The Eagle Has Landed?

Tom Houlihan · Post by **Tom Houlihan** » Sun Dec 31, 2006 11:14 pm

I was watching The Eagle Has Landed last night, and I saw something that got me thinking. At least one of the German trucks on Alderney Island had Das Reich markings on it.

Was that perhaps one of our reenacting comrades and his unit in that film? I was thinking that since I know DR was never stationed in the Channel Islands, perhaps the reenactors didn’t want to repaint their truck?

Paddy Keating · Post by **Paddy Keating** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 2:10 am

I don't think WW2 reenactors were that advanced back then. Probably just an error...like what appeared to be a late 1950s Bundeswehr jump badge worn by "Hans" as some sort of Close Combat Clasp. I thought it might be a fake LW CCC but when I froze the frame, the centrepiece looked like a diving eagle on a wreath, although the badge seemed larger than the actual BW jump badge from the late 1950s.

On the whole, pretty good, especially the Polish Para outfits and the US Rangers. In fact, the uniforms in general were good. Shame about some of the hairstyles.

PK

Tom Houlihan · Post by **Tom Houlihan** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 2:19 am

Paddy Keating wrote:On the whole, pretty good, especially the Polish Para outfits and the US Rangers. In fact, the uniforms in general were good. Shame about some of the hairstyles.

Actually, for the time it was made, it was pretty good. I got a laugh, though, out of the turreted .50 on the M3 halftrack! Faux tank?

Reb · Post by **Reb** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:40 am

Tom

There has never been a better Himmler than Donald Pleasants in that movie. Really Creepy!

I had the pleasure of seeing it again recently and was quite as good as I remembered.

Duval - "they measured me for a coffin when I started this project"

Reminded me of Picton on the way to Waterloo - he passed some gravediggers, jumped down in the grave and said, "this should do nicely!" (predicting his own fate in the upcoming battle)

cheers
Reb

Doktor Krollspell · Post by **Doktor Krollspell** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:54 pm

Fellow Cineasts!

I really liked the movie when I first saw it in the late seventies/early eighties. It caused some discussion here in Sweden since a very famous (in Sweden that is!

) swedish singer/actor called Sven-Bertil Taube played a hardened vicious Nazi Elite (as in "are german soldiers not all nazi criminals?) soldier. He played the role of Oberst Steiner's second-in-command Fallschirmjäger officers and subsequently didn't say much in the movie.

After seing the movie several times way back then, I happened to see it just some years ago and, if you accept that it do is a seventies movie, I found it still to be quite good and entertaining... I mean, Larry Hagman!

Cineastic regards,

Krollspell

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 3:39 pm

Yeah, and exactly how old is TREAT WILLIAMS??? He must have been tall for 12 years of age there LMAO

Reb · Post by **Reb** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 4:42 pm

Admittedly, most of the "art"produced in the seventies should be heaved into a huge pile and burned...

Just the airstyles are enough to cause me to flush beet red and run screaming from the room. No - I wasn't there! I did the sixties and jumped a decade!

cheers
Reb

Richard Hargreaves · Post by **Richard Hargreaves** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 2:40 pm

Tom Houlihan wrote:I got a laugh, though, out of the turreted .50 on the M3 halftrack! Faux tank?

You need to get out more, Tom.

That's one faux pas that would have passed me by. What's the difference between a Pz I, II, III and IV again?

TPMM · Post by **TPMM** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 2:55 pm

Tom Houlihan wrote:What's the difference between a Pz I, II, III and IV again?

Is there any?
Since I've seen IS-2 "acting" in film as Tigers, I'm sure that the main difference between tanks is what they got painted on their armour - a star (white oe red) or black cross

Reb · Post by **Reb** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 4:23 pm

TPMM

Quite right! Obviously you've played toy soldiers as a kid!

I once arbitrarely divided my men into blue for Germans and Green for Americans - after a while they begin to look like that to me!

ps - my least favorite Panzer is the M-47 - looks dumb with a cross and is only good for fighting giant dinasaurs in Japan!

cheers
Reb

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 4:27 pm

...giant dancing dinosaurs - remember the "Godzilla Two-Step"? Was SO p'd off when they left that out of the recent Matthew Broderick/Jean Reno abortion of a film.

Imad · Post by **Imad** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:04 pm

I watched The Eagle Has Landed in 1978. I still can't get over the sight of a Fallschirmjaeger talking like a Cockney! Good old Michael Caine.
LOL

Reb · Post by **Reb** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:12 pm

Imad

"Cockney..."

I think on one level that worked, for me at least. Cockney is at least European and not American so what the hey.

Subtitles make a lot more sense though but probably wouldn't have been seen as commercial enough.

What really puts my teeth on edge is when the Germans or Japanese talk with a German or Japanese accent - to each other!

cheers
Reb

Paulus II · Post by **Paulus II** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 2:34 am

Try watching a Western movie on German TV

John Wayne suddenly speaks German but sticks to English with some words- "Jawohl Sir" or "Jetzt geht's los, Captain". I almost die laughing and crying at the same time every time I hear one of those.
Bugger commercial motives, long live subtitles!

Cheers,

Paul

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 9:06 am

Yes - pity all those poor benighted citizens of the world as a whole that have never heard the wonder of an un-dubbed and original John Wayne, or Laurence Olivier, or a Captain Kirk....! That's why I prefer my foreign films to be with subtitles. At least its only ONE man acting onscreen - not TWO!!!