Best Action Movies of 1973

A martial artist agrees to spy on a reclusive crime lord using his invitation to a tournament there as cover.

An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated gendarme on the assassin’s trail.

A robot malfunction creates havoc and terror for unsuspecting vacationers at a futuristic, adult-themed amusement park.

James Bond must investigate a mysterious murder case of a British agent in New Orleans. Soon he finds himself up against a gangster boss named Mr. Big.

"Dirty" Harry Callahan is a San Francisco Police Inspector on the trail of a group of rogue cops who have taken justice into their own hands. When shady characters are murdered one after another in grisly fashion, only Dirty Harry can stop them.

The young D'Artagnan arrives in Paris with dreams of becoming a king's musketeer. He meets and quarrels with three men, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, each of whom challenges him to a duel. D'Artagnan finds out they are musketeers and is invited to join them in their efforts to oppose Cardinal Richelieu, who wishes to increase his already considerable power over the king. D'Artagnan must also juggle affairs with the charming Constance Bonancieux and the passionate Lady De Winter, a secret agent for the cardinal.

After her younger sister gets involved in drugs and is severely injured by contaminated heroin, a nurse sets out on a mission of vengeance and vigilante justice, killing drug dealers, pimps, and mobsters who cross her path.

Citizens of a small town are infected by a biological weapon that causes its victims to become violently insane. As uninfected citizens struggle to survive, the military readies its own response.

Hobos encounter a sadistic railway conductor that will not let anyone "ride the rails" for free.

Sinbad and his crew intercept a homunculus carrying a golden tablet. Koura, the creator of the homunculus and practitioner of evil magic, wants the tablet back and pursues Sinbad. Meanwhile Sinbad meets the Vizier who has another part of the interlocking golden map, and they mount a quest across the seas to solve the riddle of the map.

The fifth and final episode in the Planet of the Apes series. After the collapse of human civilization, a community of intelligent apes led by Caesar lives in harmony with a group of humans. Gorilla General Aldo tries to cause an ape civil war and a community of human mutants who live beneath a destroyed city try to conquer those whom they perceive as enemies. All leading to the finale.

A gunhand named Lane is hired by a widow, Mrs. Lowe, to find gold stolen by her husband so that she may return it and start fresh.

After a shoot-out kills five FBI agents in Kansas City the Bureau target John Dillinger as one of the men to hunt down. Waiting for him to break Federal law they sort out several other mobsters, while Dillinger's bank robbing exploits make him something of a folk hero. Escaping from jail he finds Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson have joined the gang and pretty soon he is Public Enemy Number One. Now the G-men really are after him.

A black man plays Uncle Tom in order to gain access to CIA training, then uses that knowledge to plot a new American Revolution.

Ex-wrestler and Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser walks tall and carries a big stick as he tussles with county-wide corruption and moonshining thugs.

A tough detective who is part of an elite New York City unit is trying to find out who killed his partner, but uncovers a plot to kidnap mobsters for money.

Rogue intelligence agents, right-wing politicians, greedy capitalists, and free-lance assassins plot and carry out the JFK assassination in this speculative agitprop.

An ex con teams up with federal agents to help them with breaking up a moonshine ring.

Cross is an old hand at the CIA who often teams up with Frenchman Jean “Scorpio” Laurier, a gifted freelance operative. After their last mission together, the CIA orders Scorpio to eliminate Cross, leaving him no choice but to obey.

Detective John Shaft travels incognito to Ethiopia, then France, to bust a human trafficking ring.

Tommy Gibbs is a tough kid, raised in the ghetto, who aspires to be a kingpin criminal. As a young boy, his leg is broken by a bad cop on the take, during a payoff gone bad. Nursing his vengeance, he rises to power in Harlem, New York. Angry at the racist society around him, both criminal and straight, he sees the acquisition of power as the solution to his rage.

A Los Angeles detective is sent to New York where he must solve a case involving an old Sicilian Mafia family feud.

A member of British Intelligence assumes a fictitious criminal identity and allows himself to be caught, imprisoned, and freed in order to infiltrate a spy organization and expose a traitor; only, someone finds him out and exposes him to the gang...

Two men who have been friends since childhood find themselves on opposite ends of the law.

Dr. Jake Terrell, who has been training a pair of dolphins for many years, has had a breakthrough. He has taught his dolphins to speak and understand English, although they do have a limited vocabulary. When the dolphins are stolen, he discovers they're to be used in an assassination attempt. Now he is in a race to discover who is the target, and where the dolphins are, before the attempt is carried out.

After federal agent Cleopatra Jones orders the burning of a Turkish poppy field, the notorious drug lord Mommy vows to destroy her.

After Col. Steve Austin fails to retrieve the contents of a safe owned by arms dealer Arlen Findletter, he takes up an friendly offer of a holiday in the Bahamas. There he runs into Soviet Agent Alexi Kaslov and his lovely assistant Katrina Volana, who also happen to be out to find Findletter. Is it a coincidence, or was Steve's trip all part of one of Oscar Goldman's missions?

Tougher than Shaft and smoother than Superfly, this high-voltage sequel to Black Caesar explodes with enough action to incinerate New York City. Packed with machine-gun mayhem and riveting adventure, Hell Up in Harlem is nothing less than a modern-day tribute to the classic 30s gangster film. Fred Williamson is Tommy Gibbs, a fearless, bulletproof tough guy who blasts his way from the gutter to become the ultimate soul brother boss. Tommy steals a ledger with the name of every crooked cop and man in the city. Enlisting the aid of his father and an army of Harlem hoods, Gibbs goes from defense to offense, launching a deadly attack on his enemies that sets off a violent chain reaction from Harlem all the way to the Caribbean, climaxing in one of the hottest turf-war shoot-outs in Hollywood history.

