37 articles
A Boy and His Dog (1975 film)
A Boy and His Dog (1975) is L.Q. Jones's independently financed black comedy sci-fi film, adapted from Harlan Ellison's 1969 novella, starring Don Johnson and a telepathic dog, set in 2024, and a Hugo-winning cult classic.
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), first sequel to Planet of the Apes, directed by Ted Post, starring James Franciscus and Charlton Heston; astronaut Brent finds telepathic mutants worshipping a doomsday bomb, and the film ends with Earth destroyed.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is Steven Spielberg's 1977 Columbia Pictures science fiction film starring Richard Dreyfuss and François Truffaut, titled from J. Allen Hynek's UFO encounter classification, with a 1980 Special Edition and 1998 director's cut.
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), also released as The Forbin Project, is a Universal sci-fi thriller directed by Joseph Sargent, based on D. F. Jones's 1966 novel, in which the defense supercomputer Colossus merges with the Soviet Guardian and takes over the world.
Damnation Alley
Damnation Alley (1977), also released as Survival Run, is a Jack Smight post-apocalyptic sci-fi film starring Jan-Michael Vincent and George Peppard, adapted loosely from Roger Zelazny's 1969 novel, featuring the Landmaster vehicle and Sound 360 audio, and a box-office failure overshadowed by Star Wars.
Dark Star (film)
Dark Star (1974) is John Carpenter's feature debut, a low-budget USC student film turned sci-fi comedy about a bored spaceship crew, co-written with Dan O'Bannon and later reworked into Alien.
Death Race 2000
Death Race 2000 (1975) is a Paul Bartel dystopian action comedy produced by Roger Corman, starring David Carradine as Frankenstein and Sylvester Stallone, in which Transcontinental Road Race drivers score points by killing pedestrians; a cult classic remade in 2008.
Demon Seed
Demon Seed is a 1977 MGM science-fiction horror film directed by Donald Cammell, adapted from Dean Koontz's 1973 novel, in which the AI Proteus IV imprisons Julie Christie's character and impregnates her.
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) is the third Planet of the Apes film, directed by Don Taylor, in which Cornelius, Zira, and Milo flee their doomed world and land in 1973 Los Angeles.
Futureworld
Futureworld (1976) is Richard T. Heffron's sequel to Westworld, starring Peter Fonda, Blythe Danner, and Yul Brynner, set at the rebuilt Delos resort; notable for the first 3D computer animation in a feature film and its 1979 general-audience release in China.
Heaven Can Wait (1978 film)
Heaven Can Wait (1978) is a Paramount romantic fantasy comedy directed by and starring Warren Beatty with Buck Henry, a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) from Harry Segall's play; it earned nine Oscar nominations, winning Art Direction, and grossed $98.8 million.
Invasion of the Bee Girls
Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), aka Graveyard Tramps, a Denis Sanders sci-fi horror film and Nicholas Meyer's first feature credit, in which mutated bee women in Peckham, California seduce men to death, starring William Smith, Anitra Ford, and Victoria Vetri.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 film)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Philip Kaufman's remake of the 1956 film and Jack Finney's novel, stars Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, and Leonard Nimoy; alien pods duplicate San Franciscans, and it is considered one of the most successful remakes ever made.
Jubilee (1978 film)
Jubilee (1978) is Derek Jarman's British punk film in which Queen Elizabeth I and John Dee travel 400 years into a dystopian London of girl gangs and a media mogul, starring Jenny Runacre, Adam Ant, Jordan and Toyah Willcox, with a Brian Eno score.
Logan's Run (film)
Logan's Run (1976) is a Michael Anderson MGM science fiction film based on Nolan and Johnson's novel, starring Michael York and Jenny Agutter as runners fleeing a domed city that kills everyone at 30; it won a Special Academy Award for visual effects.
Moscow-Cassiopeia (Москва — Кассиопея)
Moscow-Cassiopeia (Москва — Кассиопея) is a 1973 Soviet children's science fiction film by Richard Viktorov, Gorky Studio, in which teenage cosmonauts fly the starship Zarya to Alpha Cassiopeiae; first half of the diptych with Teens in the Universe.
Phase IV
Phase IV (1974) is Saul Bass's only feature film, a science fiction horror work in which cosmic radiation gives an Arizona ant colony collective intelligence; it flopped, won Trieste's Grand Prix, and its cut ending resurfaced in 2012.
Quintet
Quintet (1979) is Robert Altman's science fiction drama starring Paul Newman, set in a post-nuclear ice age where survivors play a deadly board game. Filmed at Montreal's Expo 67 site, it was a critical and financial failure.
Rollerball (1975 film)
Rollerball (1975), also known from Harrison's story "Roller Ball Murder," is Norman Jewison's dystopian sci-fi film starring James Caan as Jonathan E., a champion of a violent corporate-run sport in 2018 who resists his masters.
Silent Running
Silent Running (1972) is Douglas Trumbull's directorial debut, a Universal eco-science-fiction film starring Bruce Dern as botanist Freeman Lowell, who preserves Earth's last forests aboard the Valley Forge with robots Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
Sleeper (1973 film)
Sleeper is a 1973 American science-fiction comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen, in which a health-food store owner is revived 200 years in the future.
Solaris (Солярис) (1972 film)
Solaris (Солярис) is Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 Mosfilm science fiction drama adapted from Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel, starring Donatas Banionis and Natalya Bondarchuk; it won the 1972 Cannes Grand Prix and is known for Lem's disapproval and its contrast with Kubrick's 2001.
Soylent Green
Soylent Green is a 1973 MGM dystopian science fiction film directed by Richard Fleischer, based on Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!, starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, set in 2022 New York, famous for the twist that Soylent Green is people.
Stalker (1979 film)
Stalker (Сталкер) is Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 Soviet philosophical sci-fi film, loosely based on the Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic, about a guide leading a Writer and Professor into the Zone toward a wish-granting Room; plagued by spoiled footage and reshoots, it won Cannes prizes and ranks among the greatest films.
Starcrash
Starcrash (Scontri stellari oltre la terza dimensione) is a 1978 Italian-American science fiction film directed by Luigi Cozzi, starring Caroline Munro, Marjoe Gortner, and David Hasselhoff, a cult Star Wars-era space opera released by New World Pictures in 1979.
The Andromeda Strain (film)
The Andromeda Strain (1971): Robert Wise's Universal adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1969 novel, a documentary-style techno-thriller in which four scientists at the Wildfire underground lab contain an alien microorganism; two Oscar nominations, $6.5 million budget.
The Black Hole (1979 film)
The Black Hole (1979) is Disney's first PG-rated science fiction film, directed by Gary Nelson, about the U.S.S. Palomino crew finding the lost Cygnus at a black hole. It cost $20 million, was Oscar-nominated for cinematography and visual effects, and underperformed at the box office.
The Boys from Brazil (film)
The Boys from Brazil (1978) is Franklin J. Schaffner's thriller adapted from Ira Levin's novel, starring Gregory Peck as Mengele cloning Hitler 94 times and Laurence Olivier as the Wiesenthal-based Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman; three Oscar nominations, Netflix remake planned.
The Final Countdown (film)
The Final Countdown is a 1980 Don Taylor science fiction film starring Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen, in which the USS Nimitz travels back to December 6, 1941, before Pearl Harbor.
The Final Programme
The Final Programme (1973), aka The Last Days of Man on Earth, is Robert Fuest's British sci-fi film adapting Michael Moorcock's first Jerry Cornelius novel, starring Jon Finch and Jenny Runacre; the only Moorcock novel filmed, a cult classic.