Kelly's Heroes

Site Issues 2008 Archive Room
#1

What’s not to love about this film?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065938/

Clint Eastwood, Tele Savalas and Donald Sutherland, plus a very young Harry Dean Stanton.

Written by troy Kennedy-Martin, who also wrote the original Redcap series (with john Thaw in the '60s), bits of the Sweeny, the original and remakes of The Italian Job and loads of other stuff.

Played mostly for laughs, but with some sad bits and the anachronistic (but very funny) hippy tank commander, it’s a fine rollock through N W Europe to steal a load of gold.

My favourite bits include the scene where Oddball (Sutherland) finds out he’s going to have to take on a TIGER tank with a SHERMAN, the battle with the music playing from the loudspeakers, and the scene at HQ when the general is listening to the heist and thinks it’s a battle going on.

Some great dialogue as well:

[i]Crapgame: Hey, Oddball, this is your moment of glory. And you’re chickening out!
Oddball: To a New Yorker like you, a hero is some type of weird sandwich, not some nut who takes on three tigers.

Oddball: A Sherman can give you a very nice… edge.

(at a supply depot somewhere in France)
Oddball: We see our role as essentially defensive in nature. While our armies are advancing so fast and everyone’s knocking themselves out to be heroes, we are holding ourselves in reserve in case the Krauts mount a counteroffensive which threatens Paris… or maybe even New York. Then we can move in and stop them. But for 1.6 million dollars, we could become heroes for three days. [/i]

Fabulous film!

#2

although this film was a comedy it had great special effects.

#3

Its a Great Movie ,I think the name of the sniper is Gutkowski :lol: :lol:

#4

I used to know the bloke that advised the special effects crew on converting the T 34s into TIGERs for the film, but haven’t seen him for 15 years or more.

The giveaway is the shortened glacis, but apart from that, I thought they were pretty good, especially considering most special effects crews in the early '70s were paining SHERMANS and M 48s grey and calling them panzers . . .

#5

Thats really neat that you knew someone from the making of the movie ,Where was the movie shot?

#6

another giveaway is the small front sprocket, a real tiger the front sprocket is much bigger.

#7

Yes like the dodgy King Tigers in Battle of the Bulge werent they jusy M48’s?

#8

Yup, the wrong equipment in WWII movies drives me NUTS ( like use of ME 108 to pretend its a ME 109). In Poland, it was advertised as a “US-Yugoslavian” movie, so I would assume it was shot somewhere in former Yugoslavia.

#9

You just ruined it for me. I thought they actually WERE Tiger tanks…:smiley:

But I guess there probably aren’t three operating reliably anywhere in the world…

#10

Yes like the dodgy King Tigers in Battle of the Bulge werent they jusy M48’s?[/quote]

Yes. And the “panzers” in “The Big Red One” were Shermans.

#11

Were the people who did the mock up’s from the Angel in Islington? They was a prop shop at the back of the tube station years ago and I remember seeing Shermans and other stuff there at one time?

#12

good movie !! the final sequences r good !!

#13

Watched it twice when i was a kid.Never forgotten it.
Good movie.

#14

Definitely a good movie. I love Don Rickles in it, he’s always bitchin’ and moanin’ about everything. Really funny.

#15

yea, it was filmed in yugoslavia.

#16

The movie Battle Of The Bulge used M47 Patton tanks for the German Tigers, that everyone hates! :roll:

What caught my eye were the road wheels on the “Tiger I” in the Movie Kelly’s Heroes. That was what told me it wasn’t a real tiger after building so many of them as a kid and still doing the same now!

#17

i found it in my local rental vcd shop long time ago .i love it . sorry i copy it but only one disc i can just now i looking for to buy but no have …so sad …
sorry for my avatar

#18

Check out ebay. It’s where I got mine at, cheap too! :rolleyes:

#19

Oddball: Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don’t you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?
Moriarty: Crap!

Oddball: Crazy! I mean like so many positive waves maybe we can’t lose! You’re on!

Oddball: Always with the negative waves Moriarty, always with the negative waves.

Oddball: So they tell me. Everybody round here is very friendly. Look, baby, I’m kinda hung up. I need sixty feet of bridge.
Bellamy: Hey, kid, they haven’t got you in the nut ward again?
Oddball: Ah, Bellamy, for cryin’ out loud. That’s the the stinking, most awful, stupid joke and you’re always pullin’ that stinking awful stupid joke. You don’t want in this thing, you don’t get in this thing. I cut you out of everything. I don’t need you. Sixty feet of bridge I can get almost anywhere. Schmuck!

Oddball: This engine’s been modified by our mechanical genius here, Moriarty. Right?
Moriarty: Whatever you say, babe.
[giggles]
Oddball: These engines are the fastest in any tanks in the European Theater of Operations, forwards or backwards. You see, man, we like to feel we can get out of trouble, quicker than we got into it.
Kelly: [looking skeptical] Got any other secret weapons?
Oddball: Well, yeah, man, you see, like, all the tanks we come up against are bigger and better than ours, so all we can hope to do is, like, scare 'em away, y’know. This gun is an ordinary 76mm but we add this piece of pipe onto it, and the Krauts think, like, maybe it’s a 90mm. We got our own ammunition, it’s filled with paint. When we fire it, it makes pretty pictures, scares the hell outta people! And we have a loudspeaker, when we go into battle we play music, very loud. It kind of… calms us down.

This movie is unique for me…a WWII movie that’s half a comedy? And it works?
I’ve seen this one uncountable times and it still amuses me…

What a combination of stars, what a collection of beautiful oneliners, what a coolness Eastwood shows, what a crazy dude Sutherland plays…

SuperTrooper movie…go get it!

#20

Love it!!!