I can't believe the History Channel actually showed this movie last night. The 1965 "The Battle of the Bulge," starring Henry Fonda, Robert Shaw, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson, etc., is one of the worst World War II movies ever made, in my opinion.

Unfortunately, I still run into people who have seen this movie and believe it is historically accurate -- its appearance on the History Channel will only reinforce this notion. Except for a few place-names dropped in here and there, it bears absolutely no resemblance to the actual battle.

A few blatant errors:

Though Antwerp is mentioned as a German objective early in the film, as the movie goes on the objective becomes a U.S. fuel dump. According to this flick, the Germans lost the battle because they ran out of gas ...

In typical Hollywood fashion, German tanks are depicted by M-47 "Patton" tanks, painted dark gray. All U.S. equipment is painted with a bizarre tiger-stripe pattern of green, red brown and tan. In one scene, Bronson shoots at a tank with a panzershreck -- which we are supposed to know is a U.S. bazooka because it is painted with the tiger-stripe pattern.

The tactics depicted in the flick were reminiscient of the battles I fought with little plastic armymen in the sandbox when I was a kid: The German tanks line up abreast a few meters apart and blast away at everything. Defending Americans stand shoulder-to-shoulder behind a sandbag wall and blaze away at the "panzers" with their rifles and pistols. It reminded me of the old cowboy movies with the barracaded cowboys shooting at the attacking Indians. Ah yes, the famous defense of Ambleve ... (?!?!?!?)

The best part of this movie is when the German tankers all get together to sing "Panzerlied." Unfortunately, I missed this part of the movie last night -- I must have left the room to vomit.

I could go on and on about this movie's problems, but I'll stop. I need to watch a decent Battle of the Bulge flick to recover -- I have a copy of "Battleground" around here somewhere ...

Must have been bad movie night. I saw part of this, where the bulge takes place in the desert. Yep, pretty bad, but if we're talking bad WWII , you have to include Midway with its miraculous transformer planes, where dive bombers have no bombs on the way to target, markings change, and most amazingly, a Hellcat the was supposed to be a dive bomber transforms into an F9F Panther jet jsut as it is about to crash before becoming a Hellcat again.

Actually I saw an even worse movie than these two, a rental from Blockbuster called Critical Mass, but should have been Critical Mess. The oopening action sequence is the Cyberdyne assault scene from T2 with Arnold and the stars edited out and the, well, not quite actors from this movie spliced in. It even include the helo-truck chase on the freeway. Surprisingly, there was no mention of this plagiarism in the credits.

Hollow:

Great post, and I couldn't agree with you more.

The History Channel presenting this thing only legitimatizes the film in the minds of those not familiar with the real history of this event. Frankly I'm surprised they showed it.

You might want to consider sendng your email comments to the History channel website. Never know, it might do some good, especially with their legitamacy called into question. Good luck.

Personally I like the part where the M24 Chaffe Telly Savalis is in is hit and the turret blows off But it's still drivable That can happen right?

One can certainly add to this list some of the stinkers that Hollywood has come up with. Right off the top of my head I can come up with a couple more.

1 - Windtalkers John Woo + Nick Cage = Crap (nuff said)

2 - The Devil's Brigade - Here's an interesting case where the exploits of the First Special Service Force were not enough for Hollywood. Their true story reads better than some action novels but not to Hollywood...NOOOOOOO...they had to add to to "improve" the story. These guys were good.....darn good and their story deserved far better treatment than it got.
A prime example of where adding to a story takes away from it.

It is not THE worst movie then it is right at the top of the list.

I agree with the original writer's sentiments about the film version of BOTB, as well as the follow-up trashing of Midway and The Devil's Brigade. All of these were real stinkers. I'm also glad I put off seeing Windtalkers, since it sounds like it defies the laws of physics by blowing and sucking at the same time. I would like to add "Pearl Harbor" to the list of exceptionally bad WW2 movies. Sure, the special effects used to recreate the attack were pretty cool, everything else about the movie was pure dreck. I had a bad feeling about this movie from the start when it showed what was supposed to be an old Movietone newsreel where the narrator talked about Hitler's panzers racing across Europe and showed the well known footage of a Pershing rolling through Cologne. Things went rapidly downhill from there. I also was less than enthralled by "The Thin Red Line." It did a decent job of capturing the atmosphere of the time, but it didn't follow the book all that well and just seemed awfully flat and downright lame in too many places.

