Top Five: Battle Tank Movies
5) Battle Of The Bulge (1965)
When they said this movie was ‘loosely’ based on the real Battle of the Bulge, they were not joking. It is quite possibly the most inaccurate war movie ever, or at least the most inaccurate big screen feature movie. The tanks in the movie are not even German, let alone Tigers. Nevertheless it is a good ‘tank’ movie, if not a great ‘war’ movie. It has the notable feat of having a serious amount of armor litter the screen, with some shots having up to 20 or more real tanks rolling through the forest, the wide lens not being able to keep track of the sheer scale of things. Today, they would’ve just screwed us with CGI. The days of doing this for real are long gone.
It also has some manly casting, Charles Bronson anyone? Robert Shaw? The latter delivers one of the manliest lines from any movie from the 60’s, after being admonished by some pissant defeatist: “I am Martin Hessler. Four years ago, my panzers overran Poland in one week, that was no illusion. In 39 days, my tanks smashed all the way to Paris, that was no illusion. I conquered the Crimea, that was no illusion. Today, I was given a brigade of Tiger tanks. When I have a brigade of tanks, THAT is reality.”
2 Comments