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Most Inaccurate Historical Movies (Name films with the most glaring lack of historical accuracy)
self | September 24, 2011 | PJ-Comix

Posted on 09/24/2011 4:19:32 PM PDT by PJ-Comix

I am a huge history buff so and enjoy watching movies about events in the past. However, many of these movies really irk me because they are incredibly inaccurate as to the historical facts. Here is a sampling of movies that have bugged me due to their historical inaccuracies:

1. Battle of the Bulge: So just how inaccurate was this 1965 movie? So inaccurate that former President Eisenhower who was Supreme Commander of the Allies in Europe denounced this film in a press conference. To watch this movie you would think that some Boston detective was able to predict all the German tactical moves based on such police work as shutting off the engine of a spotter plane in the middle of a fog bank in order to hear sounds of tank treads. Oh, and the German Panzers looked exactly like M47 Patton tanks which is what they were. As to the heavily forested Ardennes forest, at times it looked like a deforested western prairie.

2. Gunfight at the OK Corral: Couldn't Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp have bothered to grow a mustache or at least wear a fake one? The cleanshaven Earp in that movie is a slap at the intelligence of anybody with even a little knowledge about Wyatt Earp. Also the real life gunfight took just a few seconds, not at all like the extended gunfight in the movie which did not take place at the OK Corral but NEXT to it.

3. Huns. Why is it that every movie depicting Huns make them look like white guys? In actuality the Huns were a nomadic tribe from deep inside Asia who looked like ugly Mongolians with scarred faces. And the movie Attila the Hun looks like Jack Palance which is just wrong.

4. Confederate uniforms. This really bugs me. Civil War movies which depict Confederates late in the war wearing immaculate uniforms. Only officers had uniforms at that stage of the war that were in decent shape. The uniforms of the average foot soldiers were either one step up from rags or were stolen Federal uniforms dyed a beechnut color. And even those latter uniforms were usually in bad shape.

5. Pearl Harbor: Did anybody else cringe when Franklin D. Roosevelt rose from his wheel chair and walk a few steps to make a point? Guess what? That never happened.

6. The Alamo: Final Mexican attack took place in the dark before daybreak not in the middle of the day as depicted in the film. Also Col. Travis in the movie spoke with a clipped British accent. Oh, and the character of supposed frontiersman Smitty from Tennessee looked and sounded like he was an urban guy from South Philly.


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: braveheart; history; movies; vanity
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To: SoJoCo

***I guess the laws of physics don’t extend to Hawaii.***

Didn’t have that problem when they cut through the hull in THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1971) But then, that was fiction.


301 posted on 09/25/2011 7:55:10 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Click my name. See my home page, if you dare! NEW PHOTOS & PAINTINGS)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

Inchon: Laurence Olivier as General Douglas MacArthur? Sorry, does NOT compute.


302 posted on 09/25/2011 8:40:04 AM PDT by PJ-Comix (The Pay to Play Cabal Cafeteria now serving oatmeal muffins)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

Inchon: Laurence Olivier as General Douglas MacArthur? Sorry, does NOT compute.


303 posted on 09/25/2011 8:40:26 AM PDT by PJ-Comix (The Pay to Play Cabal Cafeteria now serving oatmeal muffins)
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To: Sherman Logan
Also has the French launching an invasion of England that never occurred.

Sorry, you have this one wrong. This much at least was lifted from history. Just as in the movie, with the aid of renegade English nobles the French landed in Dover in 1216. The failing of the movie is that English are successful on the beach. In reality the French stayed for some time, moving about the countryside and laying siege to English castles. King John's timely departure from the mortal coil later that year is what actually ended it all.

304 posted on 09/25/2011 10:45:34 AM PDT by Melas (u)
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To: Stonewall Jackson

Rep B1 Bob Dornan makes a cameo in it, as well.


305 posted on 09/25/2011 10:54:44 AM PDT by skeeter
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To: jackal7163
In Gladiator’s first battle scene, the Germanic warriors are chanting Zulu chants lifted off the Zulu soundtrack

I tell my wife that the big German is shouting "Buxtehude!" at the start of the battle.

306 posted on 09/25/2011 1:01:27 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin (A trillion here, a trillion there, soon you're NOT talking real money)
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To: Billthedrill

‘...Who ya gonna believe, some stupid archaeologist or Raquel Welch?...”

Ha !!! Post of the day !!!


307 posted on 09/25/2011 2:11:04 PM PDT by Monterrosa-24 (...even more American that a French bikini and a Russian AK-47.)
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To: I still care

“...There is a scene where she was a walk on...”

She was unrecognizable in the background. Why didn’t they give her a real cameo like being one of the faces on the bus? She was after all, Maria von Trapp, and a defender of the real life warm nature of her husband.


308 posted on 09/25/2011 2:21:59 PM PDT by Monterrosa-24 (...even more American that a French bikini and a Russian AK-47.)
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To: Monterrosa-24

I am waiting for Monk and Psych to come on, so I am watching one called Hard Target, which is just sooo stupid it hurts. The hero person whoever, just put a sleeping rattlesnake in a tree as a trap, and it jumped down on some bad dude and bit him. Oh, hurry up Monk and come on!!! Please.


