12 Underrated ’70s CULT CLASSICS That Deserved Better!

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:05]If you're looking for some really unique and different cult classics to watch tonight, the 1970s might be the most interesting decade to look at. So, today I'm excited to recommend 12 cult films from the 1970s that should never be forgotten. My name is Daniel with the Cobweb channel and let's get started.

[00:00:25]Can you dig it?

[00:00:30]They've got one night. The Warriors. The Warriors from 1979 is probably the most beloved classic on this list, but is also one that I watched for the first time this week. I don't know how I missed it all these years, but I'm glad I finally seen it. It's about a street gang called the Warriors, which must fight a whole bunch of other rival gangs on their way back home to Coney Island when they are falsely accused of assassinating a respected gang leader.

[00:00:58]So, while this is a massive cult classic today, it actually only did okay at the box office, didn't get very good reviews upon release, and was actually blamed for some incidents of vandalism and murder. This movie was really popular with street gangs. that was blamed for riing them up and actually some ads and advertisements had to get pulled for the movie. But what I found so great about this movie is that it is so cool. It's not really a high substance film. It doesn't have a deep story or deep characterization or anything like that.

[00:01:30]It is a super cool vibe. It was directed by Walter Hill and I feel like was probably a big influence on John Carpenter for Escape from New York, but I would say it's even better. I loved watching this gang go through New York City. It feels dark. It feels almost like in a post-apocalyptic wasteland with all of these Mad Max like gangs running around. I enjoyed that the movie is clearly not going for realism. The gangs are very hyper stylized, all themed in different ways. The action really badass. You've got a lot of really cool fight sequences. I did think the cast was good. You've got a young James Remar in here, but the lead is actually Michael Beck, who is terrific because he's got such a strong screen presence, even playing a character who doesn't talk very much. This movie is fun. It is a cool action-packed vibe, and I enjoyed seeing a lot of different really iconic sequences that I kind of absorbed through pop culture, but seeing them now in context was super great.

[00:02:32]He >> seems to be getting stronger as he melts. The first new horror creature.

[00:02:36]>> The Incredible Melting Man from 1977 is a gorefest 1970s horror movie that is clearly a very nostalgic tribute to the 1950s. It follows an astronaut who gets exposed to cosmic rays outside of Saturn's rings. And when he returns to Earth, he begins to literally melt away.

[00:02:56]After escaping from the hospital, he wanders around the backwoods looking for human flesh to eat. This one actually did do pretty good at the box office as an exploitation horror flick, but did not get good reviews at all, and it's exactly the kind of movie that critics would not enjoy at the time, but I enjoyed it, especially because not only am I a fan of '7s horror movies, I love 50s horror. I love the good old-fashioned atomic age horror movies, and this is so clearly a tribute to that. Doesn't take place in the ' 50s, is not too direct or explicit with its references, but it's just got that vibe.

[00:03:30]Adding in though the gross goopy practical effects that you could now do by this time period in history. Rick Baker actually did the effects for it.

[00:03:39]He's the star of the movie because his effects are terrific. I love watching this guy, this melting man run around. I mean, he looks like a skull with goop just oozing off of him. It's so much fun. But as a story, I don't know, man.

[00:03:54]It almost feels like it's kind of missing story structure. Like it's just about this guy running around trying to eat people. You've got some heroes that are trying to stop him, trying to chase him down. You've got a lot of other weird, super quirky supporting characters running around that often lead to their brutal deaths, but all that stuff is fun and funny. This movie is kind of a chill time. Like, yeah, it's gross. Yeah, it's gory, but it's kind of got a low-key vibe that makes it perfect Saturday afternoon, throw on a horror movie kind of material. But let's get way more intense with the next pick, which I think is my favorite movie I have discovered so far this year. Death Dream from 1974.

[00:04:37]Andy, >> I didn't know Andy was home.

[00:04:39]>> He's home.

[00:04:40]>> As night fell, something evil descended upon the town, >> which was originally released as Dead of Night, but before it went into wide release, they changed the title to not to be confusing with the 1940s anthology movie. I support that because I think Death Dream is a better title. And it's a really unique take on the zombie genre about a young soldier killed in the Vietnam War who inexplicably shows up at his family's home on the night of his death. Now, at the time, this was really just another exploitation movie that mostly played at the drive-ins, but having checked it out for the first time this week, I was absolutely blown away by the phenomenal quality of this thing.

