What is the best directorial debut of the 1970s?

Steven Spielberg's 1974 theatrical debut — a chase film about a couple stealing their baby from foster care — revealed his instinct for kinetic pacing and audience empathy.

George Lucas' 1971 feature debut — a sterile, haunting dystopia where a man attempts to escape a chemically controlled underground society — announced a filmmaker of bold, alienating vision.

Ridley Scott's 1977 debut — an obsessive Napoleonic-era duel story — announced a filmmaker of extraordinary visual grandeur through its painterly composition and muted period palette.

John Carpenter's 1974 sci-fi comedy about a crew of bored astronauts on a decaying deep-space mission began as a student film and foreshadowed the director's subversive genre sensibility.

Paul Schrader's 1978 debut is a searing industrial drama about three Detroit auto workers who rob their union and uncover something far more dangerous — taut, angry, and politically incisive.

George Miller's 1979 debut transformed a $300,000 budget into a viscerally effective road-revenge thriller that launched one of cinema's greatest genre franchises.

Jonathan Demme's 1974 debut — a women-in-prison exploitation film for Roger Corman — revealed a humanistic, empathetic directorial voice beneath its genre trappings.

David Lynch's surrealist 1977 nightmare about industrial dread and fatherhood became a cult classic, shot over five years on a shoestring budget and secured its director's visionary reputation.

Tobe Hooper's 1974 breakout debut created one of horror's most enduring icons in Leatherface, shot with gritty documentary realism that made its terrors feel disturbingly real.