Just a few random ramblings.

“Windtalkers” absolutely blew. A marine division advancing over about a mile of open terrain into entrenched Japanese artillery? I thought I was watching “Gettysburg.” “Battle of the Bulge,” crap. You would not believe how many people think the battle was won by soldiers rolling burning 55 gallon drums of gas down a street. Everyone in this thread is right. I think the History Channel did themselves a disservice by even airing that piece of offal. If you want to connect the History Channel, the link is below. Enjoy.


History Channel Feedback

If a movie makes 'The Worst List' based on the number of times I stop channel surfing and can't make it the next set of commercials then this IS the worst move ever.

I saw this movie when it first came out. At that time it was shown in Cinerama, which was a big thing. My Dad drove my older brother and me some 35 miles to Hollywood to see it at the Cineramadome which had the biggest screen. Also theatres would make a big deal of new release movies like this one by setting up a diorama in the lobby. I loved the movie and thought it was one of the greatest movies ever.

Flash forward about twenty years and I started to watching the movie with a more critical eye. You're all right, it really sucks.

If you want to make a list of worst WWII movies ever here is my personal list, in no particular order.

Pearl Harbor
U-571
Battle of the Bulge
MIdway
Thin Red Line

The worst WW2 movie is still better than any chick flick.

Couldn't agree more, and I'm not surprised to see this post today. I stopped anwatched about 10 min, just to see how bad I remember it being, and it was as bad as I remember it. This could be a nitpickers dream, bui that's WAY beyond the point.
Anyway, I think my favorite scene is the tank battle at the end in the desert, anyone know the right shade for Ardennes sand?
Anyway, I'm glad stuff like "Battle Ground" and "Band of Brothers" is around and while each take their license at least it's a lot more true to real events.
My two cents....

Nate
Wisc. USA

I agree with all the comments, but had to defend Thin Red Line.

I don't think TRL is an accurate film or true to WWII. Instead, I think it is a very well made and well filmed movie. I like some of the characters and their interactions. Sure, it may seem a bit sappy to some.

But, I would consider it an anti-war movie much more than I would a depection of actual events.

At times it seems the term 'good WWII film' is an oxymoron...

Steve

What is REALLY stupid is that Telly Savalis refers to the Chaffee's incorrectly when he states "My God! We can't put these Shermans up against those Tigers"... talk about a double whammy of mis-identification. Now my son is going to grow up thinking we fought the Korean War with captured Tigers that we just painted olive green!

Sheesh! Still - I have to admit that WindTalkers was even WORSE! I made the mistake of selecting it in a hotel room while on the road. I wasted $9.95 on that crap... makes you wish Nicholas Cage would have actually stopped his career with "Raising Arizona" so his career would have ended on a high note!

Of course, most of the people do not look for technical or tactical mistakes when watching a film. But in any case, continuity is one of the basic (and I bet very difficult) parts of quality film making and it should be done right. Script is easier to change than to get twenty real Tigers to be blown up in the shooting.
If I catch myself pointing out inaccuracies during a film, then there is definitely something terribly wrong in the drama and the film itself rather than just wrong equipment...

Just a few more irritating things:
1. 350-round ammo clips in handguns
2. English spoken with "german" accent
3. Supernatural accuracy (for example hitting a guy in the head with a .45 pistol from more than 20 meters WHILE RUNNING)
4. Seeing the same explosion footage many times from different angles
5. An arm that has been shot through three times with a rifle is still functioning
6. Disappearing wounds right after battle
7. Bullet hits spurting the blood in the wrong direction

By these I don´t mean John Woo-type action flicks. They never claimed to be realistic.


