Octopus Overlords

Walmart - $8.96

50 of the finest war movies that could be scraped together, pressed onto 12 DVDs, and thrown into a giant plastic case.

Inspired by YK, it is my intent over the next however many months, to view and review these fine films of yesteryear.

First up: This is the Army (1943).

See you in a couple hours.

My experience is that there are a few good ones and the rest duck.

Irving Berlin brings us musical numbers about draftees into the US Army in 1917. Faced with a dancer and a cornet player, basic gets turned into a stage show, which ends with them deploying from the stage directly to the trucks.

Two minutes later, our singer, Jerry, is injured in the shelling of his dugout. Another two minutes, and the war is over. Jerry's dancing career is over due to his leg injury, but he's got a new kid.

Jump cut to 1939, and Poland burns away on the map. Kate Smith delivers God Bless America as we catch up with the old crew.

The new kids get mustered in after Pearl Harbor, parents day brings back the old guard for reminiscences. Old memories spawn a new show, with Ronald Reagan helping out dad Jerry put on the new show, complete with singing, comedy, a blackface minstrel number, and a good helping of drag.

Ronny gets married, and the crew finished up their tour, to be shipped off to war.

Combat rating: 0.1

Either $8.96 was waaay too much for that or not nearly enough.

I wish they showed a list of all the movies.

Here you go.

The list is alphabetized. The discs are not.

Iirc, Identity Unknown is up next.

Where are the "classics"? Most of those I've not heard of before (and those that I have I can't be certain that I've just heard of a game of the same name).

capture the heroism and the horror of war

Perhaps the "heroism" is in you making it through 50 of these horrible movies?

Irving Berlin with Lt. Ronald Reagan and Nathan Hale does not make for a promising start.

Can you apply for a Purple Heart if you make it through them all?

Ask for Trumph's.


Yeah, many of those movies were made during WW2 but have no combat in them. I recognize about 1/3 and some are pretty good and some have Ronald Reagan in them.

I don't think most of those were ever good enough to have played on a Saturday afternoon on some TV channel.

Probably not. Which is why this will be a challenge.

Identity Unknown (1945)

A soldier on a hospital ship is recuperating. He was the sole survivor of a dive bomb attack on the house with four soldiers present. All four had their dog tags blown off, and the surviving soldier has no memory. Hearing the harmonica player in the waiting room when asked for a new name, he selects Johnny March.

Convincing the Major to give him the names and addresses of the four men, he jumps off the troop train to travel to each home and see if he can find his life left behind.

Traveling across the country, he proceeds to uproot the lives of the first soldier's widow, the son of the second that is convinced that he is his father, and the younger brother, Joe, of the third, a window worker at a betting parlor.

Joe gets caught embezzling, then gets plugged in the crossfire of someone aiming for the guy he cheated. Our soldier accompanies him to the hospital, and he pulls through. Which gets him clear of his debt, and he's going to go straight to honor is brothers memory, which the mobster he saved will front the funds.

Sweet on the widow, he calls her up from the mobster's house to accompany him to the last town. She declines, seeing as he might be married.

Headed to the last place, met by the family dog and the parents, it's quickly obvious that this isn't home, either. Broken up over the loss of their son, Dad is having the place auctioned off the next day, which he now regrets. Our soldier manages to talk the crowd out of buying the place, who walk out on the auctioneer.

The widow arrives by train, and he speeds to the train station. A cop catches up to him. Trying to arrest him, the MPs catch up to him and run him in.

The colonel brings in the widow, and the colonel quizzes him on some ancient history, which he remembers. Turns out he's a history professor, and was a pilot attempting to drop supplies, who was apparently shot down and survived.

Our soldier is single orphan. With no one waiting for him, he's free to be with the widow, and head out to resume his life.

Combat rating 0.0

There's not a single coma bat sequence, even I flashback.

Next up: Kansas Pacific

Isgrimnur wrote:There's not a single coma bat sequence, even I flashback.

An obvious plot hole -- the bite of a coma bat would have totally explained his amnesia.

Stupid autocorrect.

Thinking over it more, the explosions must have completely stripped all of the victims, as I doubt that airdrop pilots were wearing the same gear as combat infantry.

I know it's not on the list bit I watched Twelve O'Clock High last, with Gregory Peck. Pretty good movie, even the wife liked it. Made me think of Catch-22 and Captain Newman M.D.

12 O'Clock High is a good one! I assume it's not in this collection.

My favorite war movie is still A Bridge Too Far. It's kind of bloated, but it does a terrific job of setting the characters' dramas within a historically accurate depiction of a complex military operation. You understand the stakes, the challenges, the methods, and the risk of failure, and it does it all without ever devolving into a simple adventure- or buddy-picture the way so many war movies do.

Holman wrote:12 O'Clock High is a good one! I assume it's not in this collection.

My favorite war movie is still A Bridge Too Far. It's kind of bloated, but it does a terrific job of setting the characters' dramas within a historically accurate depiction of a complex military operation. You understand the stakes, the challenges, the methods, and the risk of failure, and it does it all without ever devolving into a simple adventure- or buddy-picture the way so many war movies do.

