When it comes to classic WW2 movies, they don't get much better than Kelly's Heroes, the 1970 classic starring Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland.
I was just thinking the same thing. Hollywood is probably gonna find this gem and do an all-female remake. So Kelly will be a "wahman". It'll star Amy Schumer as Kelly, and the rest will be a bunch of female rappers you haven't heard of. And the promotions will all say, "Its like Ocean's Eight, but in WW-2". And yes, there will be more than Black people and Asian people on Team America Good Side.
To be honest, "All Star Cast" has almost always meant "We spent so much time and money getting all these people together, and promised ALL their agents that they'll ALL have something really meaty/funny to do that the script was a complete mess". Kelly's Heros is an exception, not a a beacon of a better and bygone age.
from the 2-time emmy-nominated director of something you've never heard of, starring the oscar-nominated star of a really horrible film, comes a tale of a woman, and her search for a clean toilet
yeah, just take the worst movie of 20 years ago and compared to today's standards it's still a masterpiece. As for WW2 movies.... there are so many of them that I at some point in time got a bit tired by it.... like it's 100 years ago people, it's not like the war ended just 5 years ago. And I ain't taking the shit of 'look how bad the nazi's were'.... I think that's the most hypocritical thing I've heard. Like The Americans discriminated and put Japanese Americans in camps too, the Japanese did it to practically anybody in Indonesia and also worked them to death with their death bridge; the English were pretty much the inventors of concentration camps during the Boer Wars and the conditions in the camps were equally horrifying; the Russians also had their gulags; I guess so much for 'this must never happen again'. Canada and Australia are making theirs now to lock up the unvxed and N-Korea basically is the largest concentration camp in the world; America still has Quantanamo Bay and you can go on and on and on and on..... so I'm pretty tired of the 'only nazi's were bad' argument at this point in time. The witch hunt has also taken enormous ridiculous proportions by people still trying to hunt down 97 year old female paper pushing females that only worked for the government and happened to be stationed in a camp vs murderers of a cold case even after bragging and showing all the documentation here about their murder going free coz the case has expired legally. That's how ridiculous it has become.
So sad. Today you're supposed to feel ashamed for just entertaining yourself. Almost everything has to have a certain political direction and is getting preachy. 🤐
Reminds me of Days of Thunder a little bit. But it is a great line that's for sur. Brut honestly is sorely lacking in modern Hollywood movies. Like Rey being able to fly a star ship without any pilot training or modern action movie. It would be funny to get a modern movie of an action hero not knowing how to drive a stick shift or something realistic along those lines.
After this one, it was fun to see Sutherland and Eastwood work together again in Space Cowboys. I kept waiting to hear, "Always with the negative waves, man."
Honestly, it’s a movie that was ahead of its time. The humor and the over-the-top situation is what we see constantly nowadays in movies. My dad and I still watch this movie because it’s just a great film
To be honest, i thing it is very good funeral ending music. Or music. Movie also says a lot about horrors of war, for example after landmine, or when ally planes attack. You can die in every moment. Soldiers, after months of hardship are full of fatigue.
that is so cool, wow. this shows how great a movie this was when it can appeal to a broad spectrum. I doubt I will have a funeral, but if I did, I think that's a good choice for me, since I have watched this movie probably more than any other over the decades
Your mother sounds cool it was my grandmother who introduced me to Kelly's Heros she had a video tape of it for her new fangled VCR that she was very proud of.
Fun trivia for Drinker, The sounds of the electric motors the Tiger tank turrets was later used for the movements of the power lifters in Aliens (1986)
Extra fun trivia... after they find the gold and the town is celebrating liberation from the Germans there's a scene where a kid is waving a Nazi flag. Whoopsie
@@rmp-xk6lr I doubt that was accidental tbh as the flick was quite purposefully subversive, after decades of hyper-earnest and patriotic WWII movies. The Krauts, even the Waffen-SS tank commander (initially thought a “fanatic”) all turn out to be schlubs, too, just fighting and dying for they-don’t-know-what anymore like everyone else. It’s really an enlisted man’s caper movie that’s phenomenally derisory about the chain of command, because all the senior officers are either loonies, incompetent, or, in the case of the direct CO of Kelly/Big Joe, engaged in wholesale looting - up to and including pinching an entire French yacht and waylaying a huge fighting aircraft to ship it back to the US. (this being what tacitly gives the ethical green light for the “Heroes” to do their own thievery) In the film’s comic cynicism there’s patently a heavy influence of _Catch-22,_ published a near decade earlier in ‘61, but without the book’s air of despairing darkness; and when the boys slow down their own general (patently a pisstake on Patton) who’s pursuing them, by telling the French villagers that De Gaulle’s in his car, I couldn’t help but keel over laughing at the brilliantly insane froggish reaction… Yugoslavia really did do a bang up job of looking like rural France.
