Best Science Fiction Movies of 1978

Matthew Bennell notices that several of his friends are complaining that their close relatives are in some way different. When questioned later they themselves seem changed, as they deny everything or make lame excuses. As the invaders increase in number they become more open and Bennell, who has by now witnessed an attempted 'replacement', realises that he and his friends must escape or suffer the same fate.

Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman discovers a sinister and bizarre plot to rekindle the Third Reich.

When a devious plot separates CIA agent Peter Sandza from his son, Robin, the distraught father manages to see through the ruse. Taken because of his psychic abilities, Robin is being held by Ben Childress, who is studying people with supernatural powers in hopes of developing their talents as weapons. Soon Peter pairs up with Gillian, a teen who has telekinesis, to find and rescue Robin.

When flesh-eating piranhas are accidently released into a summer resort's rivers, the guests become their next meal.

A French detective in London reconstructs the life of a man lying in hospital with severe injuries with the help of journals and a psychiatrist. He realises that the man had powerful telekinetic abilities.

After the destruction of the Twelve Colonies of Mankind, the last major fighter carrier leads a makeshift fugitive fleet in a desperate search for the legendary planet Earth. This film is adapted from a television series that aired on ABC from September 17, 1978, to August 17, 1980. The first and fifth episodes of the series were edited into this theatrical feature film. Taken together, the two episodes ran 148 minutes, without commercials, while the film runs 125 minutes.

Tony and Tia are other-worldly twins endowed with telekinesis. When their Uncle Bene drops them off in Los Angeles for an earthbound vacation, a display of their supernatural skill catches the eye of the nefarious Dr. Gannon and his partner in crime, Letha, who see rich possibilities in harnessing the children's gifts. They kidnap Tony, and Tia gives chase only to find Gannon is using her brother's powers against her.

Hardware Wars (1978) is a short film parody of the classic science fiction film Star Wars. The thirteen-minute film, which premiered in theatres only seven months after Star Wars, consisted of little more than inside jokes and visual puns that heavily depended upon audience familiarity with the original. The theme song is Richard Wagner's famous "Ride of the Valkyries". The tagline was "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss three bucks goodbye."

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is a 1978 comedy film directed by John De Bello and starring David Miller. The film is a spoof of B-movies. Made on a budget of less than USD $100,000, the story involves tomatoes becoming sentient by unknown means and revolting against humanity.

A comatose hospital patient harasses and kills though his powers of telekinesis to claim his private nurse as his own.

David and Carolyn marry in Hawaii and continue to work to find a cure for both their afflictions in a race against time.

Originally apart of The Star Wars Holiday Special, this animated story follows Chewbacca as he searches for a cure to the virus which knocked out his friends, with the help of an unlikely ally – the bounty hunter Boba Fett.

Scientist Dr. Bradford Crane and army general Thalius Slater join forces to fight an almost invisible enemy threatening America; killer bees that have deadly venom and attack without reason. Disaster movie-master Irwin Allen's film contains spectacular special effects, including a train crash caused by the eponymous swarm.

A UFO is stranded on earth and impounded by the US government. Its pilot, a cat with a collar that gives it special powers, including the ability to communicate with humans, has eluded the authorities and seeks the help of a scientist in order to reclaim and repair his ship and get back home.

Searching for the lost world of Atlantis, Prof. Aitken, his son Charles and Greg Collinson are betrayed by the crew of their expedition's ship, attracted by the fabulous treasures of Atlantis. The diving bell disabled, a deep sea monster attacks the boat. They are all dragged to the bottom of the sea where they meet the inhabitants of the lost continent, an advanced alien race that makes sailors their slaves.

A psychiatrist becomes the new Sorcerer Supreme of the Earth in order to battle an evil Sorceress from the past.

When an extortionist threatens to force a multi-suicide unless a huge ransom is paid, only Peter Parker can stop him with his new powers as Spider-Man.

A woman and an engineered man are sent in a gigantic sentient starship to search space for a place to start a new life cycle. Raj decides to take a look around the ship. He comes across a gigantic robotic cleaner. Combat ensues.

Depicts the not too distant future when computers have been so perfected that the largest directs the world's economy, science and human psychology. Presents a story about an assassination threat against Multivac, a computer that directs much of the world's economic and human existence, and how this threat draws everyone together.

A bus tour takes its passengers to a place called SexWorld where they can live out their most secret desires during a weekend.

Astronomers discover a comet that they believe will crash into Phoenix, Arizona. They attempt to warn officials, but without 100% certainty, the governor of Arizona is reticent to cause a panic. Even after a television news reporter discovers the truth and threatens to go live with it, the response is understated enough to doom some residents of Phoenix to certain death.

Two children help an eccentric professor test his new time machine.

After an atomic explosion blasts the Moon out of Earth orbit, Moonbase Alpha drifts in space, with 300 people on board. When a rescue team from Earth arrives in a faster-than-light space ship, everyone is overjoyed that they can now return to Earth. But Moonbase Commander John Koenig, having undergone an experimental brain soothing process after receiving a concussion in a crash on the Lunar surface, sees not friends from Earth but gruesome monsters which have telepathically caused all others on Alpha to see an illusion of an Earth party. The aliens are desperate for radiation and plan to manipulate the Alphans into detonating nuclear waste on the Lunar surface, reducing the Moon and everyone on it to dust. Koenig must expose this conspiracy to save his people. Compiled from the two part episode The Bringers Of Wonder from the TV series Space: 1999's second series.

Scientists investigating the briny deep are threatened by a giant turtle and the spirit of a young brunette swimmer in the Bermuda Triangle.