A Bridge Too Far and the Longest Day both benefit from being based on excellent books that were probably "easy" to put into screenplay form.

Holman wrote:12 O'Clock High is a good one! I assume it's not in this collection.

My favorite war movie is still A Bridge Too Far. It's kind of bloated, but it does a terrific job of setting the characters' dramas within a historically accurate depiction of a complex military operation.

Not only that, but I love how it shows both sides. Too many war movies are one-sided.

Scuzz wrote:

Holman wrote:12 O'Clock High is a good one! I assume it's not in this collection.

My favorite war movie is still A Bridge Too Far. It's kind of bloated, but it does a terrific job of setting the characters' dramas within a historically accurate depiction of a complex military operation. You understand the stakes, the challenges, the methods, and the risk of failure, and it does it all without ever devolving into a simple adventure- or buddy-picture the way so many war movies do.

A Bridge Too Far and the Longest Day both benefit from being based on excellent books that were probably "easy" to put into screenplay form.

Cornelius Ryan's ABTF was the first nonfiction "grownup" book I ever read cover to cover.

Along the line of A Bridge Too Far let us not forget The Longest Day,by the same author.

Along with some of the movies just mentioned I really like The Big Red One and Battle of Britain.

Scuzz wrote:

Holman wrote:12 O'Clock High is a good one! I assume it's not in this collection.

My favorite war movie is still A Bridge Too Far. It's kind of bloated, but it does a terrific job of setting the characters' dramas within a historically accurate depiction of a complex military operation. You understand the stakes, the challenges, the methods, and the risk of failure, and it does it all without ever devolving into a simple adventure- or buddy-picture the way so many war movies do.

A Bridge Too Far and the Longest Day both benefit from being based on excellent books that were probably "easy" to put into screenplay form.

Incidentally, the screenwriter for Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far was William Goldman, who also wrote The Princess Bride (both novel and screenplay).

Weirdly, a few years back I learned that Goldman is also my friend's uncle.

$iljanus wrote:Along with some of the movies just mentioned I really like The Big Red One and Battle of Britain.

I have seen The Big Red One several times, but I don't think it is nearly as good as other WW2 movies.

Big Red One has some moments, but it's not a great film.

Some great older war movies are Paths of Glory, All Quiet on the Western front (I know, they're WWI), The Guns of Navarone and, as mentioned, The Longest Day.

Kansas Pacific is set in the Civil War, so these gems aren't limited to the big two.

The miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific are better war movies than nearly all other war movies.

Interestingly a lot of the planes used by the German side during The Battle of Britain were from the Spanish air force of the day. Some of which were front line aircraft.

It may not be a traditional campaign film, but I do still have a soft spot for Kelly's Heroes.

dbt1949 wrote:Interestingly a lot of the planes used by the German side during The Battle of Britain were from the Spanish air force of the day. Some of which were front line aircraft.

The helicopters in Apocalypse Now were part of the Philippine Army, and some days they weren't available for filming because they were called away to fight actual communist rebels.

Holman wrote:The miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific are better war movies than nearly all other war movies.

Band of Brothers is a classic. Easily one of the best things ever made. I saw the Pacific a couple years ago and while I think it was accurate and worth watching, you don't get the same feeling from it that you get with Band of Brothers, but then maybe you aren't supposed to. It was a different kind of war, fought differently against a different type enemy and against different elements. I think it also "suffers" from continuity problems because you don't follow the same group of soldiers for the entire series.

In Harms Way has been on one of my movie channels a lot lately. It is an interesting if flawed movie about war in the Pacific with an all star cast.

Scuzz wrote:

Holman wrote:The miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific are better war movies than nearly all other war movies.

Band of Brothers is a classic. Easily one of the best things ever made. I saw the Pacific a couple years ago and while I think it was accurate and worth watching, you don't get the same feeling from it that you get with Band of Brothers, but then maybe you aren't supposed to. It was a different kind of war, fought differently against a different type enemy and against different elements. I think it also "suffers" from continuity problems because you don't follow the same group of soldiers for the entire series.

Yeah, The Pacific is less totally excellent than Band of Brothers all around, but its best parts are very strong, and there are a lot of them.

Lots of people complain that the course of the war is harder to follow in The Pacific, and I think that's a valid criticism. It jumps around, but since I already knew the difference between Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima and Peleliu it was never a problem for me.

The Pacific also provides a much more troubling picture of war.

Holman wrote:

Scuzz wrote:

Holman wrote:The miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific are better war movies than nearly all other war movies.

Band of Brothers is a classic. Easily one of the best things ever made. I saw the Pacific a couple years ago and while I think it was accurate and worth watching, you don't get the same feeling from it that you get with Band of Brothers, but then maybe you aren't supposed to. It was a different kind of war, fought differently against a different type enemy and against different elements. I think it also "suffers" from continuity problems because you don't follow the same group of soldiers for the entire series.

Yeah, The Pacific is less totally excellent than Band of Brothers all around, but its best parts are very strong, and there are a lot of them.