A criminal organization known as OSO specializes in kidnapping high ranking U.S. representatives. Although Steve Austin has already thwarted one of their kidnappings, he is unable to stop them from grabbing William Henry Cameron right from under OSI's nose. OSO demands one million dollars in gold and Oscar Goldman takes the opportunity to try and lure them out into the open. Meanwhile, Steve accompanies Dr. Erica Bergner, who is testing a new method of brain transferal in order to find out where Cameron is being kept.

The Stuntmen is a one-hour documentary for Australian TV written and directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. It was through this movie that Trenchard-Smith met Grant Page, who he put under a five-year contract and featured in a number of movies. The film also acted as a "calling card" which enabled the director to get finance for The Man from Hong Kong (1975).

When two troublemaking female prisoners (one a revolutionary, the other a former harem-girl) can't seem to get along, they are chained together and extradited for safekeeping. The women, still chained together, stumble, stab, and cat-fight their way across the wilderness, igniting a bloody shootout between gangsters and a group of revolutionaries.

Bumper Morgan is a veteran Los Angeles Police Department street cop. He is due to retire after 20 years on the job, but is not letting up on the criminal element on his beat.

In the wake of a Supreme Court decision to outlaw the death penalty, California passes an initiative that designates San Bruno island as a dumping spot for first-degree murder convicts, free to do what they like except leave. The main camp of convicts is controlled by the tyrannical Bobby, who rules with an iron hand, and the women are used as sex slaves. A.J. and a group of more free-minded murderers have escaped and gone into hiding. When A.J. and his men liberate the women from Bobby's custody, tensions mount to an all-out confrontation for control of the island.

Chang Chen-Wai, a martial arts expert who runs a jade-importing business, follows his missing brother to Thailand and learns he has been murdered. Chang vows revenge.

Super gorgeous secret agent Johnny Acropolis… The villainous Queen Bee… A mystery man whose ass (covered in coded tattoos) everyone wants. Cum, bullets, murder, car chases! The guys are hot and the film's a scream!

An ex-soldier encounters many dangers in the small town he lives in.

This TV-pilot, later made into a TV-series, is about a cop in Newark, New Jersey, who defies his superiors to try to bring down the head of a Mafia numbers racket.

Two disillusioned New York policemen plan a $10 million robbery to fuel their low pensions, only to run into one debacle after another in the process.

A harsh colonel of paratroopers neglects his family after falling in love with a chess player, the sister of one of his paratroopers that got injured because of the jumping punishment given by him.

A TV reporter investigates compromising photographs of a nominee to the Supreme Court.

When local soccer team The Eagles fall prey to a series of onslaughts from a mysterious gangster only a week before the championship final, the team turns to the one man that can help save their chances at victory – Joe Bullet (Ken Gampu). Joe will have to battle against villainous henchmen, escape booby-trap bombs and bring his martial arts expertise to the fore in order to survive an attack from a deadly assassin. In the end he will have to infiltrate the mysterious gangster’s hide-out in a dangerous cat-and-mouse rescue mission to save not only The Eagles’ two kidnapped star players, but that of his beautiful love interest, Beauty (Abigail Kubeka). The odds will be stacked against him, but he’s the man that fights crime, the man that no one can tie down! Joe Bullet!

Sisters Myra and Ellie have finally had enough of their miserable, dead-end lives. When their stepfather Charley (the titular "Bonnie" being long dead) tried to rape Myra, Ellie ventilates him with a shotgun, and the pair run off to their wealthy uncle's mansion in El Paso. From that point on, the two undergo a transformation in their personalities, and start to enjoy living their lives on the wild side.

A federal agent whose daughter dies of a heroin overdose is determined to destroy the drug ring that supplied her. He recruits various people whose lives have been torn apart by the drug trade and trains them. Then they all leave for France to track down and destroy the ring.

Semi-urban detective duo Ross and Wilson have been charged with taking down local drug kingpin, Blasi. After busting a low-level pusher, they convince his girlfriend, Sheila, to start working for them as an undercover operative in exchange for avoiding prison. But as Ross finds himself becoming romantically interested in his new, perpetually spaced out informant, Blasi continues to strengthen his crime empire, setting his sights on even loftier, and deadlier, ambitions.

Conflict erupts within a close-knit engine company of a big-city fire department when a black recruit and a bigoted white veteran clash during a wave of suspected arson in the ghetto. Pilot to the short-lived series that began a run in January 1974.

Rival prison factions surround a Los Angeles convict who has $1.5 million stashed on the outside.

Harry Walker, a former military pilot, works as a helicopter pilot and traffic reporter for a Salt Lake City radio station. One day while working he observes a bank robbery in progress and the kidnapping of a young woman who worked at the bank. Harry goes into pursuit which leads to an exciting conclusion.

Low-budget adventure starring former baseball star James Iglehart as Savage, who is kidnapped by South American rebels. After a time, he sees their position and is joined by a female commando squad in battling the repressive government officials.

A gangster's former mistress hooks up with a troupe of circus midgets who, as a sideline, rob banks and casinos.