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Battle Beyond the Stars
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Battle Beyond the Stars
Battlebeyondthestars.jpg
Theatrical poster by Gary Meyer

Directed by
Jimmy T. Murakami
Produced by
Ed Carlin
Roger Corman
Screenplay by
John Sayles
Story by
Anne Dyer
Starring
Richard Thomas
Robert Vaughn
George Peppard
John Saxon
Sybil Danning
Darlanne Fluegel

Music by
James Horner
Cinematography
Daniel Lacambre
Edited by
Allan Holzman
Robert J. Kizer
Distributed by
United States:
New World Pictures
(20th Century Fox)
International:
Orion Pictures
(Warner Bros.)
Release dates
September 8, 1980
Running time
105 minutes
Country
 United States
Language
English
Budget
$2,000,000 (estimated)[1]
Box office
$7.5 million[2]
Battle Beyond the Stars is an American 1980 science fiction film directed by Jimmy T. Murakami and produced by Roger Corman. The film, intended as a "Magnificent Seven in outer space",[3] is based on The Magnificent Seven, the Western remake of Akira Kurosawa's film Seven Samurai.[4][5][6] The screenplay was written by John Sayles, the score was composed by James Horner, and the special effects were directed by James Cameron.
Several of the effects shots and clips were re-used for other films throughout the 1980s, including Bachelor Party, while the spaceship model was re-used in the film Space Raiders. The film was later picked up by Shout! Factory, who released it on DVD and Blu-ray in 2011 as part of the "Roger Corman's Cult Classics" series.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production 3.1 Reused material
4 Reception
5 Awards and nominations 5.1 Awards
5.2 Nominations
6 Battle Amongst the Stars
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

