Best Action Movies of 1979

In the ravaged near future, a savage motorcycle gang rules the road. Terrorizing innocent civilians while tearing up the streets, the ruthless gang laughs in the face ofa police force hell-bent on stopping them. But they underestimate one officer: Max Rockatansky. And when the bikers brutalize Max's best friend and family, they send him into a mad frenzy that leaves him with only one thing left in the world to live for – revenge!

After Drax Industries' Moonraker space shuttle is hijacked, secret agent James Bond is assigned to investigate, traveling to California to meet the company's owner, the mysterious Hugo Drax. With the help of scientist Dr. Holly Goodhead, Bond soon uncovers Drax's nefarious plans for humanity, all the while fending off an old nemesis, Jaws, and venturing to Venice, Rio, the Amazon...and outer space.

The explorer craft USS Palomino is returning to Earth after a fruitless 18-month search for extra-terrestrial life when the crew comes upon a supposedly lost ship, the USS Cygnus, hovering near a black hole. The ship is controlled by Dr. Hans Reinhardt and his monstrous robot companion, but the initial wonderment and awe the Palomino crew feel for the ship and its resistance to the power of the black hole turn to horror as they uncover Reinhardt's plans.

In the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, panic grips California, where a military officer leads a mob chasing a Japanese sub.

In preparation for his daughter's wedding, dentist Sheldon Kornpett meets Vince Ricardo, the groom's father. Vince, a manic fellow who claims to be a government agent, then proceeds to drag Sheldon into a series of chases and misadventures from New York to Central America.

Horsemouth, a drummer living in a ghetto of Kingston, plans to make money selling records. After his prized motorcycle is stolen, his plans fall through and he's forced to adapt.

Three senior citizens in their 70s who live together are slowly decaying in endless days with nothing to do but feed the birds. One of them comes up with an idea - rob a bank. They certainly could use the money if they get away with it and if they are caught, what could happen to three old men?

Disarmingly realistic in its depiction of the realities of frontier life, Heartland is a strong antidote to the cliches of traditional Westerns. This semi-documentary slice of life is based on the diaries of Elmore Randall Stewart about her days on the Wyoming frontier in the early 20th century. It's a strongly feminist statement about a woman raising her small daughter alone and scrapping for a living by working for a shy Scottish rancher. Director Richard Pearce brings an endearing touch to a film that is helped greatly by the dazzling cinematography of Fred Murphy. Conchata Ferrell and Rip Torn star in this small film that substitutes veracity for a high-powered plot.

When crooks set up operations in a traditional town, a minister and a group of church ladies are willing to do anything, no matter how wacky, to get them out.

In the early years of the 20th Century, two British yachtsmen (Michael York and Simon MacCorkindale) stumble upon a German plot to invade the east coast of England in a flotilla of specially designed barges. They set out to thwart this terrible scheme, but must outwit not only the cream of the German Navy, but the feared Kaiser Wilhelm himself.

During WW 2, a Basque shepherd is approached by the underground, who wants him to lead a scientist and his family across the Pyrenees. While being pursued by a sadistic German.

Margaret is a nurse in England during WW2, and married to a secret agent. Things get complicated when she falls for David, an American pilot.

A farm girl's life turns upside down after being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She moves to Chicago and becomes trapped in a vicious cycle of prostitution and crime.

After a collision with a comet, a nearly 8km wide piece of the asteroid "Orpheus" is heading towards Earth. If it will hit it will cause a incredible catastrophe which will probably extinguish mankind. To stop the meteor NASA wants to use the illegal nuclear weapon satellite "Hercules" but discovers soon that it doesn't have enough fire power. Their only chance to save the world is to join forces with the USSR who have also launched such an illegal satellite. But will both governments agree?

A group of people converge on a barren Arctic island. They have their reasons for being there but when a series of mysterious accidents and murders take place, a whole lot of darker motives become apparent. Could the fortune in buried Nazi gold be the key to the mystery? Donald Sutherland and Vanessa Redgrave investigate

Aviation disaster-prone Joe Patroni must contend with nuclear missiles, the French Air Force and the threat of the plane splitting in two over the Alps.

Dr. Anansa Linderby is kidnapped in a medical mission in Africa by a slave trader. From this moment, her husband will do anything to recover her and to punish the bad guys, but that will be not an easy task.

