Dirty Dozen

UPC: 012569793958

Studio: Warner Home Video

MPAA Rating: NR   Contains:[Violence, Adult Situations, Not For Children, War Violence]

Summary: 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. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Category: War

Awards: Best Director – Directors Guild of America Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion – null Best Editing – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Sound Effects – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Supporting Actor – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion – Hollywood Foreign Press Association

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

Dirty Dozen

Format: Blu-ray

Release Date: 04/17/2007

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Theatre Wide-Screen

Audio: DD5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1, DD1 Dolby Digital Mono

Runtime: 149 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English,French,Spanish

Subtitles: English,French,Spanish

Bruce Eder

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. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Cast and Crew: George Roubicek  Actor 
Dick Miller  Actor 
Robert Aldrich  Director 
Frank De Vol  Composer (Music Score) 
Lukas Heller  Screenwriter 
Kenneth Hyman  Producer 
Nunnally Johnson  Screenwriter 
Lee Marvin  Actor 
Ernest Borgnine  Actor 
Charles Bronson  Actor 
Jim Brown  Actor 
John Cassavetes  Actor 
George Kennedy  Actor 
Richard Jaeckel  Actor 
Robert Ryan  Actor 
Trini Lopez  Actor 
Ralph Meeker  Actor 
Telly Savalas  Actor 
Clint Walker  Actor 
Donald Sutherland  Actor 
Robert Webber  Actor 
Tom Busby  Actor 
Ben Carruthers  Actor 
Stuart Cooper  Actor 
Robert Phillips  Actor 
Colin Maitland  Actor 
Al Mancini  Actor 
Thick Wilson  Actor 
Dora Reisser  Actor 

Country: UK,USA