Plot[edit]
The farmers of the peaceful planet Akir are threatened by the space tyrant Sador (John Saxon) and his army of mutants, the Malmori. Sador's huge ship carries a weapon called a "Stellar Converter", which turns planets into small stars. He threatens to use the Converter unless the planet submits to him when he returns in several days. Zed (Jeff Corey), the last Akira warrior, is old and nearly blind. He suggests they hire mercenaries to protect the planet. Lacking valuable resources, they can only offer food and shelter in payment. Unable to go himself, Zed offers his ship, which has an artificial intelligence navigation and tactical computer named Nell, for the job if they can find a pilot. The ship is fast and well-armed but cannot defeat Sador alone. Shad (Richard Thomas), a young man who has piloted the ship and is well known to Nell, volunteers for the recruiting mission.
Shad's first stop is the Hephaestus space station, which repairs androids. Expecting to find weapons, Shad instead finds only two humans among the androids: Doctor Hephaestus (Sam Jaffe), kept on life support, and his beautiful daughter Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel). The doctor attempts to force Shad to mate with his daughter. Shad doesn't want to abandon his people, and escapes, with Nanelia following in her own ship. Although she has no weapons, her highly advanced computer systems might be useful. The two split up to look for more mercenaries.
Shad comes across Space Cowboy (George Peppard), a spacegoing truck driver from Earth. Shad learns that Cowboy is late delivering a shipment of laser guns to a planet which, as they watch, Sador destroys with his weapon. Lacking the fuel to carry the weapons home, Cowboy offers to deliver them to Akir. Shad talks him into teaching the Akira to use the guns. Later, Shad meets a set of five alien clones who share a group consciousness named Nestor. They admit their life is incredibly dull, since their whole race shares one mind. In order to be entertained, they have sent five members to join Shad's cause. Nestor does not require payment, saying they are completely self-sufficient. Next, Shad recruits Gelt (Robert Vaughn), a wealthy assassin who is so well known he can't show his face on any civilized planet. Gelt offers his services in trade for the ability to live peacefully hiding among the Akira. Gelt's spaceship is highly maneuverable and well armed. On his way back to Akir, Shad is approached by Saint Exmin (Sybil Danning), of the Valkyrie warriors. She is a headstrong woman looking to prove herself in battle. She pilots a small, barely armed, but extremely fast spaceship. Shad finds her annoying and wishes she would go away, but she tags along.
While waiting for Shad's return, Nanelia is captured by a reptilian slaver named Cayman. Cayman possesses a powerful old ship with an eclectic crew of aliens. She quickly recruits Cayman to their cause when he learns that they are looking for mercenaries to fight Sador. The only payment Cayman wants is Sador's head, since Sador's forces had destroyed Cayman's homeworld.
The fleet of seven ships return to Akir. Shad takes the mercenaries down to the surface, but they are greeted with caution by the natives, who are not used to violent species. Eventually, Sador returns, but his fleet of fighters is intercepted by Shad and his new friends. In the opening battle, Gelt skillfully destroys several of Sador's ships but is mortally wounded when his ship crashes. Meanwhile, Cowboy and the Akiran natives, armed with his laser guns, fight off Sador's invading ground forces.
Sador survives an assassination attempt by one of the captured Nestors and launches all of his ships in retaliation against the planet. The Akira ground troops, lead by Cowboy, defeat Sador's army, but Zed is killed in the fighting. There is another huge space battle and the mercenaries' ships are destroyed one by one. However, the mercenaries are successful in destroying all of Sador's star fighters and the Stellar Converter, leaving only Sador's flagship. Shad and Nanelia, piloting Nell, are captured by the flagship in a tractor beam. The pair escape in a lifepod after Shad orders Nell to activate the ship's self-destruct program. Sador's ship is destroyed in the explosion. As Shad and Nanelia return to Akir, Nanelia despairs over the deaths of their friends. Shad tells her that the Akira believe that no one is truly dead when they are remembered and beloved by the living. The Akira will remember the sacrifices made by the mercenaries and honor them forever.
Cast[edit]
Richard Thomas – Shad, a young Akira farmer who looks for mercenaries to save his people.
Robert Vaughn – Gelt, an experienced assassin with a price on his head looking for a place to hide. Vaughn played Lee in The Magnificent Seven, who is essentially the same character as Gelt.
John Saxon – Sador, leader of the evil Malmori raiders. Very old, keeps himself alive using transplants to renew his body. His character is similar to the character of Calvera from The Magnificent Seven.
George Peppard – Space Cowboy, the only character from Earth, who has many one liners and becomes Shad's good friend. George Peppard was originally considered to play Vin, Steve McQueen's character, in The Magnificent Seven.
Darlanne Fluegel – Nanelia, Dr. Hephaestus' beautiful daughter and Shad's love interest.
Sybil Danning – Saint-Exmin, a Valkyrie warrior looking to prove herself in battle.
Sam Jaffe – Dr. Hephaestus, an old man on life support who wants his grandchildren to inhabit his space station.
Jeff Corey – Zed, a blind old Akira who used to be a warrior. Former pilot of Nell.
Morgan Woodward – Cayman of the Lambda Zone, a Zymer and slaver who has a score to settle with Sador for destroying his species.
Marta Kristen – Lux, an Akira who works the early warning system and starts a relationship with Space Cowboy.
Earl Boen – Nestor 1, usually speaks for the five clones.
John Gowens – Nestor 2.
Lynn Carlin – Nell (voice) computer of Shad's ship, protective of the kid, who she thinks is "wet behind the ears".
Larry Meyers – Kelvin 1, one of Cayman's crew, communicates by radiating body heat.
Lara Cody – Kelvin 2.
Steve Davis  – Quepeg, another member of Cayman's crew.
Julia Duffy – Mol, an Akira woman who is kidnapped by the Malmori.
Production[edit]
Prior to production, a Hollywood trade paper[who?] announced that John Wayne would star in the film, under the direction of Ingmar Bergman. In all likelihood, this was a joke, either by the trade paper or the film's publicist.[citation needed]