Lots of people complain that the course of the war is harder to follow in The Pacific, and I think that's a valid criticism. It jumps around, but since I already knew the difference between Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima and Peleliu it was never a problem for me.

The Pacific also provides a much more troubling picture of war.

Yea, I knew the geography and had even read one of the books the series is based on. But whenever they switched characters there was that brief "who is that and where is he" feeling. I would easily recommend it though.

It was a great series, but I agree that BoB was better. I think them hand-writing it based on mixed accounts hurt it, though. They wrote more drama into the characters lives than BoB, and they jumped around enough that it threw things off for me.

Blackhawk wrote:It was a great series, but I agree that BoB was better. I think them hand-writing it based on mixed accounts hurt it, though. They wrote more drama into the characters lives than BoB, and they jumped around enough that it threw things off for me.

I know when they follow the one character on leave in Australia and take the opportunity for some hawt female nudity I kinda wondered what they were thinking.

BoB was focused on the action of one company of the 101st Airborne for less than a year in Europe (except for the training flashbacks). The Pacific tries to tell the stories of several characters in different branches in different parts of the Pacific war (including the home front) over three and a half years.

I'd already read the two memoirs (Sledge and Leckie) that form the core of the series, so for me it was like a dramatization of stories I knew, though I agree that BoB is much more consistently excellent.

Kansas Pacific (1953)

1860, the railroad across Bleeding Kansas is being built, which will solidify the supply lines for the US Army, while the slave states want to keep it from being built.

The army sends an officer, John Nelson, under civilian cover to help secure the construction. He heads out to help the construction head (Mr. Bruce), his daughter Barbara, and his engineer that's worked with him for 20 years.

Mr. Nelson saves a southern sympathizer from a group of thugs, not knowing the facts of the group. The man he saved is, of course, the ringleader of the saboteurs, sending some out to get on the resuming work crews.

Nelson starts hiring hunters as railroad guards, over Mr Bruce's initial objections. But seeing as they're not paying for them directly, those are quickly forgotten.

One of the hired saboteurs 'trips' carrying a railroad tie, pushing a worker under a hammer swinger, who barely manages to miss him. Nelson saw the event, and fired the man on the spot. The saboteur takes a swing at Nelson, and gets knocked over by the return swing. He continues to attack, and gets dropped. Nelson tells the men to shoot the saboteur on sight if he returns.

Bruce mentions that things like that had been happening, and he states that he thought it was all bad luck.

Barbara is convinced that Nelson is there to take Bruce's job. Nelson comes to Bruce with an idea for an improvement, and Bruce approves. Bruce is convinced that Nelson is all right.

Nelson tries to convince Barbara that he's not out for his father's job. She wants her father to go back east where he's respected.

The saboteurs have tapped the telegraph line, intercepting the supply order, including dynamite.

Two saboteurs start a fight after the supply train arrives, attracting attention, leaving our first saboteur to shoot the dynamite, detonating the supply car and killing a worker. This leads some of the workers to quit. Bruce heard the shot, and an investigation of the surrounding rocks turns up the casing.

A couple cases of dynamite were in another location, and the saboteurs want to blow up the locomotive. Nelson wants to head into town and leave Barbara in town for her safety. Nelson finally tells the Bruce's that it's an Army project now, which flips Barbara's attitude.

The saboteurs sneak into camp and steal the dynamite after knocking out a guard. The guard comes to and fires a warning shot to rouse the camp. Nelson rides after the fleeing bombers, and manages to shoot one. He recovers the satchel and continues his pursuit, heading into town.

He finds the other two at the saloon playing cards. He threatens to shoot the saddlebag if they don't open it. They comply to avoid getting blown up. The sheriff arrests the two, and a good number of the men are willing to go back to work for the railroad. The saboteur leader buys him a drink in a sizing-up of the other side before Nelson heads out.

Rocks on the line the next morning. Nelson and a fireman go out to remove them, and are ambushed. Nelson takes out two of the four before the fireman is killed and the conductor hit. Nelson tosses some dynamite to get the other two as the conductor gets the train moving. Nelson doubles the guard, and building continues.

A jailbreak frees the arrested saboteurs, killing the sheriff, and they head back to their hideout. The plan is laid to give up on the tracks and borrow some artillery from the 'Confederate' army to shell the trains at a slow point in the line. You know, before the start of the war.

The line finished, an ammunition train is headed across Kansas, and the cannon are in place. The train is destroyed, engine to caboose.

Nelson and his first hired guard investigate and find no tracks to trail them. Nelson and Bruce get a repair crew together and get the line repaired. The next train with ammo and troops is coming through. Nelson knows where they might be for the next attack.

The train stops once fired upon, the troops free up their own cannon to return fire, and Nelson's cavalry ride to close and engage at pistol range. Nelson polishes off the last in a fistfight.

The train rolls on, Nelson leaves after getting the girl, and the credits roll.

Next up: The Lady from Chungking

You know, I've wanted to see Kansas Pacific for a long time but Netflix doesn't have it in stock. I like those really olde movies like that.

$9 from Walmart and that and 49 others could all be yours.

Combat rating for Kansas Pacific: 7.0

Gunfire, explosions, cannon, and soldiers.