The 40 most popular 1970s war movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


Apocalypse Now
1979 · 2h 27m
country: United States
At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.


The Deer Hunter
1978 · 3h 3m
country: United Kingdom
Three steelworkers enlist in the army and are sent to Vietnam, one leaving behind a rushed marriage, the others a shared love. What they encounter during the war changes their lives forever.


She Devils of the SS
1973 · 1h 35m
country: Switzerland
In the last days of WW2, women are volunteering from all over Germany to serve in the front lines by having sex with the brave Nazi soldiers. But when they start having sex with each other, things get complicated. Especially with the increasing danger from the revengeful Soviet army!


Midway
1976 · 2h 12m
country: United States
This war drama depicts the U.S. and Japanese forces in the naval Battle of Midway, which became a turning point for Americans during World War II.


M*A*S*H
1970 · 1h 56m
country: United States
One of the world's most acclaimed comedies, M*A*S*H focuses on three Korean War Army surgeons brilliantly brought to life by Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt and Elliott Gould. Though highly skilled and deeply dedicated, they adopt a hilarious, lunatic lifestyle as an antidote to the tragedies of their Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and in the process infuriate Army bureaucrats. Robert Duvall, Gary Burghoff and Sally Kellerman co-star as a sanctimonious Major, an other-worldly Corporal, and a self-righteous yet lusty nurse.


Tora! Tora! Tora!
1970 · 2h 24m
country: Japan
In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", named after the code words used by the lead Japanese pilot to indicate they had surprised the Americans, covers the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which plunged America into the Second World War.


A Bridge Too Far
1977 · 2h 55m
country: United States
The story of Operation Market Garden—a failed attempt by the allies in the latter stages of WWII to end the war quickly by securing three bridges in Holland allowing access over the Rhine into Germany. A combination of poor allied intelligence and the presence of two crack German panzer divisions meant that the final part of this operation (the bridge in Arnhem over the Rhine) was doomed to failure.


The Tin Drum
1979 · 2h 42m
country: France
In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.


Kelly's Heroes
1970 · 2h 24m
country: United States
A misfit group of World War II American soldiers goes AWOL to rob a bank behind German lines.


Captive Women 4
1977 · 1h 30m
country: France
To improve the morale of the German officers, a train with beautiful girls is arranged to entertain them when on leave.


The Wild Geese
1978 · 2h 14m
country: United Kingdom
A British multinational company seeks to overthrow a vicious dictator in central Africa. It hires a band of (largely aged) mercenaries in London and sends them in to save the virtuous but imprisoned opposition leader who is also critically ill and due for execution. Just when the team has performed a perfect rescue, the multinational does a deal with the vicious dictator leaving the mercenary band to escape under their own steam and exact revenge.


All Quiet on the Western Front
1979 · 2h 30m
country: United Kingdom
At the start of World War I, Paul Baumer is a young German patriot, eager to fight. Indoctrinated with propaganda at school, he and his friends eagerly sign up for the army soon after graduation. But when the horrors of war soon become too much to bear, and as his friends die or become gravely wounded, Paul questions the sanity of fighting over a few hundreds yards of war-torn countryside.


Cross of Iron
1977 · 2h 13m
country: Germany
It is 1943, and the German army—ravaged and demoralised—is hastily retreating from the Russian front. In the midst of the madness, conflict brews between the aristocratic yet ultimately pusillanimous Captain Stransky and the courageous Corporal Steiner. Stransky is the only man who believes that the Third Reich is still vastly superior to the Russian army. However, within his pompous persona lies a quivering coward who longs for the Iron Cross so that he can return to Berlin a hero. Steiner, on the other hand is cynical, defiantly non-conformist and more concerned with the safety of his own men rather than the horde of military decorations offered to him by his superiors.


1941
1979 · 1h 58m
country: United States
In the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, panic grips California, where a military officer leads a mob chasing a Japanese sub.


The Eagle Has Landed
1976 · 2h 15m
country: United Kingdom
When the Nazi high command learns in late 1943 that Winston Churchill will be spending time at a country estate in Norfolk, it hatches an audacious scheme to kidnap the prime minister and spirit him to Germany for enforced negotiations with Hitler.


