10 Movies From 1979 That Are Now Considered Classics

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Luc Haasbroek is a writer and videographer from Durban, South Africa. He has been writing professionally about pop culture for eight years. Luc's areas of interest are broad: he's just as passionate about psychology and history as he is about movies and TV. He's especially drawn to the places where these topics overlap.

Luc is also an avid producer of video essays and looks forward to expanding his writing career. When not writing, he can be found hiking, playing Dungeons & Dragons, hanging out with his cats, and doing deep dives on whatever topic happens to have captured his interest that week.

1979 sits right at that fault line. Cinematically, it's a year defined by extremes: apocalyptic visions of the future, harrowing portraits of war, absurdist comedy, existential science fiction, and intimate domestic drama all coexisting in uneasy proximity.

Many of these films were ambitious to the point of recklessness, sometimes chaotic in their production, and occasionally misunderstood on release. Yet what unites them now is their refusal to play it safe. The titles below weren’t designed to be comfortable, tidy, or easily digestible. They aimed for something bigger, whether that was truth, spectacle, meaning, or myth.

10 ‘Nosferatu the Vampyre’ (1979)

Nosferatu the Vampyre looking intently in Nosferatu the Vampyre

"The blood is the life." Werner Herzog remade F.W. Murnau's classic film, giving it an even more hypnotic and mournful treatment. Paying homage to both Bram Stoker's source material and the 1922 movie, it follows Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) as he travels to Transylvania to meet the eerie Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski), unwittingly unleashing a plague of death upon his hometown. But rather than emphasizing horror thrills, Herzog frames the vampire as a tragic, lonely figure cursed with eternal existence.

The plot unfolds slowly, allowing atmosphere to dominate over incident, as disease, rats, and despair spread through the city. This is a vampire story steeped in melancholy rather than fear, treating immortality as a form of unbearable suffering. To bring this home, Kinski’s performance is fittingly restrained and sorrowful, at times lending the monster an unexpected humanity. All this makes Noferatu the Vampyre essential viewing for those who like their horror atmospheric and philosophical.

9 ‘The Warriors’ (1979)

Cowboy, Rembrandt, Swan, Cochise, Vermin, Snow & Mercy in The Warriors

"Warriors, come out to play!" In The Warriors, a street gang is falsely accused of murdering a powerful leader, forcing them to fight their way back to their home turf across hostile territory. The movie is over a single night, as the group encounters rival gangs, corrupt police, and constant threats of ambush. This could've just been a straightforward chase narrative or crime flick, but Walter Hill elevates it significantly by making everything feel operatic and larger-than-life. Here, he blends urban grit with stylized fantasy, turning New York City into a mythic battlefield.

The characters inhabit a neon-lit underworld populated by exaggerated tribes, each with its own look and rules. The aesthetic deliberately rejects realism, turning the movie into a kind of urban fable. This approach was divisive on the release (as was some of the film's violence), but The Warriors went on to be embraced as a cult classic.

8 ‘Mad Max’ (1979)

Max Rockatansky looking to the distance in 'Mad Max' (1979)

"I am the Nightrider!" The epic franchise kicked off with this lean, mean banger, 93 minutes of high-octane action and rich world-building. Mad Max immerses us in a near-future Australia teetering on the edge of collapse, where law and order barely hold back chaos. In the midst of this wasteland is Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), a highway patrol officer trying to maintain justice as violent biker gangs terrorize the roads. When Max’s personal life is shattered by senseless brutality, his commitment to the law erodes, pushing him toward vengeance.

The plot is lean and relentless, driven by escalating confrontations, all powered by kinetic energy. George Miller stages action with raw physicality, emphasizing speed, danger, and consequence. As a result, despite being made on a modest budget, Mad Max feels ferocious and believable, painting an exaggerated but plausible picture of a society fraying at the seams. Later sequels expanded the mythology, but the original remains vital for its grounded brutality and moral bleakness.

7 ‘Being There’ (1979)

"I like to watch." This beloved comedy centers on Chance (Peter Sellers), a simple-minded gardener whose understanding of the world comes entirely from television. After his wealthy employer dies, Chance wanders into Washington’s elite circles, where his literal, innocent statements are mistaken for profound political wisdom. He becomes a blank screen onto which others project meaning. From here, misunderstandings drive the comedy, with the movie leaning into uncomfortable silences and subtle irony. All this makes for a quiet, devastating satire about power, media, and the emptiness behind authority.

Sellers’ performance is remarkably controlled, to the point that it's hard to imagine anyone else in the part. He rightly received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his efforts. Initially appreciated but perhaps underestimated, Being There now feels pretty prophetic in an age of media-driven politics. Its final moments are quietly surreal, reinforcing its central idea: that emptiness, when dressed properly, can be mistaken for depth.

6 ‘Life of Brian’ (1979)

Brian carries his cross in Life of Brian

"He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy!" Life of Brian is one of the most audacious religious comedies ever made, and one of the Monty Python team’s sharpest works. Graham Chapman plays Brian Cohen, a man born on the same day as Jesus who is repeatedly mistaken for the Messiah. Brian tries to live a normal life, but finds himself swept into revolutionary movements, theological arguments, and mass hysteria. What follows is less a conventional narrative than a series of escalating misunderstandings, skewering dogma, blind faith, and groupthink.