@@dukecraig2402 Meta fun trivia… McQueen’s Mustang in Bullitt, was actually overdubbed: what you’re really hearing’s the sound of a GT40 added on in post.
Not bad for a guy whos roles included a lab tech with a mouse in his pocket and a pilot dropping napalm on a giant spider. After that a great western TV shows ans then a trip to Italy and the rest is history. He learned his trade the hard way and his many awards are well deserved.
Don Rickles as Crap Game was great in this movie. " I'm coming with you guys. Switzerland is only 30 miles away and I don't want anybody getting lost."
"Hey, Hogan? It's Crapgame. I gotcha the Scotch and the nylons you wanted. Yeahhh . . . Do I ever fail ya? You better believe it -- never miss. Listen. I, uh . . . I've got a little favor to ask of ya. . . . WILL YOU STOP CRYING? I HAVEN'T EVEN ASKED YA YET!! 'DA HELL'S THE MATTER WITH YA?!?"
Glad to see this review! It was the first date with my eventual wife in 1972. She said she was thinking at the time..."he's taking me to a war movie"? Bottom line... she loved it. We have been married 43 years.
43 years is a long time! Couples who can stay married for decades deserve some kind of special tax break or something. 43 years is quite impressive. Congratulations to you and your wife!
Ha - Love it. Reminds me of Die Hard. Funny how so many older movies dealing with serious content matter were more family friendly than even "light" films made today. Just an observation.
Here! Here! I was an eight year old kid when I first saw this movie at a Drive-In theater in 1970. I loved it then and love it now. I cant really remember how many times I have watched this through the years. I may get old, but this movie never does.
Telly Savalas, an actor I don't especially like, was SUPERB in this movie---and plays the kind of NCO you hope you get assigned to in a war---tough, no-nonsense, tactically proficient, but whose over-riding concern is getting as many of his men out of a mess in one piece as possible. Each time one of his men gets killed you feel his anguish and self-reproach. Just a magnificent movie.
"Half my equipment is jammed up in the rear!" Big Joe: "UNJAM 'EM!" Skip all the methods of leadership training that managers have to sit through nowadays. Just watch Big Joe in action.
This movie perfectly manages to skirt the fine line between war movie, heist movie and comedy, and it does so without compromising on neither of them. It's being played straight with the humor coming from the surreallity of war and their situation. Kinda like how Shaun of the Dead perfectly managed to blend the drama of Shaun's parents dying with comedy. And best of all, real fucking Sherman tanks and Tigers that look like Tigers, instead of Patton tanks with a white star or iron cross painted upon them! Bizarre that it took until the end of the war movie genre for realistic looking equipment to finally show up in them. Even though the Tiger was a rebuilt T-34, at least it looked like a Tiger.
In all fairness Yugoslavia was the only place that could provide actual WW 2 equipment for filming those days. Almost everything outside of museums in Western countries was destroyed after the war, and if you wanted to make a movie you used miniatures and newer tanks. Battle of the Bulge and Patton used Spanish army and it's anachronistic equipment, because it was a great way to get extras and tanks in widescreen shots, and it just wasn't financially possible to transform battalion of tanks to look like their WW2 counterparts.
@@peterandjunko and the REAL Irony is that Spain DID have authentic German kit (Pz IVs and Stgs from the war days) right up to 1965, when they got reequipped by the US equipment--JUST BEFORE they began filming 'Patton'. The German tanks ended up being sold to Syria and those got destroyed/captured by Israel when they took the Golan in 1967
@@nickmitsialis wow- nice info there. Thanks! The North Africa ambush scene would have been great with Pz IVs and Stugs. I assume they would have been the long 75mm variant that was time appropriate for Tunisia campaign.