While on a fishing trip, Shao Lung's father is killed by Wu Pa Feng in front of the young man's eyes. Lung takes shelter with his uncle's traveling group of Kung Fu acrobats and begins honing his skills so he can one day have his revenge.

A British mercenary arrives in pre-Revolution Cuba to help train the corrupt General Batista's army against Castro's guerrillas while he also romances a former lover now married to an unscrupulous plantation owner.

A small-time crook goes in search of the other half of a wooden keepsake which will lead him to the legendary kung fu technique of the Gibbon Clan Fist.

A hitchhiker named Martel Gordone gets in a fight with two bikers over a prostitute, and one of the bikers is killed. Gordone is arrested and sent to prison, where he joins the prison's boxing team in an effort to secure an early parole and to establish his dominance over the prison's toughest gang.

Anthony Hope's classic tale gets a decidedly 'un-classic' treatment at the hands of Peter Sellers. Following the story somewhat, friends of the new King Rudolph of Ruritania fear for his life, and switch him with a look-a-like London cabby. Throw in two(!) lovely blondes, treachery, and a battle for life and honour, and enjoy life at its zaniest.

Retired cop and celebrity DJ Tucker Williams (aka The Disco Godfather) takes to the streets as a dangerous hallucinogenic drug called Angel Dust begins to take hold of the neighborhood.

An American ex-con who is trying to go straight is persuaded to be the inside man for an audacious bank job in central London.

Karate champion Matt Logan is enlisted by the police to train officers in self-defense after narcotics agents are killed by an assailant using the martial arts.

Beggars are being killed left and right to get their old leader to come out of hiding and face an old enemy. Meanwhile, young Wu Han Wei is being instructed by his blind grandfather to learn all six styles of the Butterfly technique. But when an old crazy beggar befriends the young student, his fate turns out to be intertwined with that of the fearsome Lu Din, a man with no arms or legs.

The hunter becomes the prey as a Vietnam veteran (Perry King) tries to ferret out the real culprit after being tagged as the prime suspect in the murders of his former Army pals.

It's Meng Yuan-wen (star of The Master Strikes) versus Kuan Feng in this wild and wacky wushu saga of a priceless pole with a spectacular secret. A master martial artist's silly disciple struggles to save it from an evil white slaver, the slaver's duplicitous wife, and even his own bone-headed, but greedy, companion. Hsu Hsia choreographs the abundant action, as he had for both Five Superfighters and Drunken Master. The result is both sublime (for its kung-fu) and engagingly ridiculous.

Three undercover detectives who once worked together are called back to team up again after several attempts are made on the life of their former commander.

A "Dragon Claw" master returns from Manchuria where he became a traitor to China. He's after the coveted Dragon Claw Golden Tablet that will force people to bow down to him. He challenges the Grand-master who has a checkered past of his own. The Grand-master happens to suffers from a terminal chronic injury related to his evil past. The traitor kills the grand-master, causing his wife and son the go into hiding. The wife seems to really be the Dragon Claw master in the family and she vows to train her son the kung fu secrets. The son finds that one of his friends has learned a strange style of kung fu from a filthy medicine man. The son seeks him out to improve his kung fu and defeat the traitor.

A reporter tries to stop the crash of an aircraft after uncovering an airline's plot to save their business by sabotaging Concorde flights and have them decommissioned.

Silver Fox (Hwang Jan Lee) fights a dark martial arts master imbued with weird magical powers (which include performing strange rituals on captive women) and, of course, fantastic fighting skills. The Fox will need every one of his own prodigious fighting skills to triumph over the forces of evil that marshal against him in this rock 'em, sock 'em martial arts epic. The very formidable Leung Kar Yan costars.

A group of celebrants find themselves trapped in an amusement park that is being torn apart by a hurricane during a Fourth of July holiday. The real Ocean View Park in Norfolk, Virginia, scheduled for demolition by the city, actually was blown up and burned down during the filming.

Real-life kung fu master Nathan Ingram stars in this gritty, low-budget martial arts epic as a local karate school owner who clashes with a gang of drug traffickers posing as the owners of a rival dojo. Director Charlie Ahearn (who helmed the landmark hip-hop film Wild Style) used the housing projects next to his New York Lower East Side apartment as his central location in this 1979 classic, shot on a vintage Super 8 camera.

