he’s my avatar! I’ve always thought Wyle E. is the perfect combination of brilliance and befuddlement.
Yup. And Wile E. Coyote was better than any actor in that film. It was a complement for Wile E. Coyote, and not a disparagement.
Being There – One of my favorite movies. True dark comedy. “Life is a state of mind.”
1941 – A National Lampoon movie, but made by Steven Spielberg.
The Amityville Horror – One of the best horror movies. It actually has a plot.
The Muppet Movie – Muppets on bicycles!
Kramer vs. Kramer – Boomer divorce, the movie.
Moonraker – Technically a James Bond movie.
Starcrash – Don’t hassle the Hoff!
Hair – Hippie nostalgia, with actual hippies.
The China Syndrome – Opening shots in the Leftist war against nuclear power.
Love at First Bite – “Children of the night, shut up!”
Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens – Written by Roger Ebert. Wow, what a pervert.
Zulu Dawn – Is it a sequel when it concerns a battle lost the previous day?
Escape from Alcatraz – Clint Eastwood and Patrick McGoohan! Danny Glover’s first movie.
Caligula – Made to offend absolutely everyone. The head chopping machine is pretty cool, though.
The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh – Astrology to the rescue! Filmed on location.
Going In Style – Old comedians get bored, rob a bank, break the casino.
About a third of those made my first cut, but then I had to reduce the list. There was a lot of head . . . chopping in Caligula.
Agree that 1979 was not a great year for movies despite spawning a few timeless classics like Mad Max and Alien. I was a big fan of Alan Alda from MASH so I remember going to see his forgettable movie Seduction of Joe Tynan that year. I was also a big fan of Clint so I also went to see his classic movie Escape From Alcatraz on first release. I didn’t see the over-the-top Caligula with its all-star cast that year when it first came out, but Malcolm McDowell went on from playing the lead role in that one to playing H.G. Wells across from Mary Steenburgen in my favorite time travel movie of all, Time After Time. This is a somewhat obscure 1979 movie well worth looking up and watching if you haven’t seen it.
Besides its endearing charm, TAT singlehandedly pulled the entire Star Trek franchise back from the brink after the disappointment of ST : The Motion Picture. Rising talent Nicholas Meyer, who wrote the screenplay and directed TAT, was later tapped to write scripts for and direct two ST movies including Wrath of Kahn. Supposedly Ricardo Montalban had zero interest in revisiting the role of Kahn… until he heard that Meyer was script writer and director for the project. Turns out TAT was one of Montalban’s favorite movies and he agreed to do ST: Wrath of Kahn solely because of that connection.
1979 – it was the worst of times, it was the best of times…for Star Trek.
Sorry Ricky, Mary Steenburgen couldn’t act her way out of a handbag. And she’s a carpenters dream. Alan Alda is a lying communist piece of trash.
I enjoyed TAT, and it did make the first cut. Alda? No, I’ll skip him, knowing what I know now.
And if you don’t have two hours, 95% of the key moments for TAT are the two minute trailer…
https://youtu.be/GyM_8Al0_yw
I saw The Black Hole in theaters as well, I think that was the only one on the list I saw in person. The Warriors really, REALLY, didn’t age well. At all. I tried watching last year and it was so corny and awful I had to turn it off.
Warriors did have great aesthetics. One of my friends went as a member of the baseball gang for Halloween in 83.
1979 boasted one of the greatest comedies, The In-Laws, with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. Arthur Hiller gives the actors a lot of leeway and it is inspired lunacy from beginning to end. Few movies I’ve seen are this unpredictable on first viewing. I’d put it right up there with The Jerk and it is my highest recommendation not listed above.
Two all-timers among guilty pleasures, H.O.T.S. and Malibu High, came out in 1979 as well. Two staples of late night Skinemax for the next decade. The former was very much inspired by Animal House’s success, the latter is available on Tubi now and should be seen once–cheesy and unbelievable in equal measure.
And I have to mention Fast Break, Gabe Kaplan’s bid for movie stardom after his Kotter fame on TV. Possibly the least PC sports comedy of its era–it is a close race with the original Bad News Bears. And as a result, very funny. Underrated. Worth seeking out IMO.
Serpentine, Shel, serpentine!
H.O.T.S. Ha! I waited up until late at night to watch that more than once!
