The Dirty Dozen, 1967

27. The Dirty Dozen, 1967

Train them! Excite them! Arm them!...Then turn them loose on the Nazis!


The original Dirty Dozen was and is a great film. It was a hit in my school and we all went to see it when it first came out. It did not suffer from being a Hollywood film as it had a good strong story with plenty of good actors.

We had been brought up on a diet of black and white British war films in the fifties and early sixties. There then came in the mid to late sixties more colourful and dramatic American made war films.

They indulged in a lot more action because they had the money and a little less stiff upper lip and the chaps following the lead of a well bred officer.

Lee Marvin was the archetype lone wolf. It is a cliche of films that the maverick is given a tough task to see whether he can succeed against all odds. He gets the team together for the task.

There are a lot of threats to the team from both the outside and inside. The team then get together and follow the maverick leader.

The task goes ahead and they succeed and either nobody survives or very few survive.

This is the plot of Wild Geese. War films like this idea because you can be introduced to the team during training. We know who everyone is because of the rank structure, We have to be concerned about the characters as we are introduced to them.

We then have to identify with them as they go through their trials and tribulations. The baddies turn out to be good at their job and they follow the maverick leader.

The mission is a success but very few of them survive. It is allowable for a real man to feel sad at the end of the The Dirty Dozen, 1967

Even the credits show each of them so that we remember them as they were before they were killed.

The brand has been diluted by the constant sequels which have all been rubbish.

Lee Marven on the roof of the wooden huts in England with his machine gun and the taped magazines is a lasting image. It is also a politically correct film for its time as all the ethnic minority characters had good parts.


[Kinder has just finished a psychiatric evaluation of Reisman's troops]
Major John Reisman: So what does that give you?
Capt. Stuart Kinder: Doesn't give me anything. But along with these other results, it gives YOU just about the most twisted, anti-social bunch of psychopathic deformities I have ever run into! And the worst, the most dangerous of the bunch, is Maggott. You've got one religious maniac, one malignant dwarf, two near-idiots... and the rest I don't even wanna think about!
Major John Reisman: Well, I can't think of a better way to fight a war.