The Duke is about to shoot some Gooks in the 'Nam on Sundance Channel.

That movie SUCKS.

One of his worst movies!

Agreed

Ham chunk still makes me blink a little hard at the end.

"You knew it could happen, didn't you, Ham Chunk"?

"But... ... I didn't want it to"...

https://www.jwayne.com/john-wayne-pow-mia-bracelet/

Sun sets in the east in the final scene. Priceless.

You guys are a tough crowd!

I enjoy that movie. It starts by a good ass-chewing of a liberal press wienie, has some good old fashioned Cold War anti communist propaganda, gives us a glimpse of an A-camp outpost as the GB gather up the locals. Saw my first punji watching that as well as the nasty booby traps. Had a good hostage snatch and then the James Bond air retrieval. Puff the Magic Dragon laid waste to beaucoup VC.

It wasn't all bad!

The movie was widely panned by elite, effeminate anti-war pogues when it came out. I remember watching it probably in the early seventies as a kid, when the Nam was still going on. It wasn't bad. It was marred by trying to make up for all the anti-war propaganda by becoming pro-war propaganda. The story took a backseat to politics. That always kills a show. All in all, not bad but not good either. Just a mediocre effort, but God bless John Wayne for taking on the commies.

(And still better than anything Tom Cruise ever did)

Top 50 song of all time.

I remember seeing it as a kid (8 yo?). Seem like there was a nude scene with the Asian gal in it. The scene where Peterson got impaled shook me up.

My cousin and his best fiend went to Vietnam on purpose because of that movie, had to join the Marines to do it. They saw combat, one got wounded but healed up OK and they are both proud of their service. They married each other’s sisters when they got back and formed a sort of superfamily, both working as linemen.

But when their own sons went in the service they insisted it was gonna be something other than infantry.

The one scene where you can see the holes for the speaker in the “M-16”.......truly it was a Mattel

I'm with you. I liked it.

Two niner savoy...

My favorite part was when Puff showed up.

Cactus Pryer(?) an Austin native had a part.

Aldo Ray (Sgt. Muldoon) was the real deal having served as a UDT (Frogman) in WW2 and politically a self described, "Arch conservative/Right Winger".

The book was better.

All the same guys play in JW movies?

Seems the guys in the those pics played in Hellfighters, the safari movie and some westerns.

I watched this as a youngn' and thought it was a great movie, and still do, even for all the obvious political undertones. Thing is, the American people lost this war, by their lack of will to prosecute it as a WAR. Same as ever since, but we think that when the "real one" comes we'll be able to fight it for serious, you know, as if our very sovereignty and freedom depends on it. I wonder...

I saw it when I was about 12 and liked it a lot. I was too young to notice or care about the political aspects of the movie, to me it was a cool action movie. Now that I'm older I still enjoy watching it, but I can now see where the pro war propaganda was a bit over the top. Watched it again last night and noted a couple of things I have questions about.

#1 I noticed in several scenes JW is holding his AR upside down with the carry handle toward the ground. Never seen anyone carry an AR that way. Was that a common way to do so back in the day? You can see an example of this in the photos back on page 1 of this thread.

#2 When looking up the names of actors I noted that Richard Prior had a role in the movie. Must have been a small, non speaking role because I couldn't find him.

Saw that movie decades ago, one of the very few 'Nam movies I can bear to watch. But looking at the outtake photos posted above, I laugh a bit. Because nobody who had been in country more than a month still had green uniforms. They had all turned a kind of orange//brown by then. The soil there is as good as RIT for dyeing clothes. With the very first laundering, they start coming out reddish, and it worsens with every wash - or without washing. Dust and humidity worked just as well.

When Aldo Ray was born, he came out with a sticker that read "Military Career and War Movies".

I always thought that the flip-side was just as good, if not better.

Point of Trivia: A guy with my cohort in the Peace Corps had been aircrew in Vietnam on a Puff gunship.

Two other guys were former Marines (too young for Vietnam), one of them former. Marines was a guy who rode his 125cc Kawasaki dual sport across the Sahara to Morocco at the end of his two years.

Birdie, you also know an honorary Green Beret of the 5th Special Forces. In fact, you drove him to and from PINS.

Always thought Duke’s movies were entertainment and little more. Real deal sneaky Petes working the SEA landscape were some of the most perfect monsters in town and I was and remain humbled by their courage and ingenious ways.

FWIW, we didn’t lose the war. The North was forced to sign off on the Paris Accords because their ability to continue the fight had been destroyed. They signed and we left. They rebuilt their army and Congress cut off funding support for the South. That can be spun a number of ways but don’t waste you time telling Vets we lost. DIDN’T HAPPEN.

One of my favorite John Wayne movies. Refreshing change from the anti-war hysteria and plain lies going on at the time. Some great lines as well.

I love the movie. It’s a movie, not a documentary. Don’t read too much into it.

The "Puff " attack was a feel good whipazz segment however not very realistic for those of us that flew those missions.

My favorite line is Bruce Cabot at the beginning talking about he can’t wait to get the extra pounds off he put on in the hospital! LOL! He’d been working on those extra pounds since he got kicked out of the Army Air Corps in North Africa (WWII) for smuggling schidt back home!! (Btw, look up his real name!).

'Twas my honor Sir


...and I do recall, in the best tradition of donkey-screwing Bedouins everywhere, I also offered you the use of my tent, out there on the desert sands......


Holy cow.... that trip was a fine occasion weren't it...

Bruce Cabot's real name. Etienne Pelissier Jacques de Bujac.

L.W.

My dad was a Green Beret, pre-Nam.

He didn’t care what the movie was, as long as The Duke was in it. The last movie we watched together was The Sons of Katie Elder.



P

I was deeply grateful for that tent, too.

Back to the topic...

To anyone who has done them, no movie combat comes within miles of the real thing. Real missions are infinitely more complicated, more stressful...and a helluva lot louder. For starters.

The first time I saw that movie was at the 5th SPGA Headquarters in Nha Trang.
There were tooooo many bird colonels and the mortar fire sounded kinda hoakie. The rest was
entertaining as I remember it.
I do have a large poster of the Duke in his beret.
I think the only time you saw two birds there at a time was when there was a change in command.
Tim

When I went through IOBC at Ft. Benning in 1979 our Platoon trainers would tell us that "so and so" scene from the Green Berets was filmed wherever we were at. It was funny that the scene where they were giving the briefing to the reporters and the A team camp were probably only 100 yards from each other.

Nobody but JW had the guts to do a Political Movie about Vietnam at that time. Showing Americans as the Good Guys.
Was it his best movie? No. But still a great JW Flick.

I was eight the year it came out and my favorite Uncle took me to see it. He joined the Marines the next year and headed to Vietnam.

I enjoyed the book. First chapter with "Sven Kornie". It was just a few years ago I was reading about Larry Thorne (Lauri Torni). They should have made a movie just about him. What a badass.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/lauri_torni

Filmed at Ft Benning about an hour north of me. First phase of my Ranger School there.

Believe the sunset scene there was a huge blooper...you’d be looking at the sunrise in Nam...

I have no experience and feel extremely insufficient in the presence of those who have been there and done that.