Richard Lester might be the most influential director casual movie fans don’t talk about enough.
From redefining what a rock film could look like with The Beatles, to reinventing swashbucklers, to steering Superman through the blockbuster era, his career is a wild tour through three decades of pop culture.
Ranking every Richard Lester movie is a bit like trying to rank punchlines in a great comedy set: even the ones that don’t quite land are still swinging for something bold.
This list covers all of his major feature films and theatrical projects he directed, from early pop musicals to superhero epics, ordered from least essential to flat-out classics.
Ranking Richard Lester’s Movies from Worst to Best
22. Superman III (1983)
Let’s get the elephant or maybe the kryptonite-laced supercomputer out of the room first.
Superman III is the Lester film most fans love to blame for derailing the original Superman series.
Christopher Reeve is still terrific, and there’s a fun, comic-booky idea buried inside the “evil Superman vs. good Superman” showdown.
But the tone lurches between slapstick and superhero drama, Richard Pryor is stranded in a confused comic-relief role, and the plot feels like three different movies stapled together.
It’s not unwatchable the Smallville reunion material has real heart but compared with Lester’s best work, the movie never finds a consistent rhythm, making it the bottom of the pile.
21. Finders Keepers (1984)
This madcap chase comedy about a coffin full of stolen money crammed onto a train has a wonderfully chaotic premise and a game cast, including Michael O’Keefe, Louis Gossett Jr., and Beverly D’Angelo.
The problem is that Lester’s trademark zany energy isn’t anchored to much emotional reality here.
Sight gags pile up, characters collide, and it all moves quickly, but the jokes rarely hit as hard as they should.
You can see flashes of his earlier comic brilliance, yet Finders Keepers ends up feeling like an echo of better, sharper farces he made in the 1960s and 1970s.
20. The Ritz (1976)
Adapted from Terrence McNally’s stage play, The Ritz traps a straight-laced businessman in a gay bathhouse while mobsters chase him.
On stage, the farce is rapid-fire; onscreen, some of the timing gets muddy.
The film is historically interesting as a mainstream studio comedy set almost entirely in a queer space in the mid-’70s, and Rita Moreno is a force of nature as a gloriously untalented nightclub singer.
But as a movie, it’s often stagey and frantic instead of truly funny.
Lester directs with his usual energy, yet the material never fully clicks into the kind of visual invention that makes his best comedies sing.
19. Cuba (1979)
On paper, Cuba sounds like a slam dunk: Sean Connery as a weary mercenary caught up in the final days of Batista’s regime, mixed with a doomed romance and political upheaval.
In practice, the film is oddly detached. We get glimpses of revolution, corrupt officials, and fading colonial power, but the emotional core feels undercooked.
Lester’s eye for chaos and irony is here, yet the movie never decides whether it wants to be a bittersweet romance, a political thriller, or a cynical black comedy.
It’s fascinating as a career pivot, but not essential viewing unless you’re doing a full deep dive into his filmography.
18. Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979)
Prequels are tricky even in the best circumstances, and following in the footsteps of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is nearly impossible.
William Katt and Tom Berenger are likable stand-ins, and Lester leans into a lighter, more ramshackle Western tone.
Unfortunately, the movie can’t escape the shadow of its predecessor.
It’s pleasant, occasionally funny, and competently staged, but it feels more like a curiosity than a necessary chapter of the Butch-and-Sundance story.
17. The Return of the Musketeers (1989)
Returning to the Musketeers well 15 years later, Lester reunites much of the original cast for an older, sadder, but still game swashbuckling outing.
The tone is more elegiac, with age, regret, and the passing of time woven into the swordplay.
It’s also overshadowed by the tragedy of Roy Kinnear’s death during filming, which led Lester to essentially retire afterward.
As a film, it’s uneven but affectionate rewarding for fans of the earlier Musketeer movies, though not nearly as tight or inspired as those classics.
16. It’s Trad, Dad! (1962)
Lester’s first feature is a low-budget pop musical stuffed with jazz and trad bands, stitched together with a simple “teens vs. uptight adults” plot.
You can already see his love for rapid-fire cutting and playful editing, but the movie is more a delivery system for performances than a fully formed narrative.
Still, as a trial run for the pop-energy he’d later unleash with The Beatles, It’s Trad, Dad! is a charming, modest starting point that hints at what’s coming.
15. The Mouse on the Moon (1963)
A sequel to The Mouse That Roared, this Cold War satire sends a tiny fictional European country into the space race so it can get funding for a modern heating system.
The film is gentle, whimsical, and very British in its humor, using space-age politics as an excuse to poke fun at bureaucrats and national pride.
It’s not as visually explosive as Lester’s later work, but it shows his knack for using absurd premises to smuggle in sly political jokes.
14. Royal Flash (1975)
Based on George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman novels, Royal Flash follows a cowardly, womanizing officer blundering through 19th-century European intrigue.
Malcolm McDowell leans into the antiheroic role with relish, and Lester revels in puncturing the pomp of empire and military honor.
The movie never quite reaches the heights of the Musketeers films, but it’s a sharp, sardonic swashbuckler with plenty of visual wit and a pointedly anti-heroic streak.
