Worst WW2 movies ever made?

At the time The Battle of Britain came out a "clever" producer in Italy managed to come out come out with a film titled La battaglia d' Inghilterrra a couple of month before the true long awaited movie was released, I was already a WW2 fanatic and fell for it and it was simply awful. BTW in Italy the real BoB movie is titled I lunghi giorni delle aquile because of this.
On a more mainstream topic The Battle of the Bulge and Pearl Harbor top my list too but I think Miracle at Sant'Anna would beat them if I ever wan to punish myself enough to watch it.

 

C'mon guys!

GETTYSBURG makes all these aforementioned pale in comparison..

Easily the worst casting, with the very worst beg Martin Sheen as R.E. Lee, sounding more like an Ohio version of Bedford Forrest rather than the cultured "Marble Ediface" himself.
Sam Elliot was simply laughable as John Buford, and the man that played Joshua L Chamberlain ought to have recieved a swift kick in the behind for portraying Mr. Chamberlain as a moustachio chewing doofus instead of the coolheaded, utterly compelling luminary that JL Chamberlain was.
As for Gettysburg revealing anything about how the battle was fought or why, it was simply more than this turgid movie could handle. It's depiction of Pickets Charge left more than a little to be desired, considering this should have been the very easiest of engagements to re-enact.....

PEARL HARBOR was to be on my list, but other posters have pulled that particular turkey back to the coop where it belongs.
The THIN RED LINE was tawdry, induced me to snore loudly on no less than THREE occasions, a record beaten only by Kubricks 2001-A Space Odessey, which I have consistently failed to stay awake for the conclusion of on EVERY time that I've sat down to watch it.....
The Award for Historical Idioicy and Corruption of the Truth goes unquestionably to 300.....Among the catalog of ridicule....

Portrayal of Spartans as "The one hope for reason and justice....standing up against tyranny"...Sparta was the most tyrannical of all Greek city states, served almost exclusively by Messanian Helots (slaves). It took the Theban General Epaminondas at Leuctra to debunk this ancient and well practiced myth of Spartan battlefield invincibility, if it ever existed in the minds of any but the Spartans themselves...
Depiction of the goat herder traitor as a crippled Spartan following the army to the Hot Gates.... Ephialtes was a local, who knew about the Anopaea Trail for the very reason that he used it for his goats. Xerxes offered him a bag of gold for leading a picked force of Immortals up the winding trail and behind the Greek position. He was killed by the Persian leader of that expedition when Ephialties demanded payment. The Immortal officer was so incensed at this bold betrayal that he removed the traitors head from his shoulders on the spot.
While on the subject of Immortals, they were NOT un-dead with sharpened fangs, and they definately would not be armed with Samuarai swords as depicted in the film. They were referred to as "Immortals" for the Royal habit of replacing losses in their ranks instantly. To the Greeks, whose unit differentiation did not change with time, only diminished by loss, the Greeks could simply not wrap their heads around this modern concept of how a military unit should be organised.
Elephants at Thermopylae?.... Xerxes had MARCHED every footsolder across the Hellespont and down the coast, supplied by thousands of ships of the Navy. Not a single Elephant is recorded....
No such thing as a RHINO in the Persian army or any other for that matter...Rhinocerai are far too stupid and tempremental to be trained for war. I defy anyone to show me an account of Rhino's at war anywhere on the globe.....
Xerxes depiction as a bald, tall man covered in body npiercings and gold is so much chickenshit. EVERY illustration I've ever come across shows Xerxes dressed in Immortal style armour, with a quite noble face and a long flowing beard trimmed to a point.
Spartans WITHOUT LONG HAIR?...Laughable. This is one of the chief methods that Spartans prepared themselves for battle, by fixing their hair, which grew down their backs like a horses plume...and Spartans were universally CLEAN SHAVEN.

Hollywood Catalogues of Shame when it comes to historical accuracy are LEGION. Don't get me started on BRAVEHEART, a fine FILM....terrible history....

 

I guess the worst movies ever made were in 1960s & 1970s!!
They used Shermans & M-24 Chaffe tanks as Panzers!!!

And that was so clear !! They just changed colours & flags!

Any way they used real MG-42s & Mp-40s!!

 

I think the worst WWII movie is "Windtalkers" with Nicholas Cage. It was god awful.

 

Agreed!

 

"Inglorious Bastards", i liked it, and it was good, but on a sense of realism and credibility its probably a the lowest of the low.