Catch-22
1970 · 2h 1m
country: United States
A WWII military pilot makes a valiant effort to be certified insane in order to be excused from flying missions. But there's a catch.


The Night Porter
1974 · 1h 58m
country: Italy
A concentration camp survivor discovers her former torturer and lover working as a porter at a hotel in postwar Vienna. When the couple attempt to re-create their sadomasochistic relationship, his former SS comrades begin to stalk them.


The Manila Rope
1976 · 1h 15m
country: Finland
Manillaköysi is a cult status holding TV-movie adaptation of the satirical war novel by Veijo Meri. Manillaköysi has an endless list of classic one-liners, but it is still not based on cheap laughs or anything like that. The whole humouristic aspect of it comes from describing the absurdity of war, and the whole military system, by looking it with the eyes of a simple man, who's thrown into it, and who simply does not give a rats ass of it all. The tone of it is not overly preachy or moralizing. If I would have to describe it with one word, it would be: unglamourizing. The main point of Manillaköysi is pretty much compressed in one of the most famous quotes of it: There is nothing supernatural about war, it is just work like anything else.


The Duellists
1977 · 1h 40m
country: United Kingdom
In 1800, as Napoleon Bonaparte rises to power in France, a rivalry erupts between Armand and Gabriel, two lieutenants in the French Army, over a perceived insult. For over a decade, they engage in a series of duels amidst larger conflicts, including the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812, and shifts in the political and social systems of Europe.


Sunflower
1970 · 1h 49m
country: Italy
After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?


Salon Kitty
1976 · 2h 10m
country: Germany
In Nazi Germany, Kitty runs a brothel where the soldiers come to 'relax'. Recording devices have been installed by a power-hungry official who plans to use the information to blackmail and usurp Hitler. One of the girls discovers the ploy and, with the madam's help, takes on the dangerous task of exposing the conspiracy.


Slaughterhouse-Five
1972 · 1h 40m
country: United States
Billy Pilgrim, a veteran of the Second World War, finds himself mysteriously detached from time, so that he is able to travel, without being able to help it, from the days of his childhood to those of his peculiar life on a distant planet called Tralfamadore, passing through his bitter experience as a prisoner of war in the German city of Dresden, over which looms the inevitable shadow of an unspeakable tragedy.


Force 10 from Navarone
1978 · 1h 54m
country: United Kingdom
World War II, 1943. Mallory and Miller, the heroes who destroyed the guns of Navarone, are sent to Yugoslavia in search of a ghost from the past.


Voyage of the Damned
1976 · 2h 35m
country: United Kingdom
A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.


Waterloo
1970 · 2h 14m
country: Italy
After defeating France and imprisoning Napoleon on Elba, ending two decades of war, Europe is shocked to find Napoleon has escaped and has caused the French Army to defect from the King back to him. The best of the British generals, the Duke of Wellington, beat Napolean's best generals in Spain and Portugal, but now must beat Napoleon himself with an Anglo Allied army.


Johnny Got His Gun
1971 · 1h 52m
country: United States
A young American soldier, rendered in pseudocoma from an artillery shell from WWI, recalls his life leading up to that point.


The Inglorious Bastards
1978 · 1h 39m
country: Italy
Set in Europe during WWII, a group of American soldiers on their way to military prison are beset upon by a German artillery attack, escaping with Switzerland in their sights. Before making it any farther, they volunteer to steal a V2 warhead for the French Underground - taking them deep into the heart of German territory.


Zulu Dawn
1979 · 1h 57m
country: Netherlands
In 1879, the British suffer a great loss at the Battle of Isandlwana due to incompetent leadership.


Ike
1979 · 6h
country: United Kingdom
Eisenhower the military man is the focus of this mini-series, his relationships with the other wartime leaders, and, very discreetly, his personal relationship with his driver, Kay Summersby.


Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS
1975 · 1h 37m
country: Canada
Ilsa, a warden at a Nazi death camp that conducts experiments on prisoners, strives to prove that women can withstand more pain and suffering than men, and therefore should be allowed to fight on the frontlines.


