'70s Movie Flops That Turned Into Big Hits

The 1970s were an interesting time for movies. Older generations had begun to age out of going to the theater, so Hollywood started courting younger audiences, trying to create future cinema fans in the closing years of the '60s and into the start of the '70s. As part of that attempt to shift attention, a new wave of younger filmmakers started cropping up, bringing a youthful — and in many cases, much more edgy — atmosphere to the world of film.

Unfortunately, an economic downturn made rough going for a lot of movies in the first half of the decade. Then, after "Jaws" was released in 1975 and invented the concept of a Hollywood blockbuster, the rest of the '70s were dominated by other tentpole films, which made it hard for smaller flicks to win attention.

As such, there are a lot of movi