This week’s pick goes behind the lines of World War II France with the 1967 release of Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen. The film stars the legendary Lee Marvin as Major John Reisman, an American OSS (pre C.I.A.) operative chosen by Allied command to recruit, train, and drop twelve convicted American military prisoners into France before the Normandy invasion to wipe out a chateau full of German brass. Aldrich adapts E.M. Nathanson’s novel to bring one of the 1960s most successful war movies to the screen.

The cast is a who’s who of some of Hollywood’s best talent. Ernest Borgnine (Maj. Gen. Worden), Charles Bronson (Joseph Wladislaw), Jim Brown (Robert T. Jefferson), John Cassavetes (Victor R. Franko), Richard Jaeckel (Sgt. Clyde Bowren), George Kennedy (Maj. Max Armbruster), Ralph Meeker (Capt. Stuart Kinder), Robert Ryan (Col. Everett Dasher Breed), Telly Savalas (Archer J. Maggott), Donald Sutherland (Vernon L. Pinkley), Clint Walker (Samson Posey), and Robert Webber (Brig. Gen. Denton).

Major Reisman is selected for this mission due to his illustrious reputation for behind the lines action, but he is also well known for exceeding his orders and showing borderline insubordination for his superiors. Both General Worden and Denton tell Reisman that the twelve men have a temporary stay of their sentences for the mission.

Reisman knows fully well that it’s a suicide mission and asks the Generals to reconsider and that the only way for these men to go along with such a deal, is to pardon them for their crimes and that they be returned to active duty at their former ranks. It’s a tough sell, but Gen. Worden agrees and Reisman has just a few short months to train these convicts and turn them into an elite commando unit.

Most of the twelve men are serving long prison sentences, but five (Franko, Jefferson, Maggott, Posey and Wladislaw) are to be hung for murder. Reisman sells the promise of amnesty to these five, because they are the ones with the most to lose. Reisman tells them all that they are dependent of one another and that if any try to escape, fail to add up, or quit, they will all be sent back to prison.

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Some kids find a magical creature — perhaps Frankenstein’s Monster or an extra-terrestrial — who sends them on a wild and magical adventure where they learn life lessons. Other kids find Lee Marvin, and embark on a wild and wacky adventure where they become bank robbers. Only one of these youthful scenarios has a happy ending. But what do you expect when you find Marvin copiously bleeding outside of your barn?

The Spikes Gang initially sells itself as a lighthearted, Cat Ballou type of Western. Will (Gary Grimes), Les (Ron Howard), and Tod (Charles Martin Smith) decide to be kindly and patch Harry Spikes (Marvin) up. They do the typical teen thing, and hide him away from their parents, bringing him clothes, food, and money.

He generously turns down the money, revealing that he’s a well-padded bank robber, and sells the boys tales of silk shirts, women, Cuban cigars, and expensive bourbon. They’re drooling. Who wouldn’t? Marvin could use that raspy voice to tell me the sky was green, and I’d ride off with him in a heartbeat.  (Or live in polygamy — but that’s another Marvin movie.)

But these are better boys than I, and they morosely watch Spikes ride off.  The damage has been done, though, and those tales of bourbon and babes prey on their young, impressionable minds.  Their grubby, poor, and sternly Christian lives seem more unbearable than before, and it takes only one belt-whipping before they ride out into the sunrise.   For farm boys, they’re woefully unprepared, and it isn’t long before they’re starving and desperate enough to do like Spikes would do, and rob a bank.

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Is there a film you’ve tried to watch only to have Fate thwart your efforts again and again? Cat Ballou was on that list for me. I had it recorded on my DVR and lost it, and I don’t know how many times I’ve fired it up via Netflix only to be interrupted or decide I needed a movie with a bit more edge to it. But when I took on Western Wednesdays, I resolved I’d conquer Cat Ballou once and for all.

Perhaps all the build-up and fan enthusiasm (It’s been recommended to me so many times) raised my expectations too high, because Cat Ballou didn’t do much for me. It’s such a classic film I feel like the blame lies with me. I have this kind of abusive relationship with older films, you know. If I don’t love it, it’s my fault. I mean, the AFI ranked it as the tenth best western of all time. It has to be me.

I do have to give Cat Ballou credit for its swinging ’60s enthusiasm. Only in the 1960s could you get away with an action-comedy that features a rousing, continuous sing-a-long by Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye. I like to picture these production meetings. “How about Jane Fonda as a sexy gunslinger — and she leads a gang — and we’ll have this singing Greek chorus highlighting the action — and Lee Marvin will play two roles!” “Whatever! Sure! Go for it!”

Nowadays, studios freak out when Johnny Depp shows up on a pirate set with gold teeth and dreadlocks. But a silver nose for Marvin? Hell, why not! We may enjoy a lot more sex and violence, but our films have become far more bland when it comes to sheer wackiness.

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The Big Red One: The Reconstruction is director Samuel Fuller’s (Fixed Bayonets, The Steel Helmet, Merrill’s Marauders) autobiographical account of his experiences with the legendary 1st U.S. infantry division throughout World War II. Lee Marvin leads the cast of raw recruits which include Griff (Mark Hamill, fresh from success in Star Wars), Zab (Robert Carradine, who doubles as Fuller and the film’s narrator), Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco), Kaiser (Perry Lang), and Johnson (Kelly Ward).

This version of the 1980 film was released several years following Fuller’s death, which was in 1997, as a tribute to his lasting work and the version he intended his audiences to see. When this version was released in early 2005, I was overjoyed to see the original forty seven minutes which Fuller was forced to cut by the Warner Bros. executives.

The film opens as the guns fell silent on the Western Front in France during World War I in November of 1918. Lee Marvin begins his military career as a private who outlasts the war only twenty five years later, to fight once again on the battlefields of North Africa, Sicily, and Europe. The film serves as a combat diary of Marvin and his rifle squad of young, inexperienced boys who fast become hardened soldiers.

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When I grow up, I want to be Claudia Cardinale.

There are plenty of beautiful women in movies, but few goddesses. Cardinale is a goddess. Even when she’s sunburned and running around in a rag, as she is in The Professionals, she has more charisma, beauty, and sex appeal than most actresses working today. I hesitate to call her “sexy” because that word seems so Maxim Magazine these days — but Cardinale is sexy in such a powerful and womanly way that it’s not threatening, but inspiring.

She also had great hair. What demon do I have to bargain with to end up with a perfect bouffant every day? Hers looks good even in the desert. It’s unfair.

Watching old movies can be a bittersweet experience. They don’t make them like Cardinale anymore, and you’d be hard pressed to find a Lee Marvin or a Burt Lancaster on the big screen these days. I cherish retro crushes on both (especially Lancaster — what a grin he had!) and The Professionals is so chock full of old time machismo that turning it off may actually cause you to experience symptoms of withdrawal.

Which is, oddly, what The Professionals is kind of about.   It’s the kind of movie I love in any genre — the adventure story that’s sandwiched in between the heroes’ misspent youth and their retirement.   These are men with pasts.  They’ve had near misses, they’ve experienced terrible tragedies, and they’ve woken up in their union suits with nothing but a pounding headache to remind them of the night before.   They’re men who die with their boots on out of a sense of nobility and because they have nothing else to do.

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