The Dirty Dozen

Director: Robert Aldrich Robert Aldrich

Overview

Director Robert Aldrich took what he considered a hopelessly old-fashioned script by Lukas Heller and Nunnally Johnson and fashioned The Dirty Dozen into one of MGM's biggest moneymakers of the 1960s--and the sixth highest-grossing film in the studio's history. Lee Marvin plays Major Reisman, assigned to coordinate a suicide mission on a French chateau held by top Nazi officers. Since no "normal" GI can be expected to volunteer for this mission, Reisman is compelled to draw his personnel from a group of military prisoners serving life sentences. This "dirty dozen" includes a sex pervert (Telly Savalas), a psycho (John Cassavetes), a retarded killer (Donald Sutherland), and the equally malevolent Charles Bronson, Trini Lopez, Jim Brown, and Clint Walker. On the dim promise of receiving pardons if they survive, the criminals undergo a brutal training program, then are marched behind enemy lines dressed as Nazi soldiers, the better to overtake the chateau and kill everyone in it--including the innocent wives and mistresses of the German officers.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/17/2007
UPC:	0012569793958
Original Release:	1967
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Home Video
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby AC-3 Surround Sound]
Time:	2:29:00
Sales rank:	14,122

Special Features

Bonus movie The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission; Commentary by cast members Jim Brown, Trini Lopez, Stuart Cooper, and Colin Maitland, producer Kenneth Hyman, original novelist E.M. Nathanson, film historian David J. Schow and the Veteran Military Advisor to Movies Capt. Dale Dye; Introduction by Ernest Borgnine; 2 exiting new documentaries: ; Armed and Deadly: The Making of The Dirty Dozen; The Filthy Thirteen: Real Stories From Behind the Lines; Marine Corps Combat Leadership Skills: vintage recruitment documentary featuring Lee Marvin; Vintage featurette Operation Dirty Dozen; Soundtrack remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1; Theatrical trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Lee Marvin	Maj. Reisman
Ernest Borgnine	Gen. Worden
Charles Bronson	Joseph Wladislaw
Jim Brown	Robert Jefferson
John Cassavetes	Victor Franko
George Kennedy	Maj. Max Armbruster
Richard Jaeckel	Sgt. Bowren
Robert Ryan	Col. Everett Dasher-Breed
Trini Lopez	Pedro Jiminez
Ralph Meeker	Capt. Stuart Kinder
Telly Savalas	Archer Maggott
Clint Walker	Samson Posey
Donald Sutherland	Vernon Pinkley
Robert Webber	Gen. Denton
Tom Busby	Milo Vladek
Ben Carruthers	Glenn Gilpin
Stuart Cooper	Roscoe Lever
Robert Phillips	Corporal Carl Morgan
Colin Maitland	Seth Sawyer
Al Mancini	Tassos Bravos
Thick Wilson	Worden's Aide
Dora Reisser	German Officer's Girl
Dick Miller	Actor
George Roubicek	Pvt. Arthur James Gardner

Technical Credits

Lukas Heller

Nunnally Johnson

Robert Aldrich	Director
Bert Batt	Asst. Director
Mack David	Songwriter
Frank deVol	Score Composer
Ernest Gasser	Makeup
Lukas Heller	Screenwriter
W.E. Hutchinson	Art Director
William Hutchinson	Art Director
Kenneth Hyman	Producer
Nunnally Johnson	Screenwriter
Michael Luciano	Editor
Alan McCabe	Camera Operator
Cliff John Richardson	Special Effects
Edward Scaife	Cinematographer
Wally Schneiderman	Makeup
Sibylle Siegfreid	Songwriter
Tony Spratling	Camera Operator

Editorial Reviews

Redefining the WWII movie for a less trusting age, The Dirty Dozen became one of the biggest hits of the '60s. Robert Aldrich reflected the antiwar sentiments of the times with this tale of a suicide mission that a U.S. general assigns to a group of convicted murderers and rapists. Lee Marvin, wounded during the Battle of Saipan in real life, plays the officer responsible for training these psychopaths to go behind enemy lines and assassinate members of the German High Command. John Cassavetes also stars, and Aldrich allowed him to improvise much of his Academy Award-nominated role. The maverick actor then utilized the clout that he gained from this movie to produce his own highly regarded independent films. Reviled for its brutality upon its release, the movie now falls into the cycle of Vietnam-era revisionist films, such as The Wild Bunch and M.A.S.H., that changed American attitudes towards authority, making The Dirty Dozen one of the most important war movies of its generation.

Barnes & Noble - Ben Wolf

Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen is remembered today as a fine action-adventure film, along the lines and proportions of The Great Escape and Kelly's Heroes. In its time, it was also a groundbreaking piece of popular cinema. Until its release, Hollywood had struggled with how to portray men in war, especially World War II. Movies such as The Naked and the Dead, Attack, and Between Heaven and Hell had tried to present the reality that not every American soldier, or even most, were bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, flag-waving patriots; but those movies never caught on with the public, and one extreme example, Carl Foreman's The Victors, was a box-office disaster. The Dirty Dozen succeeded at presenting the darker sides of humanity, employed in the service of good. It broke lots of lingering screen taboos, showing its heroes cavorting with prostitutes and killing with very little discrimination, and it generally held all authority in contempt -- pretty strong stuff for a mainstream movie coming out in the midst of the Vietnam War. It did for the war movie what Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and Sergio Leone's Man-With-No-Name trilogy did for the Western, while retaining just enough roughhousing fun to hang on to more traditional audiences, thus yielding a box-office bonanza for its producers and opening more conservative audience members to further films in this vein.

All Movie Guide - Bruce Eder