50 Years Later, These Are the 10 Best Movies of 1976, Ranked

1976 was a strangely brilliant year for movies. America was busy celebrating its bicentennial, but its filmmakers were in no mood to throw a party. New Hollywood was at its creative peak. Likewise, Jaws had just taught studios how to sell a blockbuster, so bleak character studies were sharing screens with crowd-pleasers.

We have ranked the 10 best movies of 1976 on three things, including how good they actually are, and how rewatchable and relevant they still are.

10 Carrie (1976)

Where to Watch: Fubo, Philo, and MGM+

Brian De Palma turned Stephen King’s first novel into one of horror’s most sympathetic nightmares. Sissy Spacek plays Carrie White, a bullied teenager with a fanatically religious mother, played by Piper Laurie, and telekinetic powers she barely understands.

Carrie is about how cruelty, both at school and home, makes the victim finally snap. The movie earned Spacek and Laurie Oscar nominations, a rare feat for horror. The prom scene is still being copied 50 years later.

9 The Omen (1976)

Where to Watch: Rent on Prime Video or Apple TV

Richard Donner‘s The Omen asks a terrifying question: What if your child was the Antichrist? Gregory Peck plays a US diplomat who slowly realizes that the son he adopted, Damien, leaves a trail of bodies behind him. It’s one of the best ’70s horror movies about faith colliding with denial, as Peck’s character keeps refusing the evidence in front of him.

The film finished among 1976’s 10 highest-grossing films. Jerry Goldsmith’s demonic choral score won him his only Oscar. It’s a great watch on a dark night, mostly thanks to those set-piece deaths.

8 Heart of Glass (1976)

Where to Watch: Philo, Tubi, and Kanopy

Werner Herzog‘s oddest film is set in an 18th-century Bavarian village that collapses into madness after the only man who knows the formula for its famous ruby glass dies. The movie’s theme is obsession and a community sleepwalking into ruin.

Herzog famously hypnotized nearly his entire cast before every scene, and the drifting performances look like nothing else in cinema. You should approach it as a mood piece as opposed to your usual narrative structures.

7 The Shootist (1976)

Where to Watch: Paramount+

John Wayne‘s final film is about an aging gunfighter, J.B. Books, who arrives in Nevada with terminal cancer and decides how he wants to go out. Wayne was fighting cancer himself and died three years later, which makes every scene land harder.

The supporting cast is stacked with Lauren Bacall, James Stewart, and a young Ron Howard. It sits at 81% with critics, well below most of this list, and the filmmaking is plain. However, this one lands emotionally in a way The Omen and Carrie never try to.

6 The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Where to Watch: Rent on Prime Video or Apple TV

Of everything Clint Eastwood directed in the ’70s, this is the Western that has aged best. He plays a Missouri farmer, Josey Wales, who picks up a gun after Union militants kill his family. He then spends two hours trying to stop being a killer and even gets a patched-together family along the way.

It beats The Shootist as a Western in this list, because it does the same elegiac work with far more life in it. Chief Dan George’s performance alone is worth the runtime. It’s not in the top five because it is a great genre film rather than an essential one.

5 Rocky (1976)

Where to Watch: Netflix, MGM+, and Fubo

The biggest film on this list by a mile. Rocky collected over $225 million worldwide, became 1976’s number one movie, and won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing. An unknown Sylvester Stallone refused to sell his script unless he could star in it, and the gamble built a franchise still running through Creed.

It is the most rewatchable movie of the decade, and probably the most beloved, but it is also the most straightforward. The movie’s 93% critics score sits beside a 69% audience number that hints at how familiar it has become. The four above it are stranger and deeper.

4 Cría Cuervos (1976)

Where to Watch: The Criterion Channel

The title comes from a Spanish proverb about raising ravens that peck your eyes out. Carlos Saura’s film follows eight-year-old Ana, played by a devastating Ana Torrent, who believes she poisoned her father and drifts between memory and fantasy inside a Madrid house.

This is the jump in quality. Made right after Franco’s death, the movie’s themes allude to criticisms of Francoist Spain, and it holds a perfect 100% on RT. It won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and became Spain’s sixth-biggest hit that year, but it ranks fourth because of what it does to you.

Cría Cuervos is now available for streaming on The Criterion Channel.

3 All the President’s Men (1976)

Where to Watch: PlutoTV

Simply put, the premise of All the President’s Men is two reporters making phone calls for two hours. Alan J. Pakula turns it into one of the tensest films ever made, with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman chasing a break-in until the trail reaches the President.

Third place comes down to relevance. Its 95% score is the highest of any American film here, and it won four Oscars from eight nominations. But the reason it is higher on this list is that it has become more relevant over time. In an era when nobody agrees on what is true, this is the clearest picture we have of how truth is actually assembled.

All the President’s Men is now available for streaming on PlutoTV.

2 Network (1976)

Where to Watch: Rent on Prime Video or Apple TV

Paddy Chayefsky thought he was writing satire. Instead, he predicted the next 50 years of media in this classic 1976 movie. In Network, a fading anchor’s on-air breakdown becomes a ratings bonanza, and an executive turns his rage into programming.

The movie did not just age well, but it came true in many aspects. Everything Chayefsky invented as absurdity, including outrage as a product, news as entertainment, and audiences fed their own anger, is now the default. It won four Oscars, three of them for acting, a record shared only with A Streetcar Named Desire.

1 Taxi Driver (1976)

Where to Watch: Rent on Prime Video or Apple TV

Robert De Niro‘s insomniac cab driver circles a rotting New York, convinced that he has been chosen to clean it up. Fifty years on, Travis Bickle is still the definitive portrait of a man radicalized by his own isolation. Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver takes the top spot because it wins on all three counts at once.

Not only is it the best movie of the year, but it’s also the most relevant, as loneliness turning into violence is not a 1976 problem. From a rewatchability perspective, nothing else from 1976 has shaped as much of what came after.

Which of these are you picking up for a rewatch this year? And is there a 1976 classic you think we left out? Let us know in the comments below!