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.
Pearl Harbor sucked.
Not only was Pearl Harbor a really bad war movie, it wasnt even a decent chick flick.
I liked the B-17s though.
I forgot to include “Windtalkers.” It was about the Navajo codetalkers (they didn’t call themselves “windtalkers”) and according to this movie, each Navajo codetalker was assigned a white marine whose job was to shoot the Navajo if it looked like he was about to be captured. No basis in fact. It was strictly a Hollywood fiction to give Nicholas Cage another prominent role in which to bomb again.
The scene where the Japanese sailors are in that pool pushing the model ships around is an old coastal battery casemate. My old man burst out laughing when he saw that, said there was one like that near San Fran.
Bootleg only. Apparently never released on VHS or DVD. It was shown once on ALN (American Life Network) several years ago.
"The SODOMITES are coming, lets head em off at the pass!!"
Assuming they DID head the Sodomites off at the pass, that might be a candidate for all-time worst war movie.
Douglas noted that he tried several times and could not read that line and keep his face straight and they ended up with an extra reading the line.
“Master and Commander”
Take a great book, then completely ruin it, by changing the main protaganists from Americans to French, out of fear of alienating the American movie audience, costing most of the major plot points.
” A Midnight Clear” absolute crap.
Combat Shock
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090866/
It is a Troma film. Horrid acting, special effects, music score, you name it. I highly recommend it :)
I hate that cliche.
Pearl Harbor: vomit worthy indeed.
McArthur: I was embarassed to be in the theater.
Oldplayer
BTW Starship Troopers was a great BOOK.
You didn’t mention the even sillier political correctness in U-571, the ridiculous convolutions they went through just to get a black guy onto the sub so that the cast would be more “diverse.”
Oliver Stone’s Alexander is certainly the worst war movie ever made in my opinion.
Any sequel to the original Dirty Dozen...
Oh my son LOVES Heartbreak Ridge. And Full Metal Jacket. It’s a Marine thing, I guess. Heartbreak Ridge IS awful but at least it has Clint Eastwood in it. Definitely easy on the eyes!
Cindie
That Stephen Speilberg golden turkey ‘1941’ or Elvis in GI Blues...awful.
It's so bad, it's good.
Kelly’s Heroes. Terrible war movie. Outstanding satiric comedy, however. One of my top 20!
“There you go again with the negative waves, Moriarty! Woof-woof!”
The Boys In Company C
And although not 'war movies',...
Firebirds
The Iron Eagle movies
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