“All you need to do is turn your gun around, blow up that door and get an equal share of that gold.” “…..” 3 seconds later everyone is rich and happy! My favourite WW2 film. I was hoping you would review it. Thanks Mr. Drinker!
My dad LOVES this movie. He once considered buying this old Sherman tank our local scrapyard had in it and planned on loading it full of paintballs and a loudspeaker playing "All For the Love of Sunshine" and just roaming around some remote area blasting stuff.
Your dad just won the internet for the day! And hell, All for the love of sunshine glaring aloud while people are dying and getting shut up makes that scene all the harder and surreal. Like real horrors of war.
What’s always impressed me since I was a kid was how accurate the uniforms/weapons/ equipment actually are. They got good mock-ups of Tiger tanks, used real Shermans, the platoon of GIs look pretty accurate to 1944-1945 period, ect. For a not serious film, Kelly’s Heroes did a better job with historical realism at times than many more serious films of the day bothered to do.
There are a few things that you notice here and there that are inaccurate. Petuko use a Wz.28 instead of a BAR M1918A2, the sniper in the bell tower uses a Mosin Nagant 91/30 PU instead of a Springfield M1903A4, from what I remember most of the German infantry are wearing the Pre/Early war style uniforms with the bottle green collars and pleated pockets with scalloped flaps. Just minor nitpicks, that only an insane person would notice.
@@obviouspseudonym9345 The early uniforms were kind of standard fair for Hollywood for time. Though, I noticed they made a valiant attempt to show camouflage zeltbalns being worn by German troops in the beginning.
@@TitusCastiglione1503 Yeah pretty sure almost every infantryman was issued one for most of the war. Maybe not as practical as a smock for a camouflage garment, but being able to make a tent out of them was probably nice.
I read an account of a WWII artillery gunner that told the story of his gun firing leaflet shells that they modified and filled with latrine waste along with the leaflets. One of my co-workers at the time said I had borrowed the idea from the movie. My reply, where do you think they got the idea from?
Also the movie aged really well. Show it to a kid today, he is going to have the same blast watching it as we did back then in our childhood. At least I know I did :)
So true! I saw this at a drive-in with my dad when it was first released, and now all these years later I've shown it to my oldest boys (ages 11 and 9...I started a family late) and it instantly became one of their favorites. And they know practically nothing about WWII or the '40s yet.
koomo81. That’s so cool! I really want to go to a drive in theatre one day, heard they’re great. That’s awesome your boys like it! Lord knows kids need better material then the stuff they put out nowadays. Convinced me to watch the movie myself. Maybe if I like it I’ll save it for when I have sons and daughters, same with the dollars trilogy.
My family and I have a long standing tradition of quoting this movie. Oddball's "Oh man, don't hit me with them negative waves so early in the morning." is one of my personal favorite.
Drinker, you've blown my mind again! I first became a fan of yours after coming upon your "Where Eagles Dare" review. My dad was one of the producers of that movie and I thought "Who in the hell is reviewing, in 2021, an old war movie done back in 1968?" The Critical Drinker, that's who and then I started watching all your brilliant videos. I've only disagreed with your wonderful videos twice. Anyway, my dad also was one of the producers of "Kelly's Heroes" and I wish he was alive to see the two great reviews you gave of both movies. That would have made him very happy. He was friends with Clint and Telly and Burton. You, unfortunately in both reviews, failed to mention my Dad's best friend, Brian Hutton, who directed both movies. He was a great director. You're so right in that they don't make movies like they used to. Special FX and CGI will never be better than good writing.
I absolutely love the editing on the German Tank Commander scene. The three heroes swaggering line-abreast towards the Tiger like a bunch of cowboys straight off Eastwood's spaghetti western, then the German TC pops out - blonde blue eyed, and more than a bit battle scared. Worn down and defeated but still proud he raises his arm in a salute to the Fuhrer, demonstrating his absolute loyalty to the Vaterland and his aristocratic ancestry. But then Kelly mentions the Gold and you see a brief glint in the Commander's eye... and camera jump cuts straight to the bank door blowing up!
I saw this flick in the Drive-In theatre, still can taste the popcorn and REAL soda. My dad loved war movies, a Korean Vet with a Silver Star, and we never missed seeing one when it released.