Despite the controversy it sparked on release, Life of Brian is not an attack on belief itself, but on the human tendency to surrender thought to authority and slogans. While its humor is absurd, its observations are piercing. The Pythons' creativity is also simply off the charts. Songs, sketches, and historical parodies whirl by at a rapid rate, including more than a few iconic scenes and famous quotes. Deceptively clever, wildly entertaining.

5 ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ (1979)

Kramer vs. Kramer Dustin Hoffman pointing a finger at Meryl Streep

"You know, I’m not gonna fight you anymore." Kramer vs. Kramer is a perceptive drama about divorce, parenthood, and personal growth, both reflecting and commenting on major cultural shifts that were then underway in the United States (and much of the world). A fantastic, Oscar-winning Dustin Hoffman plays Ted Kramer, a career-focused advertising executive whose wife (Meryl Streep) abruptly leaves him and their young son (Justin Henry). Forced into the role of primary caregiver, Ted struggles to balance work, responsibility, and emotional connection.

When his wife returns and seeks custody, the story shifts into a painful legal battle. Yet the courtroom drama is less about victory than about loss and compromise. Released at a time when changing family structures were becoming more visible, Kramer vs. Kramer spoke to its moment with impressive empathy and nuance. It never sensationalizes. It helps that the performances feel lived-in and sincere. The characters are complex and understandable, giving the movie a universal appeal.

4 ‘All That Jazz’ (1979)

"It's showtime, folks!" All That Jazz is Bob Fosse’s self-lacerating, exuberant confrontation with mortality and artistic obsession. Roy Scheider leads the cast as Joe Gideon (loosely based on Fosse himself), a driven choreographer juggling rehearsals, film editing, substance abuse, and relationships while his health steadily deteriorates. The plot moves fluidly between reality, fantasy, and hallucination, blurring the line between performance and life.

The whole way through, Fosse refuses self-pity, portraying Joe as brilliant, charismatic, and deeply destructive. This is a ho-holds-barred character study, whether the aesthetic is just as indulgent and intense as the protagonist himself. Musical numbers become expressions of denial, ego, and fear, culminating in a breathtaking final sequence that fuses spectacle with death. This was somewhat polarizing back in 1979, but All That Jazz is now generally regarded as one of the best movie musicals. Its energy, darkness, and vulnerability ensure its staying power.

3 ‘Stalker’ (1979)

"Let everything that’s been planned come true." Andrei Tarkovsky was one of the titans of meditative cinema, and Stalker represents him at his most enigmatic. Set in an unnamed country, the story follows a guide known as the Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) who leads two men, a writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and a scientist (Nikolai Grinko), into the mysterious Zone, a forbidden area rumored to grant one’s deepest desires. The plot is minimal, structured around long journeys, conversations, and moments of stillness. Tarkovsky uses time, silence, and composition to invite contemplation rather than suspense.

In other words, Stalker demands patience, but rewards it with haunting imagery and existential depth. Along the way, the Zone becomes a metaphor for faith, doubt, and the human search for meaning. The film's stature has grown over the decades, with many now ranking it among the greatest ever made. Its impact has been expensive, influencing countless films (not least Annihilation), as well as literature, games, and even philosophy.

2 ‘Alien’ (1979)

The xenomorph coming out of the smoke in Alien.

"I can’t lie to you about your chances, but… you have my sympathies." Star Wars had broken major ground two years earlier, but Ridley Scott took the genre to darker, tenser places with his haunted house movie in space. The plot is simple, almost archetypal, (and has been endlessly copied): the crew of a commercial spaceship responds to a mysterious distress signal, only to unleash a deadly extraterrestrial organism onboard. The creature stalks them one by one, morphing through a twisted life cycle where each new incarnation is grosser and more dangerous than the last.

The spaceship setting is industrial and grim, the protagonists are all realistic and grounded, and the xenomorph itself boasts perhaps the greatest monster design in the history of cinema. H.R. Giger gives us pure nightmare fuel, a biomechanical monster with acid blood and barbed tail and a mouth on its tongue and an endless drive to kill. To this day, no creature feature has topped it.

1 ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979)

Martin Sheen as Capt. Benjamin L. Willard, with only his head sticking out of a pond with mud on his face in Apocalypse Now

"The horror… the horror." Apocalypse Now is an overwhelming descent into madness, both personal and historical. Francis Ford Coppola relocates Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness to the jungles of Vietnam, producing one of cinema's greatest epics. The story is sprawling, but the focus is on Captain Willard's (Martin Sheen) mission upriver to assassinate the renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). The plot unfolds episodically, each encounter revealing new layers of chaos, absurdity, and moral collapse.

To paraphrase the director himself, Apocalypse Now doesn’t explain the Vietnam War; it immerses the viewer in its insanity. The sheer ambition and scale of this production is mind-boggling. Coppola and his collaborators were attempting the impossible, and the movie frequently came close to collapse. The troubled production process has become myth in its own right, mirroring the instability onscreen. And yet they emerged from the wilderness with a masterpiece, a movie that, still in many ways, represents the zenith of a certain kind of filmmaking.