Ranking the 10 Most Intense Films of the 1970s

Collider has compiled a ranked list of the 10 most intense movies of the 1970s, placing Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now at number one.

The piece describes the 1970s as an unusually volatile decade for cinema, shaped by political distrust, cultural fragmentation, and a growing sense that old moral certainties no longer applied. It says "intensity" in this era often meant psychological pressure, moral discomfort, and a willingness to profoundly unsettle the audience, and that the selected films — whether set in rural backwaters, urban pressure cookers, or nightmarish war zones — push situations to their breaking point and then linger there.

Examples highlighted include Straw Dogs for its provocation, Deliverance for turning a weekend adventure into a waking nightmare, The Exorcist for sustained dread, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for its sensory assault and pioneering final-girl escape, The Deer Hunter for its Russian roulette sequences and performances (including Christopher Walken's Best Supporting Actor win), and Alien as a haunted-house movie in space. The article concludes that these films remain as intense today as they were fifty years ago.

Key Topics

Culture, Francis Ford Coppola, Ridley Scott, Sam Peckinpah, Tobe Hooper, Folk Horror