Episode 44- Punchin’ Nazis with THE DIRTY DOZEN

Lee Marvin
Ernest Borgnine

Most of you are already in at this point. Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine are definitely a performance dream team, and that bill alone would be worth the price of admission. But, let’s keep going…

Charles Bronson (American actor, not British Criminal)
Telly Savalas
Donald Sutherland.

You’re fully on board now. Put something between you and this movie, that’s a good way to get that something trampled. Right?

But wait, there’s more.

Jim Brown
John Cassavetes
Clint Walker

Whaaaaaat?! No way! Greatest cast ever?! NO!!! THERE’S MORE!!!

George Kennedy
Richard Jaeckel
Robert Ryan
Trini Lopez

We could keep doing this because there is not a single bad performance in the whole thing.

In our ode to Richard Spenser, we decide to let one of the most testosterone laden grand-daddy ensemble film, where a rag tag group of misfits are whipped into shape for a suicidal mission. All of them criminals. Their only motivation, the foggy promise of a pardon upon their survival and safe return.

It’s a trope that permeates the Hollywood landscape even today, but this is the O.G. example of the notorious group of suicidal irregulars.

Strangely lighthearted, impossibly dark, barely nuanced. This is THE DIRTY DOZEN, a movie that watches just as good now, as it did back in 1967.

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