What is the best directorial debut of the 1970s?

The 1970s saw micro-budget experiments, gritty realist portraits, and genre-bending provocations arrive as debut features — many launching iconic careers. Cast your vote!

1. 1
   Performance

   Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell's 1970 co-directed debut blurred identity between a gangster and a reclusive rock star in a fragmented, hallucinatory meditation on persona and violence.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Badlands

   Terrence Malick's 1973 debut follows a young couple on a Midwest killing spree told in an eerily poetic voice-over — immediately established him as one of cinema's most distinctive voices.
   1000pts
3. 3
   Hard Times

   Walter Hill's 1975 debut set Charles Bronson as a depression-era bare-knuckle fighter in New Orleans — a lean, economical action character study that launched Hill's stoic genre career.
   833pts
4. 4
   The Sugarland Express

   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.
   750pts
5. 5
   THX 1138

   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.
   500pts
6. 6
   Mad Max

   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.
   300pts
7. 7
   Dark Star

   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.
   300pts
8. 8
   The Duellists

   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.
   300pts
9. 9
   Blue Collar

   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.
   300pts
10. 10
    Caged Heat

    Jonathan Demme's 1974 debut — a women-in-prison exploitation film for Roger Corman — revealed a humanistic, empathetic directorial voice beneath its genre trappings.
    1pts
11. 11
    The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

    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.
    1pts
12. 12
    Eraserhead

    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.
    1pts