Category: Stuart Margolin

KELLY’S HEROES

By Marc S. Sanders

There’s gold in them thar Nazi castle.  Hence the plot is set in motion for a World War II romp called Kelly’s Heroes.  It’s easy to get acclimated to the lightheartedness of this comedic war picture from director Brian G Hutton (Where Eagles Dare). 

The movie opens during a dark and rainy evening within a German occupied France. The on-screen credits pop up revealing an all-star cast of tough guy actors who are also quite funny.  Clint Eastwood is the title character who sits behind the wheel of a jeep. When the Nazis take notice, he hits the gas, makes a sharp left through the muddy road, and zooms away while avoiding shell fragments coming down on him. The film’s catchy theme song marches in – “Burning Bridges” performed by the Mike Curb Congregation.  The chorus of singers speak as a soldier who does not even care about authority or the rules of war.  The lyrics are rather simple to understand, and you want to just join in on the revolutionary merriment.  The song enters the film again and again over the next two and a half hours, reminding you to just enjoy the ride against this tragic capsule of time from the first half of twentieth century history.  Hawkeye Pierce couldn’t have said it better.

In his capture, Kelly has brought back a Nazi commandant and when he sees a fourteen-karat gold bar in the German’s possession, it’s easy to surmise that there must be more where this came from.  Turns out there is a stash worth roughly sixteen million dollars crated in a bank vault in the center of a stopover town, located across enemy lines in war torn France.  Kelly and his squad, led by Big Joe (Telly Savalas), are under heavy fire and forced to retreat for safety, but that isn’t going to stop him from making a snatch and grab.

Joe has been given orders to get the unit to safety and allow them a three-day reprieve of R & R.  However, he’s just as enticed as Kelly and gradually a small team of men assemble to pull off the heist.  First, they’ll need tanks to fight off the nearly indestructible Nazi Panzer machines they expect to encounter.  Fortunately, Crapgame (a scene stealing Don Rickles) and Kelly come across the hippie loving Oddball (another scene stealer – Donald Sutherland) who can supply the tanks they need and fend off what stands in the unit’s way.  What’s also important is Oddball find a bridge for the squad to cross before the allies destroy it.  That’s not so easy.  Sutherland is somewhat of a spaz; maybe an ancestor of Cosmo Kramer.

Meanwhile, a blood and guts two-star General Colt (Carroll O’Connor) is screaming for results from his subordinates.  When he intercepts the guys’ communications, he can’t help but be impressed with their progress and strategies of attack.  He’s ready to go into the field with a handful of medals for every American soldier that’s giving a damn. 

The looniness of Kelly’s Heroes is hilarious. Eastwood carries his signature quietness about him.  So, he’s the straight man leaving the loudmouth material for Savalas, Rickles, and a bevy of supporting actors.  Plus, there’s O’Connor in his own side story.  Sutherland is another kind of comedy – the free spirit who appears to have taken one too many shells to the noggin. 

It’s not a slapstick kind of movie.  It operates like the doctors from M*A*S*H.  These draftees have no loyalty to a cause.  They look out for each other.  They know how to survive the battles and they know that some will not make it.  Brian Hutton does not forget the frightening impact of war.  A memorable scene occurs when the unit realizes they are dead center in a mine field, offering up the life and death factor blended in both the comedy and drama that comes with a heroic war picture. 

There are some inconsistencies to Kelly’s Heroes.  Often, it feels like some scenes that would connect certain dots must have been edited out of the final print.  As the men come close to the to the bank where the gold is stashed, two of the soldiers are already in the overlooking bird’s nest tower giving a low down of the area to Kelly and Big Joe.  Yet, how did those guys ever get up there?  It’s not a terrible violation.  There are sequences like this that make the movie feel a little uneven. Clint Eastwood even went on record expressing his disappointment with the film as there were excised moments that drew more out of Rickles and Sutherland’s characters, and a few of the other supporting characters played by Gavin MacLeod (The Love Boat, The Mary Tyler Moore Show), Stuart Margolin (a very underrated character actor who had memorable episodes on the M*A*S*H tv series) and a young Harry Dean Stanton (here credited only as Dean Stanton). 

This film was shot in Yugoslavia simply because the country still had possession of many tanks and vehicles from the story’s time period.  The art design and battlegrounds are very impressive.  Before CGI, Brian G Hutton and his team were reenacting a lot of these loud, bombastic battle scenes complete with big fireballs of explosions along with the aftermath wreckage left behind of rubble and blasted out walls and craters.  Hutton positions his cameras either on top or right behind the cannons and guns mounted on the tanks.  So, you are actually getting a first person view of these massive war machines driving across the plains while shooting off their firepower.  The filmmakers did not hold back on making World War II look authentic in its battle wear.  I’ll be bold enough to say the settings are comparable to what Spielberg accomplished with Saving Private Ryan, and what Eastwood depicted in Letters From Iwo Jima.  The lens is just not as serious as those films.

The cast is a magnificent fraternity of brazenly funny tough guys, in the same vain as The Dirty Dozen, though much more lighthearted.  They’re a motley sort who all stand out among their similar appearances in green army fatigues and netted helmets. 

Kelly’s Heroes is a lighthearted comedic adventure where the heist is what you come to see against a historical backdrop when nothing was ever sensationalized fun.  History offers up a cruel world of pain and suffering, but who says we can’t enjoy ourselves through all the blood, guts and misery as our heroes ride off into a ravishing orange sunset?

Go for the gold and catch up with Kelly’s Heroes.

