Comments on: Weird War Tales

By: KeithA

KeithA — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:11:38 +0000

Which then begs the question, “Why would you send the Pee Pants Platoon to do anything?” It was like watching a task force made up entirely of Richard Pryor doing his “scared brother” routine, only not as funny.

By: PCachu

PCachu — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:35:10 +0000

Different classes of “discipline problem,” I guess. The Dirty Dozen were up the creek for not being able to refrain from talking back to their CO, while the R-Point dudes were flagged for not being able to refrain from peeing their pants. Just ill grammatical fortune that the same phrase ended up being used to describe both, really.

By: David Lee Ingersoll

David Lee Ingersoll — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:52:58 +0000

Dead Birds features former soldiers and might take place during (or just after) the Civil War. I’ve forgotten that part of the story. The characters are not actively being soldiers during the events of the movie. They’ve robbed a bank and are on the run.

By: KeithA

KeithA — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:01:36 +0000

They are pegged as disciplinary cases — though one wonders why an important rescue mission would be entrusted to disciplinary problems — but the Dity Dozen was comprised of even bigger disciplinary cases, and they managed not to scream and cry at the drop of a hat. Just a couple more manlier discipline problems would have made the movie tolerable.

I do agree that the female ghost is not really meant to be a specific person, but still, after a decade of Ring, Phone, Ryung, Ju-on, so on and so forth, the image is just overplayed. I like your deeper interpretation of what I reacted to on a more superficial level, though.

By: HP

HP — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 05:27:35 +0000

It’s been awhile since I watched R-Point, but wasn’t it set up early in the film that the rescue squad was made up of misfits and disciplinary problems? I thought that pretty well explained why they all freaked out and cried and showed no military discipline.

And I didn’t have as much of a problem as you with the long-haired ghost — I saw her as sort of “the spirit of Viet Nam,” like a kind of anti-Kwan Yin, a dark boddhisatva, rather than being a specific ghost of a specific woman.

I agree with your overall assessment, though: A fascinating and highly watchable, if flawed, film.

BTW, neither movie nor comic book, but Pseudopod did a really nice WWI combat horror story podcast for Veteran’s Day last year.

By: Matthew Fudge

Matthew Fudge — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:02:52 +0000

Scrap that, it’s called ‘Deathwatch’ the trench is a whole other movie

By: Matthew Fudge

Matthew Fudge — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:00:50 +0000

There is ‘The Trench’ where a bunch of WW1 soldiers get lost and take refuge during a battle in a (you guessed) trench which may or may not be a portal to hell, or something. It’s all a bit obscure. Not bad though, and it has Gollum and Billy Elliot in it. By which I mean Andy Serkis and Jamie Bell rather than the characters.

By: KeithA

KeithA — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:55:39 +0000

There’s one called The Bunker, but other than having it on my Netflix list, I know little about it — though the plot synopsis does sound similar to R-Point.

By: Blake Matthews

Blake Matthews — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:40:24 +0000

“Dead Birds” features Confederate soldiers menaced by supernatural forces, from what a friend tells me.

By: El Santo

El Santo — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:33:11 +0000

I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking, and as horrible as this may be, I’m nearing the conclusion that The Keep and the “B-17″ segment of Heavy Metal together represent nearly the whole of the war-horror genre as you’ve defined it.