309 posted on 09/25/2011 2:29:45 PM PDT by Squeeky ("Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it. " Emily Dickinson)
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To: Rocky
“Anything by Oliver Stone.”

Ain't that the truth. SALVADOR was a drugged out Marxist hippie fantasy that slammed the legitimate forces of El Salvador and lauded the communists (who were the real mass murderers of the campesinos).

310 posted on 09/25/2011 2:37:10 PM PDT by Monterrosa-24 (...even more American that a French bikini and a Russian AK-47.)
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To: Squeeky

What bugs me the worst are those movies that put out all kinds of publicity about the pains they went to for historical accuracy and are anything but.

BONNIE AND CLYDE

That film did indeed set up some things realistically but the Barrow’s favorite BARs and sawed-off auto-loading shotguns were absent. The real crime was what they did to Frank Hamer.

Hamer killed dozens of criminals in real life and was a dedicated and clever tracker. Clyde never took him prisoner and Hamer’s posse were all old-style lawmen who knew what they were doing firing Winchester lever guns, Remington cal35 semis, a BAR, and two shotguns.

Clyde was more interesting in real life and had a way with tough guy words as witnessed by his letters.


311 posted on 09/25/2011 2:51:05 PM PDT by Monterrosa-24 (...even more American that a French bikini and a Russian AK-47.)
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To: Monterrosa-24

I have never seen the Bonnie and Clyde movie. I will try to get it from Netflix.


312 posted on 09/25/2011 3:24:12 PM PDT by Squeeky ("Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it. " Emily Dickinson)
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To: I still care
My dad is in the movie "What's Up, Doc?". At the end of the movie, there is a scene in an airport bar; in the background you see people walking by, including two soldiers in dress greens. The tall, blonde guy is my dad.

Also in the movie "Stripes", you can see my grandfather in several scenes, as most of the movie was filmed at Fort Knox, especially around the Education Center, where my grandfather was the director. There are several shots of him sitting on the front steps, smoking his pipe; plus you can see his Gran Torino stationwagon in the parking lot.

313 posted on 09/25/2011 4:09:22 PM PDT by Stonewall Jackson (Democrats: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.")
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To: Melas

I was aware of the French semi-invasion of 1216, which was really more of a case of the French dauphin being invited by rebels to become the English king, and bringing some of his own troops along. Much as King William did in the Glorious Revolution. It was not, as portrayed in the movie, a national war of the French nation to conquer the English nation. In fact, the French king publicly disavowed support for his son in this endeavor, though he might of course have helped him under the table.

I can’t remember whether in the movie the invasion was portrayed as led by Phillip or Louis.

In any case, the movie portrayed the invasion as only months after John became king instead of 15 years later, after John had time to piss off most of the English nobles, at which he had great talent.

Portraying it as French vs. English national war is a drastic mis-statement of the situation at the time. The political nation was composed of Anglo-French Norman nobility, who didn’t think of themselves as English at all, any more than the English absentee landlords of later Ireland thought of themselves as Irish. In fact, John’s loss of the English crown’s possessions on the continent was the main reason the nobility gradually started to think of themselves as English.

The language of government was still French and many if not most of the nobility had little aversion to supporting Louis over John in a dynastic rather than national struggle.

Also Louis’ forces did not land at Dover, as they beseiged it twice and never did take it. Louis has some claim to be classed among the Kings of England, as he at one time during the year or so campaign controlled well over half the kingdom, including London.


314 posted on 09/25/2011 5:21:41 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: SoJoCo
I love the part when they were on the upturned hull of the Oklahoma, dozens of feet above the surface of the water, trying to cut through to rescue trapped crew. When they cut through, water comes gushing out.

Wouldn't be unlikely that highly compressed air might come gushing out, but not water.

315 posted on 09/25/2011 5:30:37 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: SoJoCo
I love the part when they were on the upturned hull of the Oklahoma, dozens of feet above the surface of the water, trying to cut through to rescue trapped crew. When they cut through, water comes gushing out.

Wouldn't be unlikely that highly compressed air might come gushing out, but not water.

316 posted on 09/25/2011 5:30:42 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: SoJoCo
I love the part when they were on the upturned hull of the Oklahoma, dozens of feet above the surface of the water, trying to cut through to rescue trapped crew. When they cut through, water comes gushing out.

Wouldn't be unlikely that highly compressed air might come gushing out, but not water.

317 posted on 09/25/2011 5:32:14 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: Sherman Logan
Wouldn't be unlikely that highly compressed air might come gushing out, but not water.

Far more likely. Water in the capsized wreck of the Oklahoma would not have risen above the surface of the water that the ship was in.

318 posted on 09/25/2011 5:34:37 PM PDT by SoJoCo
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To: Sherman Logan
Wouldn't be unlikely that highly compressed air might come gushing out, but not water.

Far more likely. Water in the capsized wreck of the Oklahoma would not have risen above the surface of the water that the ship was in.

319 posted on 09/25/2011 5:34:50 PM PDT by SoJoCo
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To: Eaker
Well bless your little pea-pickin’ heart.

Well, thank you. At least my heart will be healthier than that of a smoker. ;o)

320 posted on 09/25/2011 5:39:41 PM PDT by boatbums ( Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.)
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