The Beast in Heat
1977 · 1h 26m
country: Italy
In a remote village in occupied Europe, the SS pursue their inhuman treatment of captured partisans in efforts to force them to betray their comrades.... while Fraulein Krast, a sadistic biologist, concentrates her efforts on the womenfolk with refined tortures and humiliation, leaving them to the mercy of a sex-crazed half-man, half-beast she has created with experimental injections.... And as advancing Allied forces approach the village, Krast herself becomes a victim of her own fiendish rituals....


The Beguiled
1971 · 1h 45m
country: United States
Offbeat Civil War drama in which a wounded Yankee soldier, after finding refuge in an isolated girls' school in the South towards the end of the war, becomes the object of the young women's sexual fantasies. The soldier manipulates the situation for his own gratification, but when he refuses to completely comply with the girls' wishes, they make it very difficult for him to leave.


The Purple Horizon
1971 · 1h 29m
country: Vietnam
Since its first premiere in 1971, a classic Republic of Vietnam (1954-1975) war romance feature based on a fiction novel by military writer, Van-Quang. The film was lost for more than 4 decades when the communist forces took Saigon, Republic of Vietnam's capital, on April 30th, 1975. Digitized and restored from surviving 35mm prints archived by Japan film studio Imagica Lab; now transferred to UCLA Film and TV Archive. This film provides an almost unknown perspective on the Vietnam War, the Republic of Vietnam, and the RVN Army. The stage is the Republic of Vietnam, and the scenes portray a time during the Vietnam War as experienced by the Southern Vietnamese people, themselves. Phi, a soldier, longing to take Lien off to their private, imaginary space (the Purple Horizon), understands what his duty and commitment as a soldier is. Lien is a singer whose style is reminiscent of the "Torch" singers of the early 1930s. She desperately longs to escape the world with Phi to their purple.


Macbeth
1971 · 2h 21m
country: United Kingdom
Scotland, 11th century. Driven by the twisted prophecy of three witches and the ruthless ambition of his wife, warlord Macbeth, bold and brave, but also weak and hesitant, betrays his good king and his brothers in arms and sinks into the bloody mud of a path with no return, sown with crime and suspicion.


Coming Home
1978 · 2h 7m
country: United States
In 1968 California, a Marine officer's wife falls in love with a former high school classmate who suffered a paralyzing combat injury in the war.


Yanks
1979 · 2h 18m
country: Germany
During WWII, the United States set up army bases in Great Britain as part of the war effort. Against their proper sensibilities, many of the Brits don't much like the brash Yanks, especially when it comes to the G.I.s making advances on the lonely British girls. One relationship that develops is between married John, an Army Captain, and the aristocratic Helen, whose naval husband is away at war. Helen loves her husband, but Helen and John are looking for some comfort during the difficult times.


MacArthur
1977 · 2h 10m
country: United States
The film portrays MacArthur's life from 1942, before the Battle of Bataan, to 1952, when he was removed from his Korean War command by President Truman for insubordination, and is recounted in flashback as he visits West Point.


Now Where Did the Seventh Company Get to?
1973 · 1h 35m
country: France
1940: During the chaotic running fights of the French army the 7th company disappears - nobody knows they've been taken captive. Only their scouting patrol, three witty but lazy guys, can escape and now wanders around behind the German lines. They'd like to just stay out the fights, but a Lieutenant urges them to use a captured truck to break through to their troops.


Shock Waves
1977 · 1h 25m
country: United States
Visitors to a remote island discover that a reclusive Nazi commandant has been breeding a group of zombie soldiers.


Escape to Athena
1979 · 2h 5m
country: United Kingdom
During the World War II, the prisoners of a German camp in a Greek island are trying to escape. They not only want their freedom, but also seek an ineffable treasure hidden in a monastery at the summit of the island's mountain.
The 1970s are widely considered American cinema's strongest decade, when the studio system's collapse handed a generation of young directors unusual freedom. It ended with Jaws and Star Wars inventing the modern blockbuster.
War films range from combat spectacle to anti-war argument, and often try to be both at once. The genre is a reliable index of how a country understands its own history.