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AMAZON BOOKS - DVD/MOVIES
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NOTE: STORMO! Recommended Books are denoted by the symbol 
5 Symbols represents the highest scrore.
The Blue Max - George Peppard (Actor), James Mason (Actor), Rated: NR (Not Rated) Format: DVD
Product Description
The "Blue Max", a coveted medal for achievement in flying, is ruthlessly sought by Peppard, a poor-boy german soldier who climbs out of the trenches and into the aristorcratic air force. He is met with prejudice by the other contestants, wealthy snobs who...
The Blue Max is highly unusual among Hollywood films, not just for being a large-scale drama set during the generally overlooked World War I, but in concentrating on air combat as seen entirely from the German point of view. The story focuses on a lower-class officer, Bruno Stachel (George Peppard), and his obsessive quest to win a Blue Max, a medal awarded for shooting down 20 enemy aircraft. Around this are subplots concerning a propaganda campaign by James Mason's pragmatic general, rivalry with a fellow officer (Jeremy Kemp), and a love affair with a decadent countess (Ursula Andress).
As directed by John Guillermin (who later made The Battle of Britain in 1969), the film's main assets are epic production values, great flying scenes, and stunning dogfights. The weak point is the sometimes ponderous character drama, not helped by Peppard, who is too lightweight an actor to convince as the driven antihero. Clearly influenced by Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1958), The Blue Max is a cold, cynical drama offering a visually breathtaking portrait of a stultified society tearing itself apart during the final months of the Great War. --Gary S. Dalkin
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Tora! Tora! Tora! (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) - Martin Balsam (Actor), Yamamura (Actor), Rated: G (General Audience) Format: DVD
"Tora! Tora! Tora!" is the Japanese signal to attack - and the movie meticulously recreates the attack on Pearl Harbor and the events leading up to it. Opening scenes contrast the American and Japanese positions. Japanese imperialists decide to stage the attack. Top U.S. brass ignore it's possibility. Intercepted Japanese messages warn of it - but never reach F.D.R.'s desk. Radar warnings are disregarded. Even the entrapment of a Japanese submarine in Pearl Harbor before the attack goes unreported. Ultimately the Day of Infamy arrives - in the most spectacular, gut-wrenching cavalcade of action-packed footage ever. You'll see moments of unsurpassed spectacle and heroism: U.S. fighters trying to take off and being hit as they taxi; men blasted from the decks of torpedoed ships while trying to rescue buddies; savage aerial dogfights pitting lone American fliers against squadrons of Imperial war planes. It's the most dazzling recreation of America's darkest day - and some of her finest hours.
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Not Yet Rated
Midway (Collector's Edition) - Charlton Heston (Actor), Henry Fonda (Actor), Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Format: DVD
The battle of Midway sounded its furious thunder in June 1942, just six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Midway interweaves the dramatic personal stories of the men who fought the courageous battle that was to be the Pacific turning point for the United States. The all-star cast and breakthrough war footage convey the Battle of Midway with powerful reality and epic sweep.
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Patton (Cinema Classics Collection) - George C. Scott (Actor), Karl Malden (Actor), Franklin J. Schaffner (Director) Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Format: DVD
A critically acclaimed film that won a total of eight 1970 Academy Awards (Including Best Picture), Patton is a riveting portrait of one of the 20th century's greatest military geniuses. One of it's Oscars went to George Patton, the only Allied general truly feared by the Nazis. Charismatic and Flamboyant, Patton designed his own uniforms, sported ivory-handled six-shooters, and believed he was a warrior in past lives. He outmanuevered Rommel in Africa, and after D-Day led his troops in an unstoppable campaign across Europe. But he was rebellious as well insight and poignancy, his own volatile personailty was one enemy he could never defeat.
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Battle of Britain - Michael Caine (Actor), Trevor Howard (Actor), Guy Hamilton (Director) Rated: G (General Audience) Format: DVD
Featuring a "big stellar cast" (Variety), including Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Robert Shaw, Susannah York and Edward Fox, Battle of Britain is a spectacular retelling of a true story that shows courage at its inspiring best. Few defining moments can change the outcome of war. But when the outnumbered Royal Air Force defied insurmountable odds in engaging the German Luftwaffe, it may well have altered the course of history!
