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 during World War II. Lee Marvin leads the cast of raw recruits which includes Griff (Mark Hamill, fresh from success in Star Wars), Zab (Robert Carradine, who serves as Fuller’s surrogate 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 in 1997 as a tribute to his lasting work and the version he intended audiences to see. When this restored and augmented 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, restored to the film. It definitely makes for a more compelling film and adds depth to the characters.

The Big Red One opens in November 1918 as the guns fall silent on the Western Front in France during World War I. Lee Marvin’s character begins his military career as a private who outlasts the first world war only to find himself, twenty five years later, fighting 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.

Last time on War Movie Mondays Again we featured the film Kelly’s Heroes. This time it’s the 1969 Guy Hamilton directed classic Battle of Britain. This film depicts the valiant struggle of Great Britain’s Royal Air Force against the onslaught of the numerically superior German Luftwaffe during the summer of 1940

The film opens as France falls in May 1940, and the British and their allies avoid capture with the massive evacuation at the coastal city of Dunkirk. With time to regroup and strengthen their home defenses, the British lie and wait for Hitler’s forces to eventually invade England.

The film is told through a collection of fighter squadron groups (English and German) who are veterans in the skies over France and the low countries during early 1940. Like many films of the mid to late 1960’s, Battle of Britain has its fare share of brilliant English and German actors. Screen legend Sir Laurence Olivier leads the cast as Chief Air Marshal H.C. Dowding who helped to coordinate British forces to total victory in the battle.

Other screen greats include Harry Andrews, Michael Caine, Edward Fox, Trevor Howard, Curt Jurgens, Ian McShane, Kenneth More, Nigel Patrick, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Robert Shaw, Patrick Wymark, and Susannah York.

As we did with Western Wednesdays Again, we’re bringing back another favorite feature: War Movie Mondays. And kicking things off is 1970’s Kelly’s Heroes. Written by Douglas Barnett, War Movie Mondays explores a different film in the “war movie” genre each week with him offering his unique take on the film, details about the production and whole lot more.

So, we’re pleased to bring you the first installment of what we’re now calling “War Movie Mondays Again.” Yes, we know, another great title. How do we do it? Talent. Enjoy!

– Chris

Kelly’s Heroes is a war film that has all the great elements of an old fashion, rousing epic that keeps your attention all the way through. Set in the late summer of 1944 as the allies swept across occupied France, Kelly (played by the ever cool Clint Eastwood) and his squad of screwball infantry men find out that the Germans are holding over sixteen million dollars worth of gold bars in a bank thirty miles behind enemy lines.

Tired of the politics of infantry life and the gross inefficiency of their Captain, Kelly and the rest of the squad run by tough sergeant ‘Big Joe’ (Telly Savalas), cook up a scheme to go behind the lines with three M-4 Sherman tanks to rob the bank. As the movie poster states: “They set out to rob a bank and damn near won a war instead.”

With Kelly’s Heroes, Eastwood began his second collaboration with director Brian G. Hutton, who had directed him a year earlier in the highly successful Where Eagles Dare (1969) — a movie which solidified Eastwood’s status as a major box office star. One thing making Kelly’s Heroes such an interesting film is the fact it was released in 1970, just as the U.S. was beginning to downsize its presence in Vietnam.

Other films such as M*A*S*H, which came out in the same year, mirrored that of the country’s current attitude towards the war in Vietnam and was considered to be escapist entertainment. ‘Oddball’ (Donald Sutherland) graces the screen as World War II’s only hippie who commands the three Shermans who accompany Eastwood’s squad to steal the gold.

Seasons Greetings! This week’s Christmas pick is the 1990 action sci-fi classic I Come in Peace (a.k.a. Dark Angel). International action star and He-Man type (no pun intended) Dolph Lundgren stars as a Houston, Texas cop who tracks down an alien who is killing people in order to harvest the universe’s most powerful narcotic. You may be saying to yourself “That’s really the plot?” and yes, it is. The film also stars Brian Benben (from the HBO classic comedy series Dream On), Betsy Brantley, Matthias Hues, and Jay Bilas.

Jack Caine (Lundgren) is a cop who disregards proper procedure in order to get the job done. While on a routine drug bust to catch a syndicate of yuppie criminals known as the White Boys, Caine’s partner is killed when he is discovered as a cop while trying to entrap them.

This week’s Christmas pick is the 1987 buddy cop classic Lethal Weapon. The film stars Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, and Gary Busey.

Being the first film in the successful movie franchise, Lethal Weapon is not just a classic action film, but it’s also a Christmas film as well. The film centers around two L.A.P.D. detectives who are reluctantly partnered together in order to solve a murder that was disguised as a suicide.

Roger Murtaugh (Glover) is an aging officer who has just celebrated his fiftieth birthday and is looking forward to an early retirement. Martin Riggs (Gibson) is a burnt out, borderline psychotic officer who is grieving over the recent death of his wife.

After an undercover drug bust in which Riggs’ life was in jeopardy, Riggs’ superiors have him transferred to homicide where he is partnered with Murtaugh who is aware of Riggs’ illustrious reputation. Both men see this new partnership as an inconvenience and are less than thrilled to work with one another.

George Romero’s second chapter in his Living Dead series, Dawn of the Dead (1978), picks up after the events of Night of the Living Dead (1968). Dawn of the Dead is a fantastic, gory and at times satirical look at America and especially at American consumerism. Despite it gruesome effects, many consider Dawn to be of the greatest horror films ever made and it still continues to hold records for its popularity in pop culture and rankings among film critics.

