The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
d. John Huston

19th-century British India, and kingdom of Kafiristan (on Indian-Afghan border)

An old-fashioned, rousing costume adventure film and morality tale told in flashback from writer/director John Huston and based on Anglo-Indian novelist Rudyard Kipling's (Christopher Plummer) short story tale. Shot on location in Morocco, it was about two roguish British soldiers-adventurers, Peachy Carnehan (Michael Caine) and Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery) at the turn of the century who set out from Raj-ruled India. While serving as military officers in the remote city of Kafiristan in E. Afghanistan (a province now called Nuristan), the pair were mistaken for gods or kings by the people in the priest cult, and the natives believed Daniel to be the incarnation of Alexander the Great, and he himself began to arrogantly believe in his own divinity, and his right to take their rich royal treasures from the holy city of Sikandergul, with deadly consequences. When he was disappointingly revealed to be human (a marriage prospect bit him on the cheek when he kissed her), he was pursued by an angry Kafiristan mob. Wearing his crown, Dravot was trapped on a rope bridge high above a canyon's gorge when the support ropes were hacked away, and he suffered a spectacular death.

Midway (1976)
d. Jack Smight

The Battle of Midway in June, 1942 in the Pacific Theatre of WWII

Jack Smight's war film was a fairly faithful recreation, told through a series of vignettes and episodes, of the surprising, courageous American victory over the Japanese fleet in 1942 at Midway, the turning point of the war. Its stellar cast was composed of big-name actors including Charlton Heston as Capt. Matt Garth, Henry Fonda as Adm. Chester Nimitz, Glenn Ford as Adm. Raymond Spruance, and Robert Mitchum as Adm. Bull Halsey. Newsreel and documentary footage were combined with the dramatic action.

A Bridge Too Far (1977, UK)
d. Richard Attenborough

WWII, the British 1st Airborne Division battling ("Operation Market Garden") at Arnhem bridge crossing the Lower Rhine in 1944

Richard Attenborough's big-budget film with an all-star cast, adapted from Cornelius Ryan's 1974 epic best-selling book, told of a daring and failed attempt (dubbed Operation Market Garden) in a 1944 WWII mission by Allied forces and their paratroopers behind enemy lines in Holland to capture a series of bridges on the Lower Rhine. The action included the British 1st Airborne Division's courageous defense at Arnhem Bridge, and vicious house-to-house fighting in Arnhem.

Cross of Iron (1977)
d. Sam Peckinpah

WWII on the Eastern Front, 1943

Peckinpah's war film (his sole work in this genre) was based upon the 1956 autobiographical novel The Willing Flesh, by German writer Willi Heinrich, using the backdrop of the Eastern Front conflict between Germany and Russia. The film was decidedly anti-war and against the cruel effects of war in its story of class conflict in the ranks. The central figure was a beleaguered and disillusioned German officer in the Wehrmacht regiment, platoon leader Sgt. Steiner (James Coburn), who was tired of the war and contemptuous of the cruel actions of his superior officers. The film concentrated on the conflict between Steiner and his newly-appointed, Prussian aristocratic, scheming commander Captain Hauptmann Stransky (Maximilian Schell), whose sole deluded aim was to obtain an Iron Cross medal.

Soldier of Orange (1977, Belg.)
d. Paul Verhoeven

WWII, Dutch Resistance against Nazi Occupation Forces

Verhoeven's expensive and well-received Belgian film followed a group of Netherlands students during a time of Nazi occupation during WWII, showing their shifting and opposing allegiances in response to Germany's invasion, as well as the horrible fateful consequences of warfare. Rutger Hauer starred as Erik Lanshof, one of a number of young people who joined the Resistance movement, while his friend Alex (Derek de Lint) fought with the SS on the German side. In the film's most memorable and symbolic scene, Erik and Alex danced ballroom tango together at a Nazi beach party. While Erik eventually became an RAF pilot, Alex was killed by a hand grenade in Russia. The film was a precursor of the director's own Black Book (2007).

The Deer Hunter (1978)
d. Michael Cimino

Small steel town in Pennsylvania, USA, Vietnam War era, American POWs as Vietcong captives

This classic but controversially-compelling Vietnam film, Michael Cimino's Best Picture-winning war-related character study, told about three young patriotic steelworkers and fellow deer-hunters (Robert De Niro as Michael Vronsky, Christopher Walken as Nick, and John Savage as Steven) from a Pennsylvania small-town who found only horror and death in Vietnam's conflict. The film was skewered for its depiction of fictional 'Russian Roulette' - although notable for the defining moment in which Michael turned the roulette pistol in his hand on his Viet Cong captors during an escape. The film ended with Steven legless, Michael disillusioned, and Nick still in Saigon playing lucrative yet suicidal Russian roulette - and dying in Michael's arms.