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Not Yet Rated
Twelve O'Clock High (Special Edition) - Gregory Peck (Actor), Hugh Marlowe (Actor), Rated: NR (Not Rated) Format: DVD
This gritty World War II action drama staring Gregory Peck, Oscar winner Dean Jagger, Hugh Marlowe, Gary Merrill and Millard Mitchell is seen as one of the most realistic portrayals of the heroics and perils of war. Convinced an air force commander (Gary Merrill) is at the breaking point, Brigadier General Savage (Peck) takes over his struggling bomber group. Kind and understanding, he adopts a crushing discipline to revitalize the demoralized troop. At first resentful and rebellious, the flyers gradually change as Savage guides them to amazing feats. But the stress of command soon takes it's toll and the weary general reaches his own breaking point.
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Not Yet Rated
The Desert Fox - James Mason (Actor), Cedric Hardwicke (Actor), Rated: NR (Not Rated) Format: DVD
James Mason delivers a strong performance in this fascinating portrait of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. In the early 1940's, Rommel's juggernaut Afrika Korps dominated North Africa. But as the tide turned and he came to the painful realization that his Fuhrer, to whom he hd sworn allegiance, was destroying Germany, his ingrained sense of duty pushed him into a conspiracy against Hitler. Co-starring Jessica Tandy as Rommel's wife and Cedric Hardwicke as another anti-Hitler conspirator, The Desert Fox is an intimate look at one of the most respected military tacticians of modern times.
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Tora! Tora! Tora!/The Blue Max/Twelve O'clock High/ Von Ryan's Express - Joseph Cotten (Actor), George Peppard (Actor) Rated: NR (Not Rated) Format: DVD
War Pack of four great Classic films: Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Blue Max, Twelve O'clock High and Von Ryan's Express .
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Not Yet Rated
Battle of the Bulge - Henry Fonda (Actor), Robert Shaw (Actor), Ken Annakin (Director) Rated: NR (Not Rated) Format: DVD
Henry Fonda stars in this epic story of one of the deciding battles of World War II. By December, 1944 the Allies believe that the Nazi Army is on the brink of total collapse. But the Germans counterattack, pushing the American Army back in a bloody offensive. Now in a battle that could decide the outcome of the war, victory or defeat depends on fuel, without which the German tanks are powerless--and the fate of the world hangs on the outcome of one small, determined fight for a single fuel depot.
The German offensive in December 1944 became the basis for this all-star Hollywood take on the Battle of the Bulge. Henry Fonda is an officer who predicts the assault, Robert Ryan and Dana Andrews are Army brass skeptical of his intuitions, and Robert Shaw (his hair dyed yellow and his eyes glinting with malice) is a German officer leading the tank attack. Shaw is certainly the most compelling thing about the film, especially in his philosophical debates with ambivalent underling Hans Christian Blech. Elsewhere, the movie jumps around to sidebar stories (cowardly James MacArthur becomes a leader, wheeler-dealer Telly Savalas falls in love) while messing around with the historical facts of the battle. There are interesting episodes, such as the Malmedy massacre of American POWs and the Germans' use of English-speaking spies, but overall Battle of the Bulge has the feeling of having been patched together from different scripts. On the physical level the movie comes up short, with the Spanish locations rarely suggesting the wintry misery of the battle, and the use of models and studio sets highly inadequate. A number of war films from this era are compelling on their own terms, but in the wake of Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, this one looks antique. --Robert Horton
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Not Yet Rated
The Longest Day - John Wayne (Actor), Robert Ryan (Actor), Rated: NR (Not Rated) Format: DVD
This monumental account of the allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day (June 6, 1944) is a classic among WWII films. Spectacular battle scenes; intense acting by John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Sean Connery and Sir Richard Burton, among others; and gut-wrenching pathos capture the horrors and heroics of a defining historical event. 1962; black and white, 3 hours.
