70s Movies Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
59 free 70s Movies trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
51 free 70s Movies trivia questions with answers. The 1970s gave Hollywood the blockbuster, the New Hollywood auteurs and the disaster movie all at once. This quiz covers the decade's films from Airport and Love Story to Alien and Kramer vs. Kramer: The Godfather and Brando's refused Oscar, Jaws and its broken shark, Star Wars and the merchandising deal, Rocky's million-dollar budget, The Exorcist's Best Picture nomination, Cuckoo's Nest's Big Five, Annie Hall beating Star Wars, Grease and Saturday Night Fever, Taxi Driver, Chinatown, Network, Dog Day Afternoon, Apocalypse Now's nightmare shoot, Halloween's $1.98 mask, Monty Python's rock-star financiers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Willy Wonka, Animal House, Enter the Dragon, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Carrie, Superman, Mad Max, Cabaret, Deliverance, Patton and Barry Lyndon. Easy questions ask who directed Jaws and who played Rocky. Medium ones cover Oscars, sequels and famous lines. Hard ones want the film that first sold the 70s disaster genre, the bands who bankrolled the Holy Grail, the budget of American Graffiti and which 1972 musical holds the record for most Oscars without Best Picture. Every answer has been checked against reference articles on each film, and each question shows its citation once you have answered. Built for movie nights, retro parties and anyone who grew up in a cinema in the seventies.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed The Godfather (1972)?
Francis Ford Coppola
Bogdanovich was among the directors who turned the job down; Coppola co-wrote the script with novelist Mario Puzo.
Q 02Marlon Brando declined his Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather and sent whom to the podium instead?
Sacheen Littlefeather
Sacheen Littlefeather, an actress and activist, took the stage in Brando's place at the 1973 ceremony and refused the statuette, citing Hollywood's treatment of Native Americans.
Q 03The Godfather Part II (1974) made Academy Awards history how?
It was the earliest sequel to win Best Picture
Robert De Niro played the young Vito Corleone, the role that had won Brando his Oscar two years earlier.
Q 04Who directed Jaws (1975)?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg directed Jaws at 27; shooting at sea off Martha's Vineyard ran months over schedule, and the film became the highest-grossing release to that point.
Q 05Why does the shark appear so little in Jaws?
The mechanical sharks kept malfunctioning
He suggested its presence instead, helped by John Williams's two-note theme.
Q 06Which 1973 hit gave George Lucas the leverage to secure the merchandising and sequel rights to Star Wars?
American Graffiti
Made for $777,000, American Graffiti became one of the most profitable films ever.
Q 07Star Wars was distributed in 1977 by which studio?
Twentieth Century-Fox
Twentieth Century-Fox financed and distributed Star Wars after Universal and United Artists passed; studio head Alan Ladd Jr. championed the project.
Q 08Who wrote and starred in Rocky (1976)?
Sylvester Stallone
Sylvester Stallone wrote the script in a matter of days and insisted on starring, turning down larger offers; made for about $1 million, Rocky won Best Picture.
Q 09One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) was only the second film ever to do what at the Oscars?
Win the 'Big Five'
Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Adapted Screenplay; It Happened One Night did it first and The Silence of the Lambs later.
Q 10Which film beat Star Wars to the Best Picture Oscar for 1977?
Annie Hall
Woody Allen's Annie Hall took four Oscars: Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and Best Actress for Diane Keaton, in a role written for her.
Q 11Who plays Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976)?
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, the insomniac Vietnam veteran turned cabbie; the film won the 1976 Palme d'Or and later inspired John Hinckley Jr.'s 1981 attack on Reagan.
Q 12Chinatown (1974) is loosely inspired by which real-life conflict?
The California water wars
Robert Towne's script transposes the California water wars, the early-1900s diversion of the Owens Valley's water to Los Angeles, to a 1930s murder mystery.
Q 13In Grease (1978), Sandy is a transfer student from which country?
Australia
Sandy comes from Australia; the character was American in the stage show and was rewritten after Olivia Newton-John, who was raised there, was cast.
Q 21Which French director acts in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) as scientist Claude Lacombe?
François Truffaut
François Truffaut, the New Wave director of The 400 Blows, plays Claude Lacombe, the French scientist leading the UFO investigation, in his only appearance in an American film.
Q 22Who directed Superman (1978), starring Christopher Reeve?
Richard Donner
Richard Donner directed Superman, shooting it back-to-back with much of Superman II before he was replaced on the sequel by Richard Lester.
Q 23Michael Myers's mask in Halloween (1978) was made from a $1.98 mask of which TV character?
Captain Kirk
Q 14Saturday Night Fever (1977) was based on a magazine article that turned out to be what?
Mostly fictional
Nik Cohn's 1976 New York magazine piece 'Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night' was mostly fictional; he admitted in 1996 that he had invented its disco-king protagonist.
Q 15Who plays Ripley in Alien (1979)?
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver, in her first lead role, plays Ellen Ripley, the warrant officer who outlasts the crew; she returned for three sequels.
Q 16Apocalypse Now (1979) is loosely based on which novella?
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness supplied the river journey toward a renegade named Kurtz; the film moves it from the Congo to wartime Vietnam and Cambodia.
Q 17Which star suffered a near-fatal heart attack during the Apocalypse Now shoot?
Martin Sheen
Martin Sheen, playing Captain Willard, suffered a heart attack in March 1977 during the Philippines shoot, at age 36, and was back filming within weeks.
Q 18The Sting (1973) reunited which two stars of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
Paul Newman and Robert Redford
Paul Newman and Robert Redford, the 1969 Butch Cassidy pair, play con men Gondorff and Hooker; George Roy Hill directed both films, and Robert Shaw is their mark.
Q 19A Clockwork Orange (1971) was adapted from a novel by which author?
Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess published A Clockwork Orange in 1962, inventing its Nadsat slang; Stanley Kubrick wrote, produced and directed the 1971 adaptation.
Q 20In The French Connection (1971), Gene Hackman plays a detective with what nickname?
Popeye
Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle was based on real narcotics detective Eddie Egan.
The mask was a Captain Kirk mask, molded from William Shatner's face, bought for $1.98 and spray-painted white with the eyebrows and sideburns removed.
Q 24Who plays Willy Wonka in the 1971 film?
Gene Wilder
Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay from his own novel; five Golden Tickets are hidden in Wonka Bars.
Q 25Who was Mel Brooks's original choice to play Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles (1974)?
Richard Pryor
Pryor co-wrote the script but the studio reportedly refused to insure him; Cleavon Little took the role.
Q 26Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) was partly financed by which rock bands?
Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd
Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd each put money into the film when no studio would; Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson and record labels such as Charisma also invested.
Q 27In The Deer Hunter (1978), the steelworkers are from a town near which city?
Pittsburgh
The characters live in Clairton, a steel town just south of Pittsburgh on the Monongahela; the film won five Oscars including Best Picture and Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken.
Q 28Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) won Best Picture and acting Oscars for Dustin Hoffman and whom?
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep won Best Supporting Actress as Joanna Kramer, her first Oscar; Hoffman took Best Actor, and eight-year-old Justin Henry became the youngest nominee in any competitive category.
Q 29Dirty Harry (1971) drew on the real case of which murderer?
The Zodiac Killer
The Scorpio killer is modelled on the Zodiac Killer, who murdered at least five people around San Francisco in 1968–69 and taunted police with ciphers.
Q 30Enter the Dragon (1973) was notable as what for Bruce Lee?
His final completed film
He died on 20 July 1973, aged 32, weeks before its release.