This week I watched one of my favorite movies,The Dirty Dozen a war film starring Lee Marvin,Robert Ryan,Jim Brown,Donald Sutherland,Telly Savalas,Charles Bronson,Ernest Borgnine and George Kennedy.The film is about 12 prisoners who must go on a secret mission behind German lines. The film involves many of the same people from Flight of the Phoenix. including Borgnine and Kennedy, director Robert Aldrich, composer Frank De Vol and screen writer Lukas Heller.This is also in my top five war films along with The Great Escape,Where Eagles Dare,The Longest Day and Bridge on the River Kwai. Classic Film!!!
One day in Hollywood directors Sam Peckinpah and John Woo were talking about idea's for new films. You know Sam I am sick of all these cop films I have always wanted to make a western. What about you? Ever since Bonnie and Clyde came out I have wanted to make a film like that with the slow motion death scenes and lots of blood. You mean like The Magnificent 7 but with bloody slow motion shootouts. Ya kind of like that. You know what that does not sound bad. And this turned into the wild bunch. A Bloody western starring William Holden, Ben Johnson, Warren Otes, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and Edmond O'brien who are all great in the film. I thought the opening seen with the scorpion and the ants was good and it set the tone for the whole movie. In a way it is kind of like the Magnificent seven because they are fighting a group of bad guys who are robbing from a small Mexican town. And there is a final shootout in which all of the gang dies except for a few. It is one of the best westerns ever made.