The Longest Day is Hollywood's definitive D-day movie. More modern accounts such as Saving Private Ryan are more vividly realistic, but producer Darryl F. Zanuck's epic 1962 account is the only one to attempt the daunting task of covering that fateful day from all perspectives. From the German high command and front-line officers to the French Resistance and all the key Allied participants, the screenplay by Cornelius Ryan, based on his own authoritative book, is as factually accurate as possible. The endless parade of stars (John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Sean Connery, and Richard Burton, to name a few) makes for an uneasy mix of verisimilitude and Hollywood star-power, however, and the film falls a little flat for too much of its three-hour running time. But the set-piece battles are still spectacular, and if the landings on Omaha Beach lack the graphic gore of Private Ryan they nonetheless show the sheer scale and audacity of the invasion. --Mark Walker
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Not Yet Rated
A Bridge Too Far - Dirk Bogarde (Actor), James Caan (Actor), Rated: R (Restricted) Format: DVD
An epic film that "re-creates in stunning detail one of the most disastrous battles of World War II" (The Hollywood Reporter), A Bridge Too Far is a spectacular war picture. Painstakingly recreated on actual battlefield locations and boasting a remarkable cast that includes Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins, Sir Laurence Olivier and Robert Redford, A Bridge Too Far accurately recaptures the monumental scope, excitement and danger behind one of the biggest military gambles in history. In September 1944, flush with success after the Normandy Invasion, the Allies confidently launched Operation Market Garden, a wild scheme intended to put an early end to the fighting by invading Germany and smashing the Reich's war plants. But a combination of battlefield politics, faulty intelligence, bad luck and even worse weather led to disaster beyond the Allies' darkest fears.
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Kelly's Heroes - Perry Lopez (Actor), Carroll O'connor (Actor), Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Format: DVD
They were goldbricks until they found out about the gold bricks – a fortune in Nazi-confiscated bullion! Clint Eastwood reups with the director of his Where Eagles Dare for the action-filled and tongue-in-cheek tale of GIs who decide to get something extra out of the war. Eastwood’s title character masterminds a scheme to slip behind enemy lines and steal the loot. Co-stars include a trio on the verge of big-time TV success: Carroll O’Connor, Telly Savalas and Gavin MacLeod. Plus, Don Rickles plays the expectedly outspoken Crapgame. And in the same year as his starmaking M*A*S*H, Donald Sutherland is Oddball, World War II’s only hippie. Dig it!
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The Dirty Dozen - Lee Marvin (Actor), Ernest Borgnine (Actor), Rated: NR (Not Rated) Format: DVD
World War II. An impossible mission ... The fate of the Allied invasion hanging in the balance ... 12 men with nothing left to lose. Now the fate of the free world depends on a group of convicted murderers, thieves and thugs--The Dirty Dozen. Twelve American military prisoners are offered parole--if they complete a suicide mission behind enemy lines just before D-Day. After weeks of grueling training, they are dressed in German uniforms, dropped deep behind enemy lines and left on their own to complete their mission and try to get out alive. Based on the novel by E.M. Nathanson.
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The Guns of Navarone (Collector's Edition) - James Robertson Justice (Actor), Stanley Baker (Actor), Rated: NR (Not Rated) Format: DVD
Academy Award®-winners Gregory Peck (1962, Best Actor, To Kill A Mockingbird), David Niven (1958, Best Actor, Separate Tables), and Anthony Quinn (1952, Best Supporting Actor, Viva Zapata!; 1956, Lust For Life) star as a team of Allied military specialists recruited for a dangerous but imperative mission: to infiltrate a Nazi-occupied fortress and disable two long-range field guns so that 2,000 trapped British soldiers may be rescued. Faced with an unforgiving sea voyage, hazardous terrain, and the possibility of a traitor among them, the team must overcome the impossible without losing their own lives. Adapted by screenwriter Carl Foreman from Alistair MacLean’s best-selling novel, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE was nominated for seven Oscars®, including Best Picture, and won for Best Special Effects (1961).