Coming Home (1978)
d. Hal Ashby

Homeland, San Diego, CA, post-Vietnam War, 1968

This thought-provoking, triple-Oscar winning film, set in 1968, dramatized the difficulties of post-Vietnam war adjustment experienced within a romantic triangle of characters on the homefront. While her gung-ho Marine captain husband Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) was away at war, housewife Sally (Jane Fonda after her controversial visit to Hanoi in 1972, and her being dubbed 'Hanoi Jane') volunteered at an understaffed San Diego VA Hospital and became unfaithful and intimately involved with one of the paraplegic, wheelchair-bound patients named Luke Martin (Jon Voight) - setting up inevitable conflict and issues upon her husband's return home.

The Tin Drum (1979, W. Germ.)
d. Volker Schlondorff

The city of Danzig during WWII, 1939 and after

Based on one half of Gunter Grass's highly acclaimed 1959 novel, this dark fairy-tale film about war's madness, a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winner, was perceived through the eyes of young Oskar Matzerath (David Bennent), who was blessed with auditory clairvoyance, and lived in the "free city" of Danzig on the Polish-German border. At the age of 3, he received a tin drum for his birthday - and then after an accident, willed himself to not grow any further. He would pound on his drum and let go a piercing scream (powerful enough to shatter glass), both with greater frequency as Danzig was affected by war and Nazi occupation.

Apocalypse Now (1979)
d. Francis Ford Coppola

Vietnam War era, city of Saigon, a war lord's stronghold in jungle of Cambodia

This harrowing epic vision of the madness of the war in Vietnam was an exceptionally spectacular war movie loosely based on Joseph Conrad's 1911 novel Heart of Darkness. Considered by many to be the best war movie of all time, with incredible performances, especially that of hawkish, gung-ho megalomaniac bad-ass Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall) of the 1st Cavalry Division who "loves the smell of napalm in the morning," tossed playing cards on each dead enemy body to serve as calling cards, surfed ("Charlie don't surf!") and hosted steak BBQs amidst war. Sweeping, surreal, still-controversial Vietnam war epic.

An American military assassin, a socially-dysfunctional loner named Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen), was commissioned to journey upriver on a patrol boat into Cambodia to 'terminate without prejudice' an insane, renegade, shaven Buddha-like, Special Forces colonel named Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who had become an insane demi-god and now ran his own fiefdom in the jungle. The film ended with the ritualistic slaughter of Kurtz with a machete, brilliantly cross-cut with the brutal sacrificial killing of a carabao/water buffalo by the natives as a ritualistic sacrifice to their gods.

The Big Red One (1980)
d. Samuel Fuller

The US 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) during WWII, in campaigns ranging from N. Africa to the Battle of the Bulge

Director-writer Samuel Fuller's semi-autobiographical film, based upon his own wartime experiences, was his most expensive - financed and distributed by 20th Century Fox. Fuller was unhappy with the studio's decision to cut the film in half and to add off-screen narration. It captured the terror and physical/mental strain of ill-advised combat of a 12-man foot-soldier's squadron in the US Army's First Infantry Division (its insignia was dubbed 'The Big Red One') and its intrepid sergeant Possum (played by Lee Marvin) during WWII. It followed their progress (as they were whittled down to four men) from North Africa through Sicily, Omaha Beach and Belgium to the ultimate horror of the concentration camp ovens at Falkenau, Czechoslovakia.

Breaker Morant (1980, Austr.)
d. Bruce Beresford

During the Second Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa, a courtmartial trial of three Australian officers of the Bushveldt Carbineers accused of murdering Boer POWs

Australian director Bruce Beresford's Oscar-nominated courtroom drama was set during a period of British imperialism. Its plot was similar to Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957), and it starred English actor Edward Woodward as one of the ill-fated soldiers, Anglo-Australian horseman Harry "Breaker" Morant. It told the story of three Australian Army soldiers in the Boer War at the turn of the century, as members of the Bushveldt Carbineers, who were scapegoated and placed on trial for court-martial for shooting POW's during warfare. They were executed by firing squad by film's end, to which Morant commented: "this is what comes from empire building!"