the unclean 12

The Dirty Dozen (1967) was an all star cast. Brook took me to see this one at the Pitman Theater down on Broad Street in Gadsden, AL. I was eight years old in 1967. The movie was unlike any war movie I'd ever seen before. Believe it or not, I'd seen A LOT of war movies (I called them army movies when I was a kid). The Dirty Dozen ended with lots of machine gun fire, explosions and a huge body count. My favorite part of the movie wasn't that last battle, rather the maneuvers in which the convict soldiers had to prove themselves.

A year after The Dirty Dozen, Brook and I went to see The Devil's Brigade (1968). The Dirty Dozen spawned a new kind of war movie. Instead of men fighting for mom's apple pie and the girl they left behind - these movie G.I.'s were misfits that had to be whipped into shape to fight. The Dirty Dozen is the better movie (my personal opinion) but The Devil's Brigade is a movie based on a true story. The combat group was known as The Black Devils and were disbanded after WWII. Like The Dirty Dozen - The Devil's Brigade ended in a hail of gun fire, explosions with a huge body count in the end. Like in The Dirty Dozen - this wasn't my favorite part. My favorite part was when the brigade (to prove themselves) slipped into an occupied village to quietly and systematically seize it.

Both movies are still fun to watch after all these decades. These are definitely guy movies.