At one stage Australian Richard Franklin was announced as director.[7]
The Akir, the peaceful alien race at the center of the battle, were named in honor of director Akira Kurosawa.[8]
At the time of its release, it was the most expensive film produced by Roger Corman.[9] Much of the budget allegedly went toward paying the salaries of George Peppard and Robert Vaughn,[citation needed], since screenwriter John Sayles was known for low-budget productions,[10] and the film was produced in Corman's own studio, his "renowned lumberyard facility" in Venice, California.[11]
Roger Corman hired James Cameron as a model maker in his studio, and after the original art director for the film had been fired, Cameron became responsible for the special effects in Battle Beyond the Stars, or, as Cameron later put it, "production design and art direction."[12] This was Cameron's first "big break" in the entertainment industry, and it helped propel his career.[13] He was recommended by Gale Anne Hurd who was then working for Corman.[14]
While Cameron initially worked on camera rigging, he soon started working on special effects, and designed spaceship's corridors, for instance, out of spray-painted McDonald's containers.[15] Cameron paid great attention to detail, and hardly slept for weeks while working on the film; however, his hard work paid off, opening the door for his later success.[16]
The production sound mixer, also responsible for special effects, such as Robert Vaughn's "laser shot" – based on Clint Eastwood's .44 Magnum from Dirty Harry[17] – was David Yewdall, a regular contract-worker for Corman films.[18] Yewdall later remarked on the "film's frugal sound editorial budget" in his Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound, and explained some of the movie's sounds: each of the seven spaceships had its own sound. The Nestor ship's sound was made from human voices generated by the community choir from his hometown college in Coalinga, California; Robert Vaughn's ship was based on the recording of a dragster.[19]
Reused material[edit]
The spaceship used in the film was reused for another science fiction film blasted by critics, the Roger Corman film Space Raiders,[20] and in the ultra-low budget Starquest II and Dead Space. Footage was also used in later films and games: a clip from the film (in 3-D) is shown during the movie theater fight scene at the end of Bachelor Party,[21] and footage was also used for the Laserdisc game Astron Belt.[22] The soundtrack was later recycled by Corman for Raptor and other films.[23]
Reception[edit]
Battle Beyond the Stars grossed $1.7 million in its opening weekend,[24] and reportedly earned $11 million fairly quickly.[25] It received mediocre reviews.[citation needed]
Awards and nominations[edit]
Awards[edit]
Saturn Awards
Outstanding Achievement: Sybil Danning – 1981[26]
Nominations[edit]
Saturn Awards[27]
Best Science Fiction Film: 1981
Best Special Effects: Chuck Comisky – 1981
Best Costumes: Durinda Wood – 1981
Best Make-Up: Sue Dolph, Steve Neill, Rick Stratton – 1981
Battle Amongst the Stars[edit]
A prequel comic book, set 30 years before the BBTS film, was launched by Bluewater Productions in March 2010.[28] It is a four-part miniseries that tells the story of how Zed, the old man played by Jeff Corey in BBTS, began his adventures from the planet Akir with Nell. It also has the character of Dr. Hepheastus and Sador of the Malmori.
See also[edit]
List of American films of 1980
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Gerry Molyneaux, "John Sayles, Renaissance Books, 2000 p 92
2.Jump up ^ Christopher T Koetting, Mind Warp!: The Fantastic True Story of Roger Corman's New World Pictures, Hemlock Books. 2009 p 172
3.Jump up ^ Gray, Beverly (2004). Roger Corman: blood-sucking vampires, flesh-eating cockroaches, and driller killers. Thunder's Mouth Press. p. 147. ISBN 978-1-56025-555-0.
4.Jump up ^ Donovan, Barna William (2008). The Asian influence on Hollywood action films. McFarland. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-7864-3403-9.
5.Jump up ^ Meyers, Richard (2001). Great Martial Arts Movies: From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan and More. Citadel Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-8065-2026-1.
6.Jump up ^ Stafford, Roy (2001). Seven samurai. Longman. p. 80. ISBN 978-0-582-45256-5.
7.Jump up ^ "Oz in LA", Cinema Papers, May–June 1979 p332
8.Jump up ^ "Battle Beyond the Stars Movie Trivia – The 80s Movies Rewind". Fast-Rewind.com. Retrieved 2010-01-02.
9.Jump up ^ Naha, Ed; Roger Corman (1982). The films of Roger Corman: brilliance on a budget. Arco. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-668-05308-2.
10.Jump up ^ "John Sayles Finishes Shooting a Low-Budget Sci-Fi Comedy". Philadelphia Inquirer. 1993-11-20. p. K.03.
11.Jump up ^ Yewdall, David Lewis (2007). Practical art of motion picture sound. Focal Press. p. 412. ISBN 978-0-240-80865-9.
12.Jump up ^ Emery, Robert J. (2002). The directors: take one, Volume 1. Allworth Communications. p. 117. ISBN 978-1-58115-218-0.
13.Jump up ^ "James Cameron: Full Biography". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-11-13.
14.Jump up ^ Chris Nashawaty, Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen and Candy Stripe Nurses - Roger Corman: King of the B Movie, Abrams, 2013 p 175
15.Jump up ^ Gray, Roger Corman, 150.
16.Jump up ^ Gray, Roger Corman, 151.
17.Jump up ^ Yewdall, Practical Art, 257.
18.Jump up ^ Yewdall, Practical Art, 192.
19.Jump up ^ Yewdall, Practical Art, 256.
20.Jump up ^ Moorhead, Jim; William Beamon (1983-11-24). "Uninspired Turkeys: Our Reviewers Gobble Up Year's Worst Flicks". The Evening Independent. p. 17. Retrieved 2009-11-13.
21.Jump up ^ "Movie connections for Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2009-11-13.
22.Jump up ^ "astron belt video game, sega enterprises, ltd. (1983)". arcade-history.com. April 24, 2009. Retrieved 2010-01-02.
23.Jump up ^ Gray, Roger Corman, 222.
24.Jump up ^ Harper, Erick (May 4, 2001). "DVD Verdict Review – Battle Beyond The Stars". DVD Verdict.com. Retrieved 2010-01-02.
25.Jump up ^ Gray, Roger Corman, 148.
26.Jump up ^ 1981 Saturn Awards
27.Jump up ^ 1981 IMDb Saturn Awards
28.Jump up ^ "Bluewater Productions March Releases" bluewaterprod.com. Retrieved September 26, 2010.
External links[edit]
Battle Beyond the Stars at the Internet Movie Database
Battle Beyond the Stars at AllMovie
Battle Beyond the Stars at Rotten Tomatoes
 