13. How I Won the War (1967)
This is Lester at his most aggressively absurd: a fragmented, fourth-wall-breaking anti-war film starring Michael Crawford and John Lennon.
It mixes slapstick, color shifts, direct address, and surreal gags to depict World War II as senseless, cruel, and absurd.
Contemporary critics were divided, and some still find the tone off-putting the film refuses sentimentality or easy heroism.
But if you’re interested in how far Lester was willing to push form and style to make a political point, this is a key, challenging watch.
12. The Bed Sitting Room (1969)
If you’ve ever wondered what a nuclear apocalypse directed as a deadpan absurdist stage play would look like, The Bed Sitting Room is your answer.
Working from a Spike Milligan and John Antrobus play, Lester turns post-atomic Britain into a wasteland of bureaucratic nonsense, mutated citizens, and surreal visual gags.
It’s bleak, bizarre, and very funny but in a way that leaves barbed wire under every punchline.
No, it’s not as accessible as his Beatles or Musketeer films, yet it’s one of his most daring and thematically rich experiments.
11. Get Back (1991)
Technically a concert film for Paul McCartney, Get Back closes Lester’s directing career on a musical note that circles back to his Beatles roots.
It’s far more straightforward than A Hard Day’s Night or Help!, but there’s still a subtle sense of pacing and rhythmic cutting that keeps the performance film engaging.
While not essential as a narrative movie, it’s a lovely coda: the director who helped define the cinematic language of rock music returns to document an older Beatle onstage, still chasing that live-wire connection with an audience.
10. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
Adapting the Broadway musical, Lester takes Stephen Sondheim’s farce set in ancient Rome and pushes it into full-on visual chaos: chases, masks, double-crosses, and gags bounce across the screen like pinballs.
Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, and an ensemble of clowns give the movie comedic heft, while Lester’s direction turns the final chase sequence into a masterclass in controlled mayhem.
It’s messy in spots, but gloriously so a bridge between his pop musicals and his anarchic satire.
9. Juggernaut (1974)
Juggernaut is what happens when Lester applies his skeptical, satirical eye to a disaster movie.
A cruise ship is threatened by bombs planted by a mysterious blackmailer, leading to tense bomb-disposal sequences and parallel bureaucratic maneuvering on shore.
While it delivers the expected suspense especially in the nail-biting “cut the wire” scenes the film is also a sly critique of British institutions and class.
The result is one of the most underrated 1970s thrillers and proof that Lester could do tension as well as comedy.
8. The Four Musketeers (1974)
Shot back-to-back with The Three Musketeers, this sequel takes the second half of Dumas’ story and leans into betrayal, tragedy, and political machination.
The comedy is still there, but the tone darkens as characters face real consequences for their loyalties and affairs.
Like the first film, it’s full of physical inventiveness sword fights that feel messy and human, sight gags tucked into the margins yet it expands the emotional scope.
Watching both films together feels like one epic adventure with a surprisingly bittersweet back half.
7. Superman II (1980)
The authorship of Superman II is famously messy Richard Donner shot much of it before being replaced by Lester, who reshot enough footage to receive sole directorial credit.
Regardless, the released film bears a lot of Lester’s fingerprints: more overt comedy, looser physical gags, and a playful approach to action.
As a blockbuster, it works beautifully.
General Zod and his fellow Kryptonian villains give Superman real physical stakes, the Niagara Falls and Metropolis sequences are still thrilling, and the emotional conflict between Clark’s love for Lois and his responsibilities as a hero gives the story weight.
It’s not as tonally seamless as the first Superman, but as a crowd-pleasing superhero sequel, it remains one of the genre’s high points.
6. Robin and Marian (1976)
What happens when Robin Hood gets old?
Lester answers that question with a melancholy, romantic adventure starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as older versions of the legendary outlaw and the woman who loves him.
The film balances swashbuckling set pieces with a sense of time slipping away armor creaks, muscles tire, and legend collides with mortality.
It’s one of Lester’s most heartfelt works, gently skewering myth while still giving Robin and Marian a moving, unforgettable final act.
5. The Knack …and How to Get It (1965)
A pure time capsule of Swinging London, The Knack follows a shy schoolteacher trying to learn how to attract women from his ultra-confident roommate.
Stylistically, this is Lester unleashed: odd angles, jump cuts, voiceover commentary from disapproving bystanders, and visual jokes constantly interrupting the action.
It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, cementing his status as a major auteur of the 1960s.
Some of the sexual politics feel dated (and have been rightly criticized in modern reappraisals), but as a piece of kinetic, experimental cinema, it’s vital to understanding his evolution.
4. Help! (1965)
If A Hard Day’s Night is grounded Beatlemania, Help! is the band dragged into an absurd spy spoof involving a cursed ring, cultists, and globe-trotting chaos.
The plot is deliberately ridiculous, but the musical sequences are stunning bold color, inventive framing, and staging that pushed pop cinema toward the kind of stylized performance pieces that would become music videos.
Critics often rate it a notch below A Hard Day’s Night, but as a visual playground and pop-art comedy, it’s endlessly rewatchable and hugely influential.
