Bad Movies You'll Remember If You Grew Up in the '70s

With a plot that some described as too complicated to explain, “Diamonds Are Forever” starred Sean Connery, who returned to his role as the famous 007 spy after a hiatus of a few years.

In this spy thriller/horror movie, the son of a CIA operative is kidnapped for his psychic powers by a sinister colleague who wants to develop the boy’s abilities as a weapon. One critic called the plot “convoluted, confused and confusing,” but most praised Kirk Douglas’ performance.

Clint Eastwood, who also directed this movie, plays an art history professor and art collector who finances his hobby by performing the occassional assassination. Movie critic Roger Ebert said its plot was “so unlikely and confused that we can’t believe it for much more than 15 seconds at a time.”

This movie might hit an especially sensitive note among viewers today. An experimental vaccine leaves Dr. Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) as the only truly immune survivor of a global pandemic.

A family driving to California accidentally crashes in the desert and encounters a group of cannibals in this horror thriller. While some found the movie “tasteless” and “ultra-violent,” it became a cult classic and was remade in 2006.

Based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel of the same name, “The Great Gatsby” tells the story of a young Midwesterner who becomes involved with a decadent crowd living in the mansions of 1920s Long Island. Movie critic Roger Ebert called it “a superficially beautiful hunk of a movie.”

A jaded hitman befriends the son of one of his victims and takes him on as an apprentice in this action thriller. But one critic called it “as slow as molasses and just as exciting.”

“The Crazies” takes place in a Pennsylvania town that has accidentally become infected by a man-made virus. Another pandemic movie on our list — perhaps we have just lost the taste for such subject matter.

In this disturbing battle of wits, Andrew Wyke, mystery writer and game player (played by Laurence Olivier) meets Milo Tindle (Michael Caine), who has fallen in love with his wife.

Flesh-eating piranhas are accidentally released in a river near a summer camp in this comedy-horror hybrid. A brazen “Jaws” knockoff, some viewers found the movie so bad it was good.

In this horror-slasher movie, Michael Myers, who killed his sister when he was a child, escapes from a mental hospital and returns to stalk teenage babysitters on Halloween. This first “Halloween” movie spawned a slew of sequels and remakes.

In this 1971 psychological thriller, American astrophysicist David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) and his British wife move to the English countryside for a more peaceful life, but they are terrorized by the locals. One critic wrote that the script “relies on shock and violence to tide it over.”

In “The Last House on the Left,” two teenage girls on their way to a rock concert are kidnapped by a group of sadistic convicts. One of two Wes Craven movies on our list, critics found the movie’s “visceral brutality is more repulsive than engrossing.”

In this brutal revenge horror movie, a young writer seeking seclusion to work on her first novel is stalked by vicious rapists. Movie critic Roger Ebert called it “a film without a shred of artistic distinction.”

In this fifth and final installment of the original Planet of the Apes series, the battle between apes and humans continues, but most critics agree that the movie takes “a celebrated franchise and blows it all up.”