After "The Poseidon Adventure", in which the ship got flipped over by a tidal wave, the ship drifts bottom-up in the sea. While the passengers are still on board waiting to be rescued, two rivaling salvage parties enter the ship on search for money, gold and a small amount of plutonium.

A group of old friends on an outing re-live various traumas and tragedies via flashback whilst trapped high above a ravine in a disabled cable-car.

The Crane Fighter is set just after the majority of the Shaolin monks have been outlawed and killed by the, I think, Ching Dynasty. A few have escaped, and live secretly among the common people. One old guy has a daughter that he has forbidden to learn kung fu, but she does so anyway, by watching some other monks in a nearby temple.

Two novice thieves are plotting to rob a bank in Vancouver. A photographer snaps a shot of one thief as he is carrying the bank building's blueprints. The would-be thief then begins a relationship with the photographer and attempts to retrieve the photos. Meanwhile, the thieves' plot consists of this: one man will enter the bank building after dark, while the other man sits in a van and uses a computer to unlock the building's doors. The final step involves transporting the cash to a freight ship waiting on the docks, for transportation to a money launderer in Macau.

A pyromaniac, ex-employee of a city oil refinery creates an explosion at the facility which starts a chain-reaction of fires that engulf the entire city.

A government agent discovers a plot by a cartel of seven gangsters to take over the state of Hawaii. He hires a team of seven hitmen to stop them.

CIA agent Harry Wargrave is sent to aid Gen. Marenkov, a senior Russian official, who is defecting to the west. Wargrave decides they should travel to safety on a train across Europe, the "Atlantic Express". During the journey, they must survive attacks by terrorists and an avalanche, all planned by Russian spy-catcher Nikolai Bunin.

A World War I deserter competes in the first long-distance motorcycle race.

From Hell To Victory follows the relationship of six friends throughout the Second World War. They meet in a cafe in Paris on 24th August 1939 and agree to meet there on the same day every year. The war however takes them on their own individual path's and keeping their friendship throughout proves complicated.

Sung Shao Chong (Billy Chong) traverses the Arizona desert, helping those in need on the way to meet his old friend Kum (Lam Hak-Ming) in a small western town. Once there, he runs into a group of men who terrorize the town and extort the local businesses. Meanwhile, a trio of three bank robbers need a place to hide until the heat dies down from a recent heist. They pick the home of a black farming family and subsequently kill them, leaving only the severly injured eldest son Tommy (Carl Scott) to escape. Tommy is found by Chong and Kum and is brought to the home of Doctor Ko (Leung Siu-Chung), who heals his injuries. Eventually Tommy learns kung fu from Ko, and sets out for payback. Luckily for Tommy, Chong is also bent on revenge after the bandits hire the local troublemakers and some Japanese samurai to kill him.

Mike Catton was once a world-renowned construction foreman (at least in the construction world), but an accident left him with a serious fear of heights. Unable to climb the big skyscrapers while under construction, he retired and became a truck driver. But when an old friend needs him to help put up a building, and when the old friend gets harassed and threatened by an Evil Corporate Type, he comes out of retirement and assembles the creme de la creme of the construction world. Together, they race against time to finish the building while the Evil Corporate Type tries to stop them.

Commissario Paolo Ferro (Maurizio Merli) stars as a (typical) tough cop again. This time he returns to the city of Milan to go after a murder corporation. Acampora (Mario Merola) is believed to be the prime suspect although he later proves to be one of the mafia's targets. As if all that wasn't enough, Paolo has to face his own nephew who seems to be involved in all sorts of dirty business.

Master Johnson Yap stars as Dynamite Johnson a crippled boy who undergoes an operation by bionic doctors to make him superbionic. In the same hospital is a man suffering from terrible burns inflicted by a giant robot dragon (which looks like it is made from silver cardboard) and his delirious ramblings are overhead by Johnson (with his superbionic ears) leading to an investigation which uncovers an evil Nazi plot for world domination.

A model and a private eye help a New York insurance investigator on a deadly case in Acapulco.

A secret agent is trained by having his brain linked up to a computer. He is then sent on a mission to rescue a Russian sub commander. The Russian is a defector who has important secrets but has been captured by an agent of an enemy nation.