Categories: English-language films
1980 films
1980s action films
1980s science fiction films
American independent films
American science fiction action films
Film remakes
New World Pictures films
Orion Pictures films
Space adventure films
Space Westerns
Film scores by James Horner










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We need your help documenting history. »

Westworld
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

For other uses, see Westworld (disambiguation).

Westworld
Westworld ver2.jpg
Theatrical release poster by Neal Adams

Directed by
Michael Crichton
Produced by
Paul Lazarus III
Written by
Michael Crichton
Starring
Yul Brynner
Richard Benjamin
James Brolin
Music by
Fred Karlin
Cinematography
Gene Polito
Edited by
David Bretherton
Distributed by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release dates
November 21, 1973

Running time
88 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
Budget
$1,250,000[1]
Box office
$10 million[2]
Westworld is a 1973 science fiction western-thriller film written and directed by novelist Michael Crichton and produced by Paul Lazarus III. It stars Yul Brynner as an android in a futuristic Western-themed amusement park, and Richard Benjamin and James Brolin as guests of the park.
Westworld was the first theatrical feature directed by Michael Crichton.[3] It was also the first feature film to use digital image processing, to pixellate photography to simulate an android point of view.[4] The film was nominated for Hugo, Nebula and Golden Scroll (a.k.a. Saturn) awards, and was followed by a sequel film, Futureworld, and a short-lived television series, Beyond Westworld. In August 2013, HBO announced plans for a television series based on the original film.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production 3.1 Script
3.2 Shooting
3.3 Digital image processing
3.4 Post-production
4 Release 4.1 Box office
4.2 Book tie-in
4.3 Critical reception
5 Sequel
6 Network TV airings
7 Remake
8 TV series
9 In popular culture
10 References
11 External links

Plot[edit]
Sometime in the near future a high-tech, highly-realistic adult amusement park called Delos features three themed "worlds" — West World (the American Old West), Medieval World (medieval Europe), and Roman World (pre-Christian Rome). The resort's three "worlds" are populated with lifelike androids that are practically indistinguishable from human beings, each programmed in character for their assigned historical environment. For $1,000 per day, guests may indulge in any adventure with the android population of the park, including sexual encounters and even a fight to the death, depending on the android model. Delos' tagline in its advertising promises "Have we got a vacation for you!"
Peter Martin (Benjamin), a first-timer, and his friend John Blane (Brolin), who has visited previously, visit West World. One of