“The Warriors” is an all-time favorite. Turn up the volume when “Luther” is doing his thing with the beer bottles and you can hear somebody – presumably Walter Hill – say, “And, action!” as a cue to start his notorious chant.
And, I think that was an improv by that actor. Made the whole movie.
Partially correct. He “borrowed” it from a childhood bully who would taunt him with a similar chant.
Thank you for the trip back to 79. I graduated high school that year. Most of those movies I watched at the drive in. Some I enjoyed some I didn’t. But you are correct about the mood of the country. And to end this. I was fortunate enough to vote for Reagan TWICE!!
Hehehehe! His only problem? He didn’t go far enough.
Weirdly, I saw almost all of the movies on this list whereas I had only been batting about .500 on your other lists. Probably because by the time I was in high school, all of these were being shown on cable or network TV. Other than “Alien,” I agree that most of these have not aged well. I remember liking “Warriors” when I first saw it, but I couldn’t even get through the trailer when I saw it pop up as a recommendation on one of the streaming services recently. “Black Hole” and “Star Trek the Motion Picture” were both attempts to make something as popular as “Star Wars” that failed miserably. The only good part of the Star Trek movie was the scene showing V’ger destroy the Klingon warships and that was at the very beginning. Then you had to sit through a long slog of a movie that made “2001: A Space Odyssey” seem like an action flick. I can’t remember any good scenes from “Black Hole.”
The Klingon warships in Star Trek: TMP were very cool.
The best part of “Apocalypse Now” is, of course, the section with Robert Duvall and the helicopters. Best best best. Rest of the movie could easily go away. The rest of the movie approaches or surpasses the dreckiness of “The Deer Hunter.” Which also sucked leech-covered balls.
Star Trek-TMP was… okay. Not great, not horrible, just okay. The best part was the Klingon music, which actually sounded rather militaristic and ‘alien’ compared to the rest of the music in the movie.
And I must be some serious slacker because I have yet to watch “The Road Warrior.” Got it, haven’t seen it yet.
As to “The Black Hole,” much like “TRON,” Disney didn’t know what the heck it was doing with that movie. I actually like it and enjoy the dark gothic steampunk meets Logan’s Run feel of the movie. Really, it’s basically “Alien meets Dracula” but with wide open spaces, better lighting, and some creepy gothic-horror dude running the show. I like it a lot better than any other movie dealing with black holes, especially “Interstellar,” which I thought was a large bowl of dog vomit.
And, “10”? God, not another stupid inane piece of garbage starring Dudley Moore, probably one of the worst actors pushed into top roles ever. They’d have done better having David Hasselhoff do the main role.
You missed “The Great Santini,” yet another Robert Duvall tour-de-force. Dark military humor and family drama, just like real life, but starring Robert Duvall. Seriously, is there any movie not made better by having Robert Duvall in it? He’s like the serious version of Bruce Campbell, who always brings up any piece of dogsqueeze he’s in.
Then there’s people who think “All That Jazz” is an excellent movie. Usually someone who actually hasn’t seen it but listens only to critics. Bleh. Definitely one of the bottom 10 of 1979. People who like this need to be kicked to death. Hard. And then resurrected. And kicked to death again, hard, and resurrected. This movie was Hollywood’s way of saying they really hated their audience and wished their audience to die by being kicked to death. It’s the 1979 version of “Cabaret,” which sucks tick-infested donkey balls. Same type of people like that crapfest that like “All that Jazz,” being people who’ve never actually sat through the whole horrid show. Want a better sad musical than either of these? Watch “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” especially the European release which has one more number which ties everything together. Much better than “All that Jazz.”
A little FYI. Both “Santini” & “The Big Chill” were filmed in the same house in Beaufort, SC. “Santini” was based on Pat Conroy’s semi-autobiographical novel of his childhood here.
That house has been extensively remodeled and now includes an adjacent property & house. It’s marsh front with a deep water dock. I’d guess it’s yours for $4MM or so.
Loved Life of Brian. OK, not the first time I saw it, but a couple weeks later realized if I can’t deal with at least the serious parts of it, I’m not as secure in my faith as I should be.
I’ve come to accept it as the film that separates those who can discuss religious concepts from those whose faith is too fragile to do so.
And so, since most people do not appreciate Life of Brian, it creates a bright line separating those I can’t talk about serious matters from those I can.
Very well said. And, I sense, almost everyone who hangs out here you could have a serious conversation with.