3. The Three Musketeers (1973)
There are dozens of Three Musketeers adaptations, but this is the one that critics and fans keep pointing back to as the gold standard.
Lester brings grounded, slightly chaotic realism to the sword fights people slip, armor bends, and duels are as messy as real life while filling the world with slapstick grace notes, from collapsing laundry lines to overworked servants.
The cast (Michael York, Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, Christopher Lee, and more) is impeccable, and the film walks a perfect line between respect for Dumas’ story and a modern, irreverent sense of humor.
2. Petulia (1968)
If you only know Lester from The Beatles and swashbucklers, Petulia is a revelation.
This San Francisco-set drama stars Julie Christie as an impulsive, troubled young woman and George C. Scott as the doctor drawn into her orbit.
Stylistically, it’s fragmented and modernist: time jumps, associative editing, and overlapping sound create a portrait of emotional disconnection in late-’60s America.
Critics and filmmakers have since praised it as one of the key films of the era, with some even describing it as a spiritual cousin to Alain Resnais’ work in its use of memory and montage.
Beneath the formal experimentation is a deeply moving story about trauma, escape, and the myths Americans tell themselves about love and freedom.
It’s arguably Lester’s most underrated masterpiece.
1. A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
At the top, it has to be the film that changed everything.
A Hard Day’s Night isn’t just a Beatles movie; it’s one of the most influential films ever made.
Shot in a loose, documentary-inflected style, the movie follows the band through 36 hours of rehearsals, interviews, and escapes from screaming fans.
Lester stitches together handheld footage, fast cutting, visual jokes, and musical sequences into a new cinematic grammar that would shape everything from music videos to modern TV editing.
It’s funny, joyful, and formally radical, all at once.
Even if you’ve somehow never heard a Beatles song, the filmmaking alone makes A Hard Day’s Night an all-time classic and the ultimate Richard Lester movie.
What It’s Like to Watch Every Richard Lester Movie in Order
Watching Lester’s entire filmography chronologically is like fast-forwarding through three decades of pop culture while hanging out with the smartest, most mischievous person in the room.
In the early 1960s, you feel him testing the boundaries of form with It’s Trad, Dad! and The Mouse on the Moon.
These movies are modest, but you can already see the seeds of his style: a fascination with music as pure cinematic energy, a distrust of authority figures, and a fondness for visual jokes that unfold in the corners of the frame.
Then the Beatles arrive, and it’s like someone plugged cinema into an amplifier.
A Hard Day’s Night and Help! don’t just capture Beatlemania they invent a new way of filming music and youth.
If you marathon his movies, these two feel like the moment everything snaps into focus: suddenly the camera moves differently, the edits come quicker, and the movies are less about story than about rhythm, personality, and attitude.
The mid-to-late ’60s period is the phase where you start to realize just how fearless he is.
The Knack, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, How I Won the War, Petulia, and The Bed Sitting Room bounce from sex comedy to musical to bitter anti-war allegory to fractured character study to post-apocalyptic surrealism.
Watching them in sequence, you feel a director who refuses to get comfortable constantly interrogating the world, the audience, and his own impulses as a storyteller.
When you hit the 1970s, especially the Musketeer films and Juggernaut, a different pleasure kicks in: watching Lester apply his subversive humor to more straightforward genre frameworks.
Instead of tearing structure apart, he bends it.
Swashbucklers get bruises, disaster movies get cynical punchlines, and romantic legends like Robin Hood are invited to stumble, age, and bleed.
The Superman films add another layer of experience.
Going from Superman II to Superman III, you feel the tug-of-war between Lester’s taste for slapstick and the demands of studio franchise filmmaking.
As a viewer, it’s strangely instructive: you see how a director’s sensibility can elevate blockbuster material and how easily that balance can tip into chaos when the tone gets away from them.
By the time you reach Finders Keepers, The Return of the Musketeers, and Get Back, the sweep of his career becomes the story.
You’ve watched him go from low-budget musical quickies to redefining the look of rock films, from counterculture experiments to mainstream superhero sequels.
You’ve seen him behind some of the most iconic images of the 1960s and 1970s, and you’ve watched him step away after a personal tragedy on set.
The biggest takeaway from a full Lester marathon is how consistently skeptical and humane he is.
Whether he’s filming pop stars, musketeers, bomb squads, or caped heroes, he’s always interested in puncturing pomposity, protecting the vulnerable, and reminding us that institutions armies, churches, studios, monarchies are often ridiculous, sometimes dangerous, and never as solid as they look.
Ranking his movies is fun for film nerds, but the real reward comes from seeing the through-lines: the way a quick joke in a Beatles film foreshadows a gag in a disaster thriller; the way a fractured edit in Petulia echoes in the way he cuts superhero spectacle; the way silliness becomes a political tool rather than just a way to get a laugh.
Sit with his work long enough and you start to feel like Lester built a hidden bridge between classic studio cinema and the fast, fragmented, media-saturated style that defines so much of what we watch now.
Watching every movie he directed isn’t just a checklist exercise it’s a way of tracing how modern screen language evolved, guided by one director who never stopped asking, “What if we did it a little stranger, a little faster, and with a little more bite?”