"why can't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change..." freaking awesome movie I've watched 100+ times since the early 80's when i discovered it.
Ah, Kelly's Heroes. A film I know almost word for word. How I wish I could completely forget it just so I could properly enjoy the film for the first time all over again.
This was, as ever, a fair shakedown of this classic . Don't forget the brilliant theme music.' Burning Bridges' from the succinctly named 'Mike Curb congregation'. My big bro' bought the single. And that's all you need to know.
Reading the writings of German tankers from the era, they took great pride and made it a point of emphasis to ride "unbuttoned" as much as they could- they even credit the fact that they could make allied tankers close their hatches easily as one of the primary reasons the Germans performed so much better in tanks (per Otto Carius)... so many of their commanders had such facial scars (like Carius).
@@stxrobstar Nope. It was the exact other way around. Every German battle tank form the outset of the war had radio, that is one of the reasons why the stomped the French and the Russians so badly in the first years.
I cannot describe how much I love this movie, and how much it means to our family. It's kind of our cinematic heirloom that is passed down from one generation to the next.
I met Mr. Rickles a couple years before he passed. I was working security in nearby Casino that he was performing at. I escorted him from his room to a steakhouse at the casino. He quipped and joked from the moment he opened the door until he returned to his room. An absolute gem of a man.
An exceptional movie and ironically, for such a clearly fictional film, the equipment and combat scenes are among the most realistic I've seen in film. Great selection.
Back then, to see German vehicles portrayed accurately was ground breaking. I was sick of seeing American tanks with swastikas' by this time and Kellies Heroes was glorious.
Hell even in some more modern movies the equipment is shit... just look at the wanna-be Tiger from Saving Private ryan... good god... what a fugly tank.
Kelly: “We’re not holding on for five minutes. We’re pulling out and pushing forward. If you can’t keep up, that’s your problem.” General: “You hear that? That’s the fightin’ spirit I was talking about! If that guy’s a major, he’s a colonel now!”
If you can dig out an old interview Donald Sutherland did with Bob Costas in the 80s where they talked about this classic. Turns out Donald had gotten sick and his brain swelled during filming and he almost died. But the swelling made him half crazy and emotional. Basically the performance of Oddball was just Donald at the time.
A personal favourite, and you don't get to see Don Rickles lugging a thirty calibre machine-gun everyday. The Eagle Has Landed was also a very cool ride.
Excellent pick. My favorite WWII movie and most quotable WWII of all time. "What kind of deal?" "A deal deal. Maybe the guy is a Republican." - This became funnier as I got older.
Imagine that. An original story created solely for the big screen. That's what Hollywood used to be. No franchises, reboots, sequels, remakes, re-imaginings, sequels to remakes, or adaptations of reboots. They used to make fucking MOVIES. I miss movies.
In the original theatrical release the song was not used in the intro. The main tiles was an instrumental theme. The soundtrack was by Lalo Schifrin. With the success of the song the intro was switched to Burning Bridges for all future releases.
I thought sure Drinker would mention the song while he was going on about all the world war II movies with bridge in the title...but no...mums the word.
Best movie ever! Loved it when I watch this with WWII vets. they told me this stuff is not too farfetched they seen crazier shit than this LOL WTF!!! Must have been super crazy times what an awesome generation! I still watch this movie at least once a year.
My Mother and her Mom were working 24/7, keeping up their brownstone in Brooklyn to give room and board to soldiers and refugees from around the world, living poor in the city or needy and just passing through. Angels... And The Strongest Of Women! Believe That!!
Guys, have you notied how those old movies had this crisp look to them? I can't put my finger on it, but overall it feels somewhat better than what we have right now.
All movies were filmed in HD, its the only camera tech we have really ever had for cinema. Projectors and many other devices didn't support the image quality that was present. In the 90s there used to be lots of old movies avail 'remastered' where they went back and tried to enhance stuff from the original reels. Orphan Annie, Mary Poppins, A Christmas Story, etc.
Depending on the source material, real film masters compare up to the range of 8k. When you had a bad dvd/blu its mostly because they used a cheaper theatrical copy of it. Or the master was not stored properly
It's modern directors obsession with filters and post processing effects. I think it is utterly horrible. Every movie has to be entirely brown or blueish, natural colors are banished from films.
