KELLY'S HEROES 1970

[Yaddo 42]

An annoying uncle of mine got me to watch this once and I was hooked, a great over the top caper film. I too have too many quotes from this floating around in my head. The older I get the more I relate to Big Joe. Great cast of big names and familiar character actors having a ball.

Pointless story, before I went to a day shift job, the head of another department at work had a dry erase board in "The War Room" filled with rallying messages and slogans when his department was going through a rough time, mostly due to his incompetence. One of them was "'No negative vibes.' - Donald Sutherland" I took to pointing out to people in his department that he had the line wrong and that he was using a line from a character named Oddball who might be insane (certainly an opportunist and possibly a deserter) to "inspire the troops". After a few months the quote got corrected. Most of the men knew the line already, the women didn't, not their kind of flick I guess.

I have threatened to make my best friend's wife watch this one to make up for all the chick flicks she makes him watch. It's a guy's flick and there ain't nobody pretty looking for her to gaze at, no Brad Pitt or Olando Bloom types in this film.

[Kooshmeister]

Personally, I adore this movie. I love how it goes out of its way to be as accurate as possible about the German vehicles when other, more serious war films of the time such as Battle of the Bulge and Patton just slapped German insignia on American tanks and such. I also liked that they had the German characters actually speak German (real German, too, since my sister, who understands the language, was able to translate it for me while we were watching recently; I can't remember everything but I do remember the dialouge of the German lieutenant at the minefield).

[peter johnson]

I once went on and on about how great it was that they'd somehow managed to find real German Tiger MkIV Panzers in Yugoslavia to film for this, and some killjoy pointed out to me that these are actually Soviet M-34's -- far more available -- rigged & painted up to look like Tigers.
Boy, was I depressed --
peter history/denny buff

[flackbait]

I once went on and on about how great it was that they'd somehow managed to find real German Tiger MkIV Panzers in Yugoslavia to film for this, and some killjoy pointed out to me that these are actually Soviet M-34's -- far more available -- rigged & painted up to look like Tigers.
Boy, was I depressed --
peter history/denny buff

even if they were M-34s at least they made em look like panzers. Unlike the afformentioned patton But stuff like that really doesn't bother me too much.

[Killer Bees]

This is one of the VERY few war movies I like.

Donald Sutherland with his hippy attitude and the "negative vibes" comments are hilarious! 

A definite DVD purchase if I can find it.

[AndyC]

I wonder how many people got into movies like this because an older brother watched them. Count me in that number.

I have to say the Oddball quote that cracks me up the most has to be when the bridge they're about to cross is blown up. It's just so absurd.

Oddball: See what sending out them negative waves did, Moriarty?

Moriarty: That ain't my fault, Oddball. I've had nothing but good thoughts about that damn bridge ever since we left.

Moriarty was Gavin McLeod's best character, I think. I just love the way he knew oddball was nuts, but seemed to get pulled into the insanity.

And, thanks to Seinfeld, I have a new joke to make when Len Lesser shows up as Bellamy: "Uncle Leo!"

[Yaddo 42]

"Jerry! Hello!"

He's in Slaughterhouse Five also, ditracted me the first time I saw it after being a Seinfeld fan.