DEATH WISH (1974)

By Marc S. Sanders

I never saw the original Death Wish before.  Never felt I needed to having already watched Death Wish II and Death Wish 3.  Yes!  The inconsistency in the numbers (Roman vs numeral) is how the “saga’s” films are titled.  Sometimes self-described writers and studio marketers do not pay attention to the minute details.  If you’re gonna be stupid with your five film franchise, then be sure to strive for a complete lack of intellect.

Now before I get back to discussing the original film which I finally watched last week, I offer you this confession.  In 1985, there were two films I saw five times each in theaters.  Oh God, You Devil and Death Wish 3.  I guess Out Of Africa and Prizzi’s Honor did not appeal to my twelve-year-old mentality.  Death Wish 3, however, had a hideously violent gang making social progress because they consisted of whites, blacks and Hispanics.  A couple of punk girls too.   A welcome melting pot of deranged animals operating under an equal opportunity philosophy.  They were all pals and they pillaged, robbed, vandalized, murdered and raped the helpless neighbors of the destitute projects in New York.  Happy times.  More importantly, have you ever seen that shootout that occupies the last thirty minutes of Death Wish 3?  It is one for the ages and worth your time to watch on repeat.  Dare I say it’s as good as anything in a Stallone, Schwarzenegger or Eastwood actioner.  

Here’s where my endorsement stops with this article, though.  Skip the first two trashy Death Wish films. Unless you want to see Laurence Fishburn try to shield himself from a Charles Bronson bullet by covering his face with a boom box and then drooling blood and radio parts out of his mouth before collapsing dead on the pavement.  That glorious moment occurs midway through the second installment.

Stay with me, now.

Having experienced the happy bloodshed of the third of five films in the Charles Bronson franchise, I am surprised to learn his city architect character Paul Kersey begins the original film as a “bleeding heart liberal” who would prefer to stay away from guns.  What a departure for Bronson’s most famous role.  All that being said, director Michael Winner likely started filming this piece with a need for a message about justifiable homicide or vigilantism, but unfortunately it very quickly drowns in repulsive ugliness.

I’ll say this for Michael Winner.  He’s keen enough to show Paul and his wife (Hope Lange) vacationing in beautiful Hawaii.  Then as they return home, an overhead shot of a bloody sun-soaked New York City appears on screen with the title of the picture DEATH WISH in big block letters, accompanied by some sinister sounding music.  Hawaii is heaven.  Home is hell.  John Milton was never this poetic.

Paul Kersey’s wife and adult daughter are attacked in their home.  Interesting tidbit! One of the slimeballs is Jeff Goldblum in his first film role.  Though there’s nothing for him to be proud of here.

Kersey’s wife dies.  The daughter is brutally raped, and I mean brutally.  It’s a disgusting scene that offers no sense of sadness or fear or awareness.  It also looks as if Winner and his crew and cast never even rehearsed the scene.  The poor girl’s clothes are ripped off of her, she’s pulled against one of them from behind by her throat, and then the attackers spray paint the center of her bare anus in orange as a “target” for where to penetrate.  Another thug paints a swastika on the wall. What is that supposed to tell me? Then we are treated to seeing Goldblum and company baring themselves and mounting the actress who was awarded this unfortunate role.  Reader, I’ve seen just about everything there is to see in films.  When I consider the point of delivery that Jodie Foster offered in her Oscar winning role in The Accused, what is smeared across Death Wish is exploitative garbage. Any shred of cinematic artistry is entirely devoid in this picture.  In this case it was not just another movie.  It’s just truly sickening.

Anyway, Bronson has never been a great actor.  Nor has he been charismatic.  Yet, there’s a tough guy and dark presence to what the camera found in him.  A client gifts Paul a modern-day Colt handgun and considering the high level of violence that occurs within the streets of New York, he takes it upon himself to seek out or bait would be muggers and criminals.  He never catches up to the hooligans that tormented his family, but he takes on the mission of cleaning up the streets while a useless police force amounts to little results.

After Paul’s first shooting, he comes home to vomit.  I can only guess the liberal cannot stomach what he’s committed.  This is about the only dimension we get out of this guy.  Paul has boring conversations with his son in law.  Poorly acted scenes with actor Steven Keats; poorly acted, poorly directed, poorly written, poorly filmed.  Paul hardly ever shares a scene with his traumatized daughter who goes in and out of catatonic states when she appears in the film.

As the body count piles up, a detective played by Vincent Gardenia starts the investigation around town and wrangles up his police force posse to be on alert. Hey, look who is giving a run down on a progress report.  It’s Gardenia’s Moonstruck wife, Olympia Dukakis.  Pretty neat to see this. Still, Death Wish is not recommended for your Vincent Gardenia/Olympia Dukakis movie marathon.

Death Wish is tone deaf.  I’d be interested to see how a liberal, who shutters at violence, transitions into a vigilante.  That’s a story with an eccentric transformation. However, Michael Winner and his writers are not even aware or interested in talking to you about that.  I only know Paul Kersey starts out as a liberal because his co-worker mockingly calls him one, and again he vomits after his first shooting.  How humane of Paul.

I won’t disclose the entire ending, but I’ll share this with you.  Paul relocates to Chicago and upon arrival, Michael Winner freeze frames on a grinning Charles Bronson pointing a finger gun at a couple of harassing punks who are tormenting some citizens in a train station.  What do I gather from this hint of subtly?  I guess Paul Kersey registered with a different political party when he became an Illinois citizen.  Quite the message!