Love this film! Think my favourite Oddball line is "it's a mother beautiful bridge....and it's gonna be there". Fits into my top 3 war films along with Where Eagles Dare and Guns of Navarone.
"His name's Oddball" and then the eye roll to end all eye rolls. 🙄 Don Rickles, what a legend. One of my all-time fave movies, and Oddball one of the best characters ever filmed.
I’m 36 and this is one of my all time favorites when I was a kid an still is today. Also has one of my favorite songs at the beginning of the movie and at the end. Burning Bridges
Along with the magnificent seven, this movie was one of my youths treasures. Between the two, I probably watched them hundreds of times. All the badass actors playing in those kind of movies is getting me depressed about the state of film industry today. The scene where oddball is showing off his drunken unit to kelly is movie magic. "Sixty feet of bridge I can pick up almost anywhere" - oddball talking to seinfelds uncle leo of all people, hahaha.
"what can be more important than 16 million bucks?" "You come by later Crapgame ..... and we'll show you" Always wanted to know what oddball and his crew did that night
One of my favorite war films. And have to laugh that for being a satirical comedy it is still more realistic than many "serious" war films. And "Burning Bridges" was, in my opinion at least, a perfect song for the film.
My father was absent for most of my childhood, but I always remember Kelly's Heroes as the first moment we truly bonded. My dad identified as Kelly, and my brother and I identifying with Oddball. God, we must of watched that movie once a week for a year when he came back...good times.
Kelly's Heroes is one of the best films ever made and I say that as a life-long Disney Princess fan 😄 The cast is phenomenal and the story is a great caper, with lots of action to keep you interested! Clint Eastwood is top-notch (as always) and Donald Sutherland and Telly Savalas are the best men to be at his side. And Don Rickles being his hilarious self! The peace-treaty scene with the German tank commander is one of the best scenes Ive ever seen in a movie. The dialogue was to-the-point, the tension was immeasurable and then the big BOOOM!! Man, I need to go watch it again!
I remember watching this with my granda back in the day. Love it. I'm going to have to buy it on bluray now. Hopefully there's a Kelly's Heroes, Where Eagles Dare boxset. Never enough Eastwood.
I bought a TCM WWII movie boxset a bunch of years ago that was Kelly's Heroes, Where Eagles Dare, the Dirty Dozen, and Battleground. Absolutely superb.
By the way Oddball is what's called a "beatnik". It was an American subculture from the late 40s to mid 60s and was, as you described, basically a proto-hippie.
Ooh good call, I was just being ironic, draft is more associated with Vietnam, but ill but that Although..any self respecting beatnik would have gone to Mexico haha
One of the most underrated entertaining war movies ever made This movie, Bat 21, Stripes & Courage Under Fire are some of the underrated entertaining and maybe also fun war movies
One of my favorites of this sort of film(along with Dirty Dozen), but I gotta compliment you on your statement about getting the German officer drunk for information. My uncle worked intelligence in WWII and always said he got more by playing chess and smoking cigars than any torture of the enemy ever would.
Fun fact: the Shermans used in Kelly's Heroes were 76mm armed, small turret Shermans, which were never accepted for service by the US military. The 76mm Shermans used in WW2 used the T23 turret.
Thank you, Drinker! Kelly's Heroes is my favorite WWII movie. It has a very special place in my heart. Back when I was in junior high (when Jesus was a baby and before most people even owned a vcr) there were 2 movies that made the rounds on local late night TV after Johnny Carson. One was Zulu. The other was Kelly's Heroes. And all the guys at school watched it. We made sure we all knew it would be on that night, and we'd quote it endlessly the next day. Great memories
Saw this in the mid 70's on TV when it showed on the Sunday afternoon movie series. As a kid I was definitely enamored and I think it's one of the reasons I ended up joining the Army.
It amaze me how many times the drinker recommends shows and movies i love ....this one is one of my favourites in the oldies department....he also reviewd " where eagles dare" .... another great movie...
Saw this film, when a kid, with my family at a local drive in theater. What a riot. One of all time top 5 favorite films. Those were the days & my family then, for the most part, all liked each other. Parents are now gone & the gloves are off, sad.
