Posted on 11/11/2011 4:18:37 PM PST by PJ-Comix
Today is Veterans Day so I guess it is also a day to discuss the WORST war movies ever made. Here is my list of a few of the WORST movies IMHO:
1. Battle of the Bulge---This movie was so bad and inaccurate that Former President Eisenhower held a press conference just to denounce it. Not only was it historically inaccurate with an absurd plot (a Boston police detective piecing together battlefield clues to help defeat the Germans) but the geographic locale was all wrong with the dense Ardennes forrest at times appearing to be a large western prairie. Okay, the Panzer Lied scene was kind of interesting but the rest of it was ridiculous.
2. Starship Troopers---Okay this was science fiction but did why did they insult the viewer's intelligence by using obsolete WWI battlefield tactics a couple of hundred years in the future? Drone rockets could have nuked those bugs without sending troopers in with machine guns.
3. Naked and the Dead---Painful to watch.
4. Thin Red Line---Hollywood attempted two versions of James Jones brilliant novel which was probably the best such book written in modern times and failed miserably both times. A tragedy since the book was incredible.
5. Pearl Harbor---Did anybody else wish that a stray Japanese bullet would have put Ben Affleck out of his, and our, misery? And the scene with President Franklin D. Roosevelt rising out of his wheelchair to walk was both painful to watch as well as laughable.
6. The Alamo---I wanted to like this movie but Frankie Avalon as the most unconvincing frontiersman ever, Smitty from Tennessee, ruined my usual suspension of disbelief while watching a movie. Frankie was way too urban for the role. Whenever I started getting into the movie, Frankie as Smitty kept ruining it for me. I kept seeing the Alamo but I kept thinking of South Philly. Also I kept thinking about Alamo eye candy, Linda Cristal, but that's another story.
“Battle of the Bulge’’. Yup, I agree, just bloody awful. “Bridge at Remagen’’ was another God-awful movie. For a battle fought in the foggy, rainy cold of Germany in March of 1945 this dreck looked like it was filmed in Santa Monica for cryin’ out loud. Just horrendous.
Say what you will, but the Russkies know how to do war films...The one I just watched, “The Brest Fortress”, may very well be the best war movie ever. You can’t watch Hollywood war movies after watching the Russian ones.
I like the one with the short grey skirt and the black heels.
Yeah, I know. The Russkies certainly have the rather painful personal experience when it comes to WW2. Is “The Cranes are Flying’’ a Russian war movie?
If you had actually watched Apocalypse Now you would know it was not a Marine Colonel.
Lance Corporal Fragatti: Lance Corporal Fragatti, Gunny.
Highway: [takes off Fragatti's sunglasses and steps on them] Well, you shouldn't litter Fag-eddi. It's ecologically unsound.
I loved that movie. Clint was his usual great self, and he looked as if he came off a week-long bender before filming began, and gargled with glass shards to get his voice "just right"
You’re thinking of the one in “Sausalito, CA” just North of the Golden Gate Bridge.
IDK if it’s still there, but it was maintained by the Army Corp (the “p” is silent) of Engineers.
Awright, Ladies: When I give you the word, I wanna hear 40 pu$$ies suckin’ pine. Ready, SEATS!
Just cut up both movies to include all the airplane bits and it would be pretty good!
You’re being polite: the whole movie was pointless. Last night I was surfing and saw that the extended version (sans harsh language, meaning the Chef has about 1/3 his usual lines) was on AMC. I was subjected to the French family dinner, which has to rate as the most boring sequence of any film, involving war or not, in history. Why anyone would shoot that sequence, much less go to the bother of inserting it in a film that was already insane without it, is beyond me.
Apocalypse Now: the most egregious waste of an interesting high concept in movie history.
8-229. Great unit. Welcome home, Flying Tigers!
About the only war movies I really enjoyed were The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, and Pork Chop Hill but I suspect veterans of those wars would find them unrealistic as well.
Good addition, I agree. Terrible movie.
The protagonists were British, not French. The privateer the Brits were chasing was French.
lol...Iron Eagle...that’s a movie so bad, it’s good. I ALWAYS stop and watch it when it’s on cable.
Nick Nolte whispering "dramatic internal dialog" made me giggle. All I could think of is the parodies of his acting in other movies wherein the people playing him continually shouted their lines! (If you sample Nick Nolte's memorable lines from most of his career you will find most are shouted.)
Ah! Heresy! That movie’s awesome! What was really funny, though, is that I first saw it with my MIL who had no idea it was a “fairy tale,” not even after Hitler was killed...not a history buff, that one...
Ahhh but there are some great quotes from that movie and this man: 
uttered most of them.
Though the most memorable quote for me was:
Pvt Joker: "How can you shoot women and children"?Door Gunner: "Its easy. You just don't lead them as much!"
The second most memorable quote for me is:
Door Gunner: Fires weapon out door of helicopter and then states: "Anyone who runs is V.C. Anyone who stands still is well-disciplined V.C."
Classic Stuff!
“...the Empire loses to some stuffed animals not because of military strategy, but because they appeal to the target demographic and are cute.”
These days, that strategy might actually work.
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