Pictures: Universal Pictures
Netflix kickstarted the year as normal by rotating its library of movies. Among the movies that came to Netflix on December 31st and January 1st were 15 movies from the 1970s considered classics. Here’s a rundown of all those movies that dropped.
The movies seem to come to Netflix through a range of different distributors, including Paramount and Universal Pictures. It comes as Netflix has seemingly been getting greater access to some of the biggest Hollywood studios’ back library of IPs as of late. We’ve seen almost all providers step up their licensing to Netflix in various forms, whether that be through licensing newer movies, older movies like the ones below, or titles from their vast TV catalog.
In alphabetical order, then, here’s a rundown of all the new movies that recently touched down that were first released in the 1970s. Descriptions of each movie come courtesy of Netflix:
- Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) – PG – English – A widowed singer and single mother starts over as a diner waitress in Arizona, befriending her coworkers and romancing a ruggedly handsome rancher.
- Black Belt Jones (1974) – R – English – High-kicking Black Belt Jones is dispatched to take down a group of Mafia goons trying to muscle in on a downtown karate studio.
- Blazing Saddles (1974) – R – English – This gleefully satirical take on Hollywood Westerns follows the tortured trail of a freed slave who’s elected as the sheriff of a racist town.
- Charley Varrick (1973) – PG – English – After burglarizing a small-town bank, petty crook Charley Varrick and his motley crew become targets of the mob in this action-packed thriller.
- Death Wish (1974) – R – English – After an architect’s wife is murdered and daughter is raped, he seeks vigilante justice against not only the culprits but other wrongdoers as well.
- High Plains Drifter (1973) – R – English – A showdown looms when a nameless gunslinger with shadowy origins rides into a frontier town that needs his protection from a gang of outlaws.
- It’s Alive (1974) – PG – English – Frank and Lenore Davis are an ordinary couple who produce an extraordinary baby — a fanged mutant that sets off on a killing spree to survive.
- Joe Kidd (1972) – PG – English – An ex-bounty hunter becomes entangled in a land baron’s pursuit of a vengeful group of Mexican homesteaders who have been cheated out of their deeds.
- Murder on the Orient Express (1974) – PG – English – When a passenger is found dead aboard the Orient Express, investigator Hercule Poirot sifts through an eccentric group of suspects to find the killer.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) – R – English – A rabble-rousing prisoner transfers to a psychiatric ward thinking it’ll be better than hard labor — until he tangles with the controlling Nurse Ratched.
- The Conversation (1974) – PG – English – An audio surveillance expert faces a moral quandary when he suspects that a couple whose conversation he’s been hired to record will be murdered.
- The Front Page (1974) – PG – English – Eager to quit his job and get married, a reporter in 1920s Chicago finds himself lured back on the beat when his editor offers a story too big to resist.
- The Gambler (1974) – R – English – After a bad run at a casino leaves him $44,000 in debt to a mobster, a professor with a gambling addiction tries in vain to win the money back.
- The Great Gatsby (1974) – PG – English – Mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby is obsessed with Daisy Buchanan, who’s married to unfaithful Tom, making for a tragic love triangle.
- The Parallax View (1974) – R – English – While investigating the assassination of a leading U.S. senator, a journalist uncovers a conspiracy involving a shadowy multinational corporation.
- The Sting (1973) – PG – English – In this Oscar winner, a rookie grifter and veteran con artist plan to fleece a homicidal racketeer through a phony racetrack scam in 1930s Chicago.
- The Street Fighter (1974) – R – Japanese – Martial arts legend Sonny Chiba stars as tough guy Terry Tsurugi, a ruthless street fighter hired by the Japanese Mafia to kidnap the beautiful heiress of a vast oil fortune, all so that they can take over her family’s estate.
These are all now populated in our complete list of movies from the 1970s on Netflix. Don’t forget we also break down movies from the 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s too via our library pages.
Netflix won’t hold these movies for very long, we should note. We checked a bunch of the expiry dates for these titles, and by the looks of it, most were only licensed for a few months, with the majority set to leave the service on April 1st, 2024. Suffice it to say, if you plan on watching any of these new titles on Netflix – we’d recommend you start doing so ASAP.
For more on what’s new on Netflix in the United States – keep it locked here on What’s on Netflix.
Will you be checking out any of these classic movies? Let us know down below.