[00:05:19]Now, it was directed by Bob Clark, who yes, made A Christmas Story, but also made stuff like Black Christmas and Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. It's a lot better than Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, but I think it's about on par with Black Christmas. It is that good. For one thing, as a movie about the 70s, about the anxieties around the Vietnam War and the people who come back from it now damaged with PTSD, having seen horrific things, and maybe almost come back dead inside. It's so heartbreaking following this family that's at first absolutely destroyed after they learn about the death of their son, but when he shows back up in such a horrible state that they or especially the father who's the real focus of this thing seems to almost wish he didn't come back at all. He is scary. He is a really unsettling presence. There are horrific kill scenes in here.

[00:06:22]And as his body decays more and more as the movie goes, I was horrified at seeing what he ends up looking like.

[00:06:29]Now, Tom Cevini did the effects for this one. I think this is some of his best work. I've seen a lot of zombie effects, and rarely have I seen some where the creature looks so authentically dead. I was really unsettled by the look of this zombie. It's offputting. It's horrifying. It's disgusting, but it's also heartbreaking. And I respected how committed this movie was to being bleak and punishing and miserable. And yet, I had a wonderful time watching this incredibly dark movie. And the ending is just like it'll just sit and rot at the pit of your stomach. Amazing movie. I was blown away by it.

[00:07:11]>> What do you do for fun? What activity gives you a different sense of enjoyment from the others?

[00:07:19]>> I go to funerals.

[00:07:21]>> Harold and Mod from 1971 is one of the weirdest movies of the '7s, possibly of all time. And oh my gosh, I am so happy I've now finally seen it. I've been aware of this film ever since I was a kid. Like, I've always known about it as the movie where a young guy gets into a romantic relationship with a really old woman. Man, I was always just like, "What is that? That just seems too weird. I don't think I want to watch that movie." It's so good though. Like, I just loved it. It's directed by Hal Ashby. And yeah, it is about a dead pan, ultra wealthy because of his family, young man, who's completely obsessed with death. He's even constantly staging um incidents of him removing himself from the world for his mother to see.

[00:08:07]the most horrifically dark scenes of him faking that and she's just like, "Oh, get up off the floor. You're being ridiculous." But anyway, he ends up meeting an old woman who is such a carefree, free spirit, and she teaches him to start living life at the fullest.

[00:08:23]But yeah, this movie was completely critically and commercially unsuccessful when it came out. Of course, it was. It is so utterly bizarre, but it's so funny, often in such incredibly dark ways. Almost all of the scenes are almost set up as their own joke sequences. Like this isn't told in a series of vignettes. It's got a clear, straightforward story, but like every scene is its own great joke, always ending with a great punchline. I was constantly laughing through this whole thing. The lead actors are so wonderful.

[00:08:53]Bud Court, who actually just passed away, so may he rest in peace, is so good as this incredibly bizarre dude.

[00:09:01]And Ruth Gordon as Ma is wonderful. She is wonderful in this movie. She is so lovable. And I was utterly shocked how much this movie was able to get me on board with their relationship to really care about them, to love watching them together. They are so fun like throughout this whole thing. And I just grew to fall in love with them so much.

[00:09:26]And it has a great ending. It brings this whole thing full circle in such a beautiful way. I honestly think it's an incredibly well-written movie. It is so wellacted and it has an amazing soundtrack. The whole soundtrack is done by Cat Stevens. Every song is great and it just gives it this really great '7s vibe in a way that I just loved living in. The most frightening motion picture experience of your life. Be one with us.

[00:09:54]The Sentinel from 1977, which is one of the creepiest satanic horror movies of this decade and possibly of all time. It's about a fashion model who moves to an apartment building where she encounters a number of bizarre eccentric tenants and attempts to uncover the building's sinister secret that, yes, might involve a gateway to hell. Now, this is a total cult movie. It was not a box office success. still to this day receives largely negative reviews, which I think is pretty crazy. But it's directed by Michael Winner, who's like one of the most unhinged directors that I've ever seen the work of. This dude is nuts. He made the Death Wish movies for one thing, and it's kind of like his version of Rosemary's Baby, but the cast, the cast is amazing in this. The actual lead is played by Christina Reigns, who I'm not very familiar with, but I thought did a really good job in the movie. But man, it's also got Chris Sarandon, John Keredine, Ava Gardner, Burgess Meredith, Jeff Goldblum, Tom Behringer. Like the list goes on and on. It's absolutely insane. And in particular, I really love Chris Sandon in here. I mean, I always love him when he pops up in movies, but he plays the main character's boyfriend.