 

I think some movies deserve a "get out of jail free" card on the the grounds of poetic license, and are the foundation of any collectors errr.. collection.
Im thinking the ;
Kelly's Heroes
Memphis belle's
The Patton's
Dirty Dozen's
The Great escape's
Saving Private Ryan's and even the U571

These are the classic or even cliche movies (or soon to be) that we can play on our surround sound enhanced widescreens when our families are over for christmas/new years. Young and old they'll enjoy them, but we'll be enjoying showing our families a glimpse of what our passion/love/obsession is... and the tanks, planes, weapons, jargon, music........

But i am surprised no ones mentioned the dirty dozen sequel "the Next Mission"... The actings on a par with R rated films, even Lee Marvin acts like the storyline has no hope.. Very average movie, almost comical

 

Speaking of Lee Marvin, his movie "Hell In The Pacific" must rate as an all time dog as well.

Mr. Marvin spent most of the film acting in a very boorish manner. The dialogue is not very complicated, and the actor playing the role of the Japanese soldier marooned on the island with Marvin makes several attempts at reconciling their position...all to no avail. Just who this movie was aimed at is something of a mystery, and the end sequence has to be the most un-inspiring finis to a film of this genre ever conceived.

If this movie was any more of a dog it would make appalling gas and lick it's genitals!

 

You're kidding me right?

The movie is a microcasm of the War. One has what the other wants and each fight to defend what they have from one another.

They finally accept their fate and realize that they cannot survive without working together and they build a raft to escape the island. This helps to tear down the barrier of their differing ideologies and a friendship begins to build. Notice how once they reached the island they both try to protect eachother when each one realized/assumed the island was either under Japanese or American control?

They allowed themselves to become comfortable with one another and let their guard down and develop a friendship based on their mutual experiences and the fact that they could remain on the island comfortably until they were rescued.

As they spent more time on the island Lee Marvin became more convinced that the US was winning the war, while Toshiro Mifune realized that Japan had lost as they were looking at the "Life" Magazine.

Once Marvin realizes that Mifune was no longer an asset the old hatred reapeared in the form of him asking Mifune if he believed in God.

Shortly after, the Island is shelled (by one side or the other) and both are presumed killed. The underlying message is that unless both sides can learn to get along and accept eachother they will be destroyed.

If you didn't like this movie then I am sure you wouldn't enjoy : "The Best Years of Our Lives"

 

Killin me Jeff.........your opinion of movies is now suspect. John Boorman also directed Deliverance; for which he won an Academy Award.

 

I will agree that most movies from that time period 1967-73 were lacking the cinemagraphic refinement that we have become accustom to today. I look at that era as a dark time for American Film makers.

What Boorman tried to accomplish in Hell in the Pacific is to document the interaction between Mifune and Marvin without interfering. Kind of a "Blair Witch Hunt" idea where the viewer is given the perspective of actually being there. Much the same style as Deliverance. We can go back a step further and look at Battle of Britain wich, was for all intents and purposes a documentary, used similar editing and camera angles to tell the story. BoB was however more clinical in it's approach; whereas HitP was much more gritty and filmed in a Sergio Leone ("The Good, The Bad and The Ugly") style. You have to remeber that this was filmed on location in Palau and Micronesia; pretty much the end of the know universe at that time for film making.

I think we see this "gritty independant" style of film making up until Jaws. There are a few exceptions "Dirty Harry", "Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid", "French Connection", "Three Days of the Condor", "Day of the Jackel".

The movies comming out of England were much more refined during this time:
Bridge on the River Kwai
Battle of Britain

American Film makers seemed to be putting money and effort into high dollar big name movies:

Donovan's Reef
Sound of Music
Father Goose
Operation Petticote

At the end of the day Hollywood did not want to see Lee Marvin in a Dramatic Role.

The movies I hold in the highest of contempt are :
"Battle of the Bulge"
"The Longest Day"
"The Big Red One"

I guess I will let my defense of this movie rest and in sumation will merely say that I like the movie.

Brad

 

I consider a lot of Sinatra's war movies just bad like Never so few and None but the brave. I like Sinatra he has always been a childhood hero but he is not a good soldier actor or has just never been given a good role to be one.

 

Sinatra's movies are a genre vehicle for the studio to cash in on somone's appeal. Case in point: "Von Ryan's Express" tried to cash in on Sinatra's appeal to repeat some of the success William Holden had in "Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Stalag 17".

 

Im sending my lad over to jugs...I dont care what the movies like..although as a movie just like our the long the short and the tall marvins was great dialogue if neither were great bang bang war movies...jugs could give a few english literature teachers a run for their money..

 

All the movies made after 1948.

Some are good, but the majority of them are terrible.