Patty is lying awake one night in a church basement, distraught and scared. She is to be executed the next morning for refusing to take the Mark of the Beast. Patty knows what lies ahead if she takes the mark but can still not believe in Christ.When those around her try to comfort her and encourage her to accept the Lord, she lashes out at them.

A nuclear leak creates a mutant Slithis sea monster, which terrorizes the variety of pets, winos, and hippies who hang around Venice, California.

Corporate smuggling of South American killer bees into the United States results in huge swarms terrorizing the northern hemisphere. A small team of scientists work desperately to destroy the threat, but the bees soon mutate into a super-intelligent species that threatens the world.

1000 years into the future, after the Great Neutron Wars, the world is divided into desert wastelands and isolated city-states. Notorious "Desert Ranger" Kaz is forced to fight in the DeathSport, dueling on futuristic motorcycle "Death Machines". With the help of renegade vixen Deneer, Kaz must face his past and fight to save himself and his people.

Captain Nemo (José Ferrer) is found in suspended animation under the sea and revived by modern-day Navy men in order to battle a fiendish mad scientist (Burgess Meredith).

A scientist builds a machine that will enable him to travel back and forth in time, but when he puts it in motion, he gets more than he bargained for.

The Pig has a plan to eradicate some people with a freeze bomb that instantly freezes people to death. It is up to Detective Ash to stop him and protect the woman with the secret to the ice bomb embedded in a microdot under the skin of her forehead.

A spaceship containing specimens for an intergalactic zoo crashes on Earth near a small back woods town. The specimens escape, and soon town folk are turning up mutilated. Very low budget feature was the first for Baltimore filmmaker Don Dohler.

When a philandering husband accidentally finds himself lost during a rainstorm, he’s taken in by an elderly mortician and is forced to learn the ghastly origins of four freshly arrived corpses.

Luke Skywalker and Han Solo battle evil Imperial forces to help Chewbacca reach his imperiled family on the Wookiee planet - in time for Life Day, their most important day of the year!

Invading aliens are taking over the brains of folks in a small town. The head leech is a wad of black tinfoil with a couple of white thumbtacks for eyes. Others are spidery-like rubber things pulled along by strings.

A space probe brings back a micro-organism from Mars which terrorizes passengers at a railhead.

Loner teenager Billy Duncan stumbles across a lost alien ray gun while wandering the desert one day. Billy uses the destructive weapon to get revenge on his enemies, but quickly finds himself beginning to turn into a violent, alien creature who destroys anyone who offends him.

A veteran street cop is teamed up with the police department's new crime-fighting weapon--an android.

A bizarre sci-fi rock opera like little else being produced under the banner of Canadian film at the time, Metal Messiah is about an enigmatic metallic-skinned stranger trying to stop society's self-destructive obsession with rock and roll. Anchored in Toronto's live music scene if the late 1970s, this dystopian parable was the feature film debut of local music impresario and director Tibor Takács. Working with screenwriter Stephen Zoller, Takács' film is a crudely crafted, episodic work that plays out like a glam version of Amos Poe's avant-punk NYC flick The Foreigner (1978), but with even more ambition, attempting to scale to the bombastic rock opera heights of films like Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and Tommy (1975). (from: http://www.canuxploitation.com/review/metalmessiah.html)

Thunder Mountain somewhere in the American wilderness, has a reputation that has scared away travellers, both white and Indian, for hundreds of years. Undaunted by the ghost stories surrounding the mountain, a father decides it's just the place for him and his son to go camping and do a little bonding. Strange voices and stranger footprints around their campground try to warn the pair away, but Dad is unconcerned and blithely pushes on. Eventually, however, the two come face to face with the force standing guard over this forbidden mountain.

An alien vessel manages to break the earth defense systems. Captain Layton is sent to investigate and find the invaders. Together with friends from the planet Ganymed he discovers the enemies in a hidden underground city on earth.

The comic adventures that befall a crew of astronauts assigned to a remote military space station.

An intelligence agent discovers a Nazi plot to revive the Third Reich by using clones.

Local teenagers are holding a Halloween party at a supposedly "haunted" old mill, but find out that one of the partygoers who is dressed as an alien is actually a real alien.

This movie has been approved for release by Warner Bros. In 2009, a team of Superman movie enthusiasts came together to create the longest known version of Superman-The Movie, containing footage from the TV broadcasts that were not included in the theatrical release. The assembly of footage resulted in a robust 188-minute version, appropriately called Superman-The Movie: Restored International Cut. Storyline: Just before the destruction of the planet Krypton, scientist Jor-El sends his infant son Kal-El on a spaceship to Earth. Raised by kindly farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent, young Clark discovers the source of his superhuman powers and moves to Metropolis to fight evil. As Superman, he battles the villainous Lex Luthor, while, as novice reporter Clark Kent, he attempts to woo co-worker Lois Lane

On the edge of the universe, the Doctor, Leela and K9 encounter a Minyan ship on an epic quest to find their race banks... but their people have encountered the Time Lords before...

The Doctor returns to Gallifrey, claims his rights and is inaugurated President. It soon turns out that he has led a group of aliens called Vardans to the planet to eradicate them completely. After they are destroyed, the Sontarans take their opportunity and follow them in their invasion until they are destroyed by the Doctor.

The Doctor and Romana learn the second segment of the Key to Time is on the planet Calufrax. Yet they arrive on a planet called Zanak, which has been hollowed out and fitted with hyperspace engines, allowing its insane, half-robot Captain to materialise it around smaller planets and plunder their resources.

Searching for the third segment to the Key to Time brings the Doctor and Romana to present-day Earth, where the travellers have to contend with stone circles, Druidic rituals and a not-so-mythical goddess known as the Cailleach.