[00:11:06]And something that I liked about him is when she's starting to tell him about the strange, seemingly supernatural stuff she's experiencing, unlike most husbands and boyfriends in horror movies, he believes her. He takes her seriously and he starts going on this serious investigation trying to figure out what's going on that bucked a lot of cliches that can get annoying and I really appreciated that. And when the satanic horror is really coming to the forefront in the climax and you get demons and apparitions and weird stuff, it is so creepy. And the way Michael Wy brings it to life, it is so bizarre. It is so deranged. And the movie even involves a birthday party for a cat. So, how can you not enjoy that? But you know what? Let's next go to another Michael Winter movie and actually I think my favorite movie from him, The Mechanic from 1972.

[00:11:53]>> You ever hear the term mechanic used outside its normal meaning?

[00:11:56]>> A hitman.

[00:11:57]>> So So there we are.

[00:11:59]>> This follows a veteran hitman played by Charles Bronson who takes one of his victims son under his wing, teaching him the craft of assassination and bringing him on several hits. But as the apprentice improves, he starts to worry that he might discover who killed his father. When this came out, it largely got poor reviews. And that blows my mind because I think it's so obviously such a good movie. And especially for the fact that it's starring Charles Bronson, it's so much better than the Death Wish movies. I think it's better than all of them. I love watching Bronson as a super cool gentleman hitman. He's totally that archetype of the badass assassin and he nails it. He's so good. He's even got this ridiculously elaborate almost batcave kind of house that's so much fun. Like so much about his character is so over the top in such a fun way. It has an incredible opening 15-minute sequence that's totally wordless and just him going through this slow, quiet process of very intelligently killing someone. And it's fascinating. I really think it's one of the best pre-1980s action movies I've seen. Like I I know there are quite a few pre-1980s action films, but I really think of the '8s is when the action genre really took off and we really started getting a lot of classics. But if you're going before that, this is one of my favorites. It's also got a really good supporting performance from Jan Michael Vincent as this apprentice he takes on. So many exciting chase sequences and explosions.

[00:13:26]This one actually got a remake with Jason Staithm, but this is the one to check out. Welcome to Rock and Roll High School.

[00:13:32]>> YOU HAVE MANAGED TO upset the entire school with this godforsaken noise.

[00:13:36]>> Rock and Roll High School from 1979 is one of the greatest examples of 70s teen rebellion ever caught on film. It's about a group of rock music loving students who with the help of the Ramones take over their school to combat its newly installed oppressive administration. This is a total countercultural 1970s sex, drugs, and rock and roll kind of exploitation movie and it is so much fun. It's directed by Alan Arkish with a little help from uncredited Joe Dante, but Roger Corman got this thing going.

[00:14:11]He produced it and he actually originally thought of it as Disco Hide.

[00:14:15]It was going to be about disco music and Joe Dante and some other guys had to explain to him disco doesn't really upset parents these days. Right now it's all about rock and roll. So, they had this transition to punk rock bringing on the Ramones. And what's crazy is the Ramones were largely unknown at this time, just starting to get going in the punk scene. And they got so lucky getting the Ramones because if it was just some no-name band, I think this thing would have much less of a reputation, though it would still be a lot of fun. But it's so fun to watch the Ramones in here. This movie was actually my introduction to them. They can't act at all, but there's kind of a charm to that. They really just seem like they don't care. like they can't be bothered to even notice that they're in a movie and it just makes them feel more like cool and rebellious and have a really fun screen presence.

[00:15:03]>> Hey, we're not students. We're the Ramones.

[00:15:05]>> Ramones? You're responsible for making that horrible rock and roll music? Do your parents know that you're Ramon?

[00:15:11]>> But they're not the leads. It really focuses on a group of high school students who are trying to bring the Ramones to their school. The lead is actually PJ Souls from Halloween. And while Halloween is her best movie, I mean, Halloween's in my top 10 movies of all time, I think this is her best, most fun to watch performance. She is so high energy. You've got Mary Ward and Paul Bartell as administration at the school.

[00:15:32]They're so much fun. And the film gets ridiculously over the top in a way I just love. The House of the Dead from 1978 is the most obscure and I'll just tell you worst movie on this list. But if you're a big fan of horror anthologies, and I know a lot of you are, it's still totally worth watching.

[00:15:50]It follows an adulterous husband who accidentally finds himself lost during a rainstorm and is taken in by an elderly mortician and forced to learn the ghastly origins of four freshly arrived corpses. I just checked this one out and it immediately reminded me of the Mortuary Collection, my favorite recent anthology, and being about a mortician telling the stories of the dead bodies.