This rousing, explosive 1961 WWII adventure, based on Alistair MacLean's thrilling novel, turns the war thriller into a deadly caper film. Gregory Peck heads a star-studded cast charged with a near impossible mission: destroy a pair of German guns nestled in a protective cave on the strategic Mediterranean island of Navarone, from where they can control a vital sea passage. As world famous mountain climber turned British army Captain Mallory, Peck leads a guerrilla force composed of the humanistic explosives expert, Miller (David Niven), the ruthless Greek patriot with a grudge, Stavros (Anthony Quinn), veteran special forces soldier Brown (Stanley Baker), and the cool, quiet young marksman Pappadimos (James Darren). This disparate collection of classic types must overcome internal conflicts, enemy attacks, betrayal, and capture to complete their mission. Director J. Lee Thompson sets a driving pace for this exciting (if familiar) military operation, a succession of close calls, pitched battles, and last-minute escapes as our heroes infiltrate the garrisoned town with the help of resistance leader Maria (Irene Papas) and plot their entry into the heavily guarded mountain fort. Carl Foreman's screenplay embraces MacLean's role call of clichés and delivers them with style, creating one of the liveliest mixes of espionage, combat, and good old-fashioned military derring-do put on film. In 1978, the sequel Force 10 from Navarone was released, but MacLean fans will prefer to check out the action-packed thriller Where Eagles Dare. --Sean Axmaker
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Not Yet Rated
Force 10 From Navarone - Harrison Ford (Actor), Robert Shaw (Actor), Guy Hamilton (Director) Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Format: DVD
Robert Shaw (The Deep, Jaws) and Harrison Ford (The Fugitive, Air Force One) star as fearless World War II commandos in this thrilling follow-up to The Guns of Navarone. Directed by Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger) and adapted to the screen by Robin Chapman (screenplay) and Academy AwardÂ(r) winner* Carl Foreman (screen story), it's a large-scale action-adventure saga with "remarkable special effects" (Los Angeles Times), a powerful cast and "one hair-breadth escape after another" (Newsweek). In the darkest days of World War II, Hitler's armies are storming through Europe, annihilating all opposition in their path. But US Colonel Barnsby (Ford) plots to strike a crippling blow to the brutal Nazi forces. To succeed, he'll need the help of the most skilled and lethal soldiers in the world: the Force 10 squad, fresh from itstriumphant mission at Navarone. *1957: Adapted Screenplay, The Bridge on the River Kwai
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The Bridge on the River Kwai - James Donald (Actor), Geoffrey Horne (Actor), Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Format: DVD
When British POWs build a vital railway bridge in enemy-occupied Burma, Allied commandos are assigned to destroy it in David Lean's epic World War II adventure THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. Spectacularly produced, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI captured the imagination of the public and won seven 1957 Academy Awards(r), including Best Picture, Best Actor (Alec Guinness), and Best Director. Even it's theme song, an old WWII whistling tune, the Colonel Bogey March, became a massive hit. THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI continues today as one of the most memorable cinematic experiences of all time.
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Flying Tigers - John Carroll (Actor), John Wayne (Actor), David Miller (Director) Rated: NR (Not Rated) Format: DVD
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The Desert Rats - Richard Burton (Actor), James Mason (Actor), Robert Wise (Director) Rated: NR (Not Rated) Format: DVD
Richard Burton stars in this exciting story of the stubborn, courageous men who held Rommel at bay in North Africa despite hopelessly outnumbered. The year is 1941, and Rommel has the British in full retreat. All that stands between him and the Suez Canal is the fortress of Tobruk, manned by a small army of Australian troops who are ordered to hold this vital position at any cost. Many of the men are green recruits, and it falls to Capt. MacRoberts (Burton) to whip them into shape. A bold tactician who realizes they will soon be overwhelmed if they do not take the offensive, MacRoberts leads countless daredevil raids that keep the superior enemy off-balance and earn his men the famous nickname they "won with blood and bore with pride." Directed by Robert Wise and co-starring James Mason in a reprise performance as Field Marshall Rommel (whom he first played in "The Desert Fox"), this stirring blend of action and history pays tribute to the heroic men known in the annals of war as The Desert Rats.
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Not Yet Rated
The Sea Wolves (Keep Case Packaging) - Gregory Peck (Actor), Roger Moore (Actor), Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Format: DVD
Academy Award winners Sean Connery and David Niven star with Roger Moore and Patrick Macnee in this true story of heroism that turns the tide of war when 18 middle-aged businessmen fight one last battle as The Sea Wolves. Goa, India. 1943. At the very height of World War II, in the neutral, Portuguese colonial enclave of Goa--deep within the heart of British territory--a Nazi spy ring reports to German U-boats, with devastating effect, on Allied supply convoys in the Indian Ocean. The British are desperate to shut down the operation but cannot use overt military force within Portuguese territory. Their men and materiel stretched to the breaking point, the Allies turn to the men of the Calcutta Light Brigade--successful, middle-aged businessmen who last fought forty years before.
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Not Yet Rated
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