Set not too far after the events of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn opens where the United States (and possibly the entire world) has succumb to a phenomenon which has caused the bodies of the recently dead to return to life and to pray on the flesh of the living.

This week’s Monday pick is the 1982 horror classic Alone in the Dark which was the debut film from Jack Sholder (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), The Hidden (1987), and By Dawn’s Early Light (1990). The film stars Jack Palance, Martin Landau, Dwight Schultz, and Donald Pleasence.

Alone in the Dark is one of the most intelligent and generally frightening horror films that came out in the early 1980s, a time where cinema was oversaturated with slasher films like the Halloween or Friday the 13^th franchises. Jack Sholder and fellow writers Robert Shaye and Michael Harrpster created one of the greatest cult horror films that would go on to influence a whole new generation of fans and filmmakers.

Dr. Dan Potter (Dwight Schultz, Murdoch from TVs The A-Team) is hired as a replacement psychiatrist for an institution known as the Haven. The hospital’s owner is Dr. Leo Bain (Pleasence), an unorthodox shrink whose very lenient approaches to the treatment of his patients is met with astonishment by Dr. Potter. Dr. Bain refers to his patients as “voyagers” individuals who are having trouble adapting to an already insane world.

As the two men walk the grounds, Bain shows Dr. Potter the third floor of the hospital where four of the most dangerous “voyagers” are contained with an elaborate electrified security system.  The four men who reside on the third floor are former POW and paranoid schizophrenic Frank Hawkes (Palance), pyromaniac and former preacher Byron Sutcliff (Landau), Obese child molester Ronald Elster (Erland Van Lidth), and Skaggs aka ‘The Bleeder” (Phillip Clark) who hides his face throughout the whole film.

In celebration of October and all things associated with Halloween, horror, and the macabre, this week’s pick is the John Landis comedy/horror classic An American Werewolf in London (1981). The film stars David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, and Jenny Agutter.

After making a name for himself in Hollywood with such comedy classics as The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), Animal House (1978), and The Blues Brothers (1980), director John Landis’ next project would further solidify him as one of Hollywood’s newest breed of film makers. An American Werewolf in London is a tongue-in-cheek film that has always been considered a comedy, but Landis says that it’s a horror film with comedic elements.

Landis had come up with the concept of the film while he was a production assistant in Yugoslavia working on the classic war film Kelly’s Heroes in 1970.  While driving through the Yugoslavian countryside, Landis and his driver/interpreter came to a crossroad where they witnessed a gypsy funeral. Landis and his driver watched as these gypsies performed rituals over the dead man’s corpse in an attempt to make sure that he didn’t come back to life and caused mischief.

This week’s Monday Pick is the 1984 multi genre classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Director/screenwriter W.D. Richter (Dracula (1979), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Big Trouble in Little China) created one of the weirdest and most beloved cult classics of the 1980s.

Peter Weller (Robocop) stars as the multi talented neurosurgeon, physicist, rock musician and comic book hero Buckaroo Banzai who battles aliens know as Red Lectroids from the Planet 10 who plot to take over the Earth. Buckaroo Banzai’s character was influenced by the 1930s pulp novels of Doc Savage, much like Lucas and Spielberg’s Indiana Jones that was influenced after the literary adventure character of Allan Quatermain.

Buckaroo Banzai has always been a favorite of mine since I first saw it in theaters in the summer of 1984. It’s a very interesting/hard film to describe to anyone who has never scene it. The premise is beyond absurd but that’s what makes the film so lovable. Banzai and his team of do-gooders known as The Hong Kong Cavaliers (a version of Doc Savage’s Fabulous Five) battle the evil Red Lectroids under the command of Lord John Whorfin (yes an alien leader named John) played to psychotic perfection by John Lithgow, who is actually an Italian physicist known as Dr. Emilio Lizardo. Yeah, it’s a little confusing but when you watch the film it all comes together.

This week’s Monday Pick comes to us from the wonderful world of the king of Independent cinema, Mr. Roger Corman, who produced the low-budget version of Jaws, and that movie was the Joe Dante classic Piranha (1978). Cashing in on the “animals run amok” craze of the late 1970s, Dante and screenwriters John Sayles and Richard Robinson crafted a truly unique horror film that quickly gained a huge cult following.

The film centers around a young woman named Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) who is hired to find two missing teenagers who were hiking in the vicinity of Lost River Lake. Maggie enlists the help of a backwoods drunk named Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) to be her guide and to help her find the two missing teens. Paul and Maggie’s search brings them to an abandoned military installation with a giant pool filled with salt water. Maggie and Paul enter the facility and find a series of mutant specimens and preserved experiments. Maggie finds the master control in order to drain the pool and see whether or not the teens possibly drowned. Maggie pulls the lever and is suddenly attacked by the facility’s caretaker who is knocked unconscious, as he was trying to stop the pool from draining.

Maggie and Grogan take the man back to Grogan’s cabin where he has sustained further injuries after he crashed Maggie’s jeep in an attempt to flee. The man is tied down to a bed and is frantic when he awakens and learns that the pool had been drained. Grogan decides to take the injured man down river in a homemade raft. As the three trek down river, the man introduces himself as Dr. Robert Hoak (played by Dante alumni Kevin McCarthy) a military scientist who explains that the pool was filled with genetically engineered piranhas for a project codenamed Operation: Razorteeth, a plan which was to introduce the deadly strain of fish that could survive in the coldwater river systems of North Vietnam.