JKwiat5787

I'm not well 'up' on my prehistoric mammals, the ones which inherited the Earthy from the Dinosaurs, or I'd suggest remaking this film to be little bit more accurate from a natural history standpoint. You wouldn't want to set it in the Ice Age. You'd have had to cover Raquel in fur, and covering so much as an inch of her skin (beyond what's needed to avoid an 'R' rating, of course) was to be avoided at all costs. After all, that was what people, especially guys, paid to see. But how about having the hero defend the village from an attack by a saber-toothed tiger? Hunting Woolley Mammoths would be out; they, from what I know, lived in cold, snowy climates, and that would have required covering Raquel up, as I noted above. That's why the extra research would be needed. What monsters would people have faced in those days in a warm climate, where Welch could stick with her doe-skin bikini? What about hunting horses no bigger than dogs? Harryhausen did fine with that little project in 'The Valley of Gwangi', and they did exist. It;s known that these little horses lived in North America and they were hunted to extinction. It took the Spanish to introduce ridable horses to their possession in the Americas in the 1500s.

I'm sure Ray Harryhausen would have done as well with a saber-toothed tiger as he did with a T-Rex or a triceratops. The basic plot needn't have changed, but the relationship between Tumac, his father, and his brother might have been softened a bit. You don't have to get rid of the sibling rivalry entirely, but it doesn't have to be lethal.

Still, fun to watch.

My main problem with the production had to do with some of the dialog, which sounded like it was aimed at a junior-high-school audience. The premise by which this movie was produced was obvious to me when I saw it as a high-schooler in 1976: get the main facts right and let the special effects really sell the story. In that respect it was like Star Wars without the light sabers and the blasters. (You obviously had to stick with the weapons systems available on Earth in 1942.) There were bits and pieces of the story left out due to time constraints, like the Japanese dive-bomber attack on 'Yorktown' getting chewed to pieces by F4F wildcats. Time constraints also forced the leaving out for proper explanations of strategic decisions like Nimitz's decision to keep his remaining carriers in the vicinity of Midway after 'Yorktown' is damaged. There was more to it than just 'wanting the fourth carrier'. I don't have too much to say about the sub-plot involving Ensign Garth and his Japanese-American girlfriend that others haven't already said. Probably the most historically-correct aspect of the movie was the differences in the effectiveness of American and Japanese intelligence. All Japanese errors stemmed from their poor intelligence regarding the location of our carriers, and most of what went right for us stemmed from us knowing where there's were.

The fact that I usually watch it whenever its on says enough for my opinion of its watchability.

To really judge this film, as well as 'A Bridge Too far', one needs to read the book either after or (better yet) before seeing the film. Every time this film comes on, I find myself flipping through my battered paperback copy of the book, especially at the point where Private Schultz decides he needs to lose the $2,500 he won at craps. That actually happened, though there is no mention of him having suffered any serious injuries during training.

Probably the most glaring deviation from the book is that the final breakout from Omaha Beach wasn't as dramatic as was portrayed in the film. Those who survived fought their way off that beach inch by bloody inch. It is true that General Cota was very inspirational to his men in the 29th Infantry Division as he tried to move his men off the beach. I was pleased that some of the more minor 'idiosycracies', like Lord Lovat having his personal piper with him, were accurately portrayed, as well as the incident when Lovat's commandos relieved Major Howard's Paratroopers at 'Pegasus Bridge.' That incident was retold fairly accurately, although I'm not so sure about the exchange of words between Pvt. Flanagan and the other Irish soldier, regarding the way Bill Millin played the bagpipes. It did strike me as classic British humor in a time of stress.

By the way, one error on this page that might be cleared up. Pips Priller's Luftwaffe 'buddy' and wingman, the one who complained about 'not being able to get any sleep', was no major. He's Flight Sergeant Heinz Wodarcyck, Priller's regular wingman on the staff flight of Jagdgeschwader (fighter wing) twenty-six. Also, Priller's final official score was 101, not the 130-some-odd mentioned in the movie. He survived the war, so it's entirely possible that some of those kills occurred after D-Day. Wodarcyck was killed in Operation Bodeplatte, a major strike coordinated with the Battle of the Bulge, intended to wipe out the U.S. 9th Air Force, and maybe the British 2nd Air Force, on the ground in Belgium. That was New Year's day 1945.