Toni

This movie never should have been released in the first place. In my opinion, it totally DISHONOR'S AND DISRESPECT'S WW2 history and all those who fought in the battle. The only scene that did any justice is the one where they killed the American prisoner's, which represented the "Malmedy Massacre ".

This is one WW2 movie that someone as the reputable & well respected Steven Spielberg should really give some thought to remaking according to accurate historical events as they happened in the Ardennes in 1944. ..............I know that Spielberg would definitely "do the right thing ". .........and we all know what Spieberg is capable of !

AS FOR THE ORIGINAL MOVIE ...............................BURN IT ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

- ralph

At first I was feeling sheepish about never having seen Battle of the Bulge - until reading these comments - now I feel fortunate...

Gunnie

Let's not be too critical of a picture that's over 30 years old. In 1965 the studio was out to promote its stars and the Movie Battle of the Bulge had the stars in it. Accuracy was not the point here, entertainment and money were the driving factors.

The movie shows the desperate Americans out numbered and outgunned with the fanatical Nazis hordes killing them even after surrender. Great stuff of Hollywood. In the end the good guys win and the head Nazi gets roasted alive in his "tiger."

I will agree that compared to SPR and BOB this movie is a real stinker. But then in Hollywood few ever thought of making it look real.

Also, remember when the History Channel runs these movies they usually have real historians to talk about what really happened. I remember watching the "Flying Tigers" with John Wayne and reviewing the film were "real" Flying Tigers. These guys had a good alugh at the Duke and said the movie was wonderful propaganda for its time.

When I took a propoganda course in college, Flying Tigers is one of the films that we watched. Good propaganda for the time, pretty bad film when it comes to historical accuracy!

Steve

First off, anyone who says that The Thin Red Line was a bad movie is a little bit slow, sorry

The worst WW2 movie ever has got to be Battle of the Bulge.
It is the most innacurate and poorly acted movie of all time (well maybe not).
To sum it up, it SUCKS :-)

Andrew

I feel that I must take issue with Major Oberst's contention that anyone who thinks that The Thin Red Line (TTRL) is a bad movie is slow. I have a degree in history with an emphasis on ancient and military history, and am especially fascinated by both WW2 and the messages contained within war movies. While TTRL does a decent job of capturing the mood, look, and history of the situation faced by the army troops on Guadalcanal, I believe that director Terence Malick (sp) was too heavy-handed in trying to get his anti-war message across. As a result, the pacing of the movie suffered and there were sections of the movie that dragged unnecessarily and led to the movie being pretty dull overall. Instead of being fairly suttle, was writer James Jones was with his book (the movie would have been better had it followed the book better), Malick decided to beat moviegoers over the head with his message at the expence of the film's overall enjoyability. I've seen interviews with veterans of the battle (and talked to a couple myself) who also didn't care for the movie for many of the reasons I mentioned above. It is my honest opinion that Malick was so busy trying to make a good message movie that he failed to make a better overall movie.

the Battle for Neretva and Platoon are the two worst i have ever seen.

Chris, War Pig

This topic got me think about other Hollywood films that used the "wrong" tanks in them:

Patton - the German tanks are US M-48's - but at least they were painted panzer yellow. Some shermans and M-47's for the US
The Big Red One - Israeli "Super Shermans" as German Armor
Kelly's Heroes - The introduction of the T-34 Tiger - painted Gray in late '44 - DOH!
SPR - Another T-34 Tiger - but least it look good.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

I agree with War_Machine in taking issue with Major Oberst's comments re: Thin Red Line. It is perfectly possible to make a message movie without making a bad movie. Paths of Glory is an excellent example of an anti-war movie that got its message across without being a boring movie.

Okay Ed, I do agree with the fact Terence Malick was too heavy-handed in trying to get his anti-war message across and as a result, the pacing of the movie suffered and there were sections of the movie that dragged unnecessarily leadingto the movie being pretty dull overall.
You have to admit though that it is not one of the worst out there.
Chris, you thought Platoon was a bad movie???
This is very strange. I thought it was a fantastic movie, as did the critics...
Oh well, opinions are opinions :-)

Andrew