[00:16:12]It's a totally classic setup and I will tell you the overall direction and the acting of it is really strong. I mean for a low-budget regional horror movie from the '7s, I was surprised how rock solid every single performance is in this thing. I even recognized a few people, especially Bernard Fox, who I know from Bewitched and the Andy Griffith Show. But the stories themselves are all good, not great. I don't think there is a bad story in the mix, but they never quite hit at the level that I want them to. The first one is about a woman who's a total grouch towards children and her house ends up becoming under siege by some creepy kids. And what's funny is that's the only one with any kind of supernatural leaning. The rest of them play much more realistically. The next one's about a serial killer who films all of his killings, which makes it feel like a really early precursor to found footage.

[00:17:05]I think the most fun segment was the third one, which also felt the least horror of the bunch, but it's about a couple of dueling detectives who are kind of battling it out for the title of the greatest sleuth, the greatest murder mystery inspector in the world. And watching them try to oneup each other and it going to some violent ends by the end was a lot of fun. And then the last one. Very interesting. Almost like this grouchy guy caught in a less gory version of a Saw movie kind of. I think I might be making these all sound cooler than they are. They all play pretty low-key, but never bad. But if you haven't seen very many '7s anthology movies, I'll tell you the ones from Amicus are much more worth watching, except Baltapor. I don't like that one.

[00:17:48]But if you already seen those, this is like a cool American version of an Amicus flick.

[00:18:00]THE Beguiled from 1971 is a Clint Eastwood movie, but really not what I think you would expect out of a Clint Eastwood western. After being wounded in the Civil War, a Union soldier is taken in by a Confederate girls boarding school and slowly nursed back to health.

[00:18:16]there. He cons his way into each of the lonely women's hearts and they start to become obsessed with him and things end up going really badly.

[00:18:26]>> Get any ideas of trying to amuse yourself with any of the ladies in this house?

[00:18:31]>> So, I tend to really appreciate movies that change genres as they go and this is a terrific example of that. I mean, it really starts out as a drama kind of a western. It doesn't really look or feel like a western, but it's taking place in that kind of time period of America. It's a little bit romantic.

[00:18:46]It's got a very charming performance from Clint Eastwood. And it's interesting watching all of these women fall for him very intensely, very quickly, but then it starts to become a thriller and very southern Gothic, almost a little bit of a southern gothic, dare I say, horror film. And it gets demented. It gets disturbing. I was shocked at how far this thing was willing to go. And it's all very sexually charged. It is like a Clint Eastwood period piece erotic thriller.

[00:19:18]Not just from Clint Eastwood. All the performances in here are really strong.

[00:19:21]Geraldine Paige is fantastic. It's directed by Don Seagull, so it looks great. The direction is so solid and I really think now is the time for this to get a resurgence in popularity because there's a big popularity going on right now with historical erotic fiction. I mean, Withering Heights was pretty big this year, and this one actually did get a remake, which I've never seen, but this one is really, really cool. Very interesting movie. But speaking of erotic thrillers, how can you talk about the '7s without talking about Italian Jallow? Let's look at Death Walks at Midnight from 1972. This follows Valentina, a beautiful fashion model. I know you're shocked, a Jallow is about a beautiful fashion model, who takes an experimental drug as part of a scientific experiment. And while under the influence of this crazy trip, she witnesses a brutal murder of a woman at the hands of a man with a spiked glove.

[00:20:15]After coming out of the trip, she totally assumes that that was just a hallucination. But then she finds out a woman was killed in exactly that way that night and she starts to investigate what's going on. So yes, there's a ton of 70s Jallow films you can watch. A lot of them are really good. This one really stands out to me, especially because of the lead actress. I believe her name is Neve Navaro. She is terrific in here. I just love her character. She's like really take charge. She's full of agency. She's not at all this kind of boring passive pretty girl that just kind of floats through the story like you do get in a lot of Jallow. I mean, let's be real. And the mystery is really interesting because we actually see the face of the killer in the first kill.

[00:20:56]So, it's not the sort of thing where you're just looking at black gloves doing something and you're trying to figure out who is it. It's not so much who is the killer, but who really is he?

[00:21:04]What is his significance? What does he mean to our main character? And the mystery has a lot of interesting twists and turns, some that I found very unexpected. The kill scenes are quite brutal. And I always love when Ajallo has a really unique weapon. And this spiked glove certainly fits that bill. I haven't seen that very much. And the ending hits so hard because I'm just going to tell you without spoilers, it ends with a huge long hand-to-hand combat fist fight scene. Like it's almost like they live like John Carpenters they live where guys start fighting and it just goes on and on and it gets increasingly more brutal and over the top and I am not used to seeing that in Jallow. But I enjoyed it. Like I really appreciated how weird that was.

[00:21:48]>> I can't cover the check because the check is for $6,000 and you don't have $6,000.

[00:21:53]>> Come to the point, Becket.

[00:21:54]>> The point, Mr. Graham, is that you don't have any money.

[00:21:57]>> A New Leaf from 1971. Here's a fantastic, incredibly funny comedy. This still has some really fun darkness to it. It follows a formerly super rich guy, Henry Graham, who after running out of money, plans to marry and murder a wealthy botonist for her money.

[00:22:14]>> She doesn't deserve to live. Forget I said that.

[00:22:18]>> This movie is such a cult classic because it bombed terribly at the box office. It had a ballooning out of control budget and ended up losing so much money. But it has gained such a fandom. When I first checked it out just last year, I had already heard so much buzz about it. I was so excited to see it and I loved it. It is so much fun. It stars Walter Matau as this completely lazy, useless guy who's just been ghosting on his wealth for so many years. And in a lot of ways, this film feels almost like it's well in line with us being a self-improvement movie. And I love self-improvement movies. And you think it's going to be about this useless, lazy, terrible person who learns the value of hard work and learns how to be a better person because he runs out of money. But the funny thing is, his character is just so awful that he bucks so many of those cliches because of his total refusal to learn anything, to improve anything about himself. Now, the director of this movie, Alen May, actually plays the wealthy botist who he ends up romancing.

[00:23:24]And she is such a ridiculous character that he struggles so much to romance because of how weird and how boring she is. But I thought she was great. Like, she's so funny. And their relationship, again, kind of like Harold and Ma, you can't help but root for them a little bit, no matter how unhealthy this relationship is, especially because of how truly awful he is. But you're just rooting for him. like, "Please improve in some way. Please stop being so terrible." I love this. It's so funny.

[00:23:53]It's often very charming. It's also often very dark and uncomfortable, but that's just great for a 70s comedy.

[00:24:00]>> My music is for Phoenix, so she can sing it. Anyone else that tries >> Phantom of the Paradise. Phantom of the Paradise from 1974, which is, I guarantee you, one of the most unhinged and deliriously weird cult movies you will ever see in your life. But in spite of that, it's actually got an impressive pedigree. It's directed by Brian Dealma.

[00:24:24]It's really his version of Phantom of the Opera. It's about a singer songwriter who seeks revenge on a seriously evil music producer who steals his music and his favorite singer for the grand opening of his new rock palace, The Paradise. This was a total box office failure. It received mixed to negative reviews at the time, but it actually got an Oscar nomination for best original score. And I think you could compare it somewhat to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I think it's so much better. I'm actually not a big fan of Rocky Horror Picture Show, even though it is one of the biggest cult classics of the 70s, but I just think this one works so much better as a movie, as a story about characters. It's actually something you can get invested in and care about what's going on. It's not just music and over-the-top weirdness, although it very much has those things. This lead character of the Phantom is incredibly sympathetic and tragic, and you feel so bad for him, but he's still kind of scary. He's got a really striking design. His vocal cords have been destroyed and he's only able to talk through some machinery, so his voice sounds really scary as well.

[00:25:31]Jessica Harper plays the singer that is his muse in typical Phantom of the Opera type of archetypes. She was the lead in Sesperia if you didn't know, and she's great in here. Very charming, has a beautiful singing voice. There's so much really, really genuinely good music in this. And you've got Paul Williams as the evil music producer who I'm absolutely positive is the most 70s looking person I have ever seen in my life. I mean, oh my gosh, he is the 70s personified. But Paul Williams is awesome. Also a great songwriter. He co-wrote the music in this thing, which makes it funny because he plays the guy who steals the music. I love this. It's absolutely wild. It's insanely weird, but still is a movie that gets me to care. Before I give you the streaming options for these, I just want to send out a huge thank you to my patrons who truly make this channel possible. Thank you guys so much for supporting me. And if anyone else wants to support me and what I do here, there's always a link to my Patreon in the description below. But today, I want to give a special shout out and thank you to Holly Bartos, Tanya Moore, and David Richkoff. You all are the absolute best. But if you want checking these out for yourself, I do have streaming options right here on the screen. But of course, those are always subject to change. So, I've also got physical media links in the description, and using those does help support the channel. What are some other 70s cult classics you want to recommend to me?

[00:26:42]Let me know down in the comments below.

[00:26:44]Let's keep talking movies and click the video on the screen if you want to hang out with me more. Thank you guys so much. Don't forget to enjoy yourselves today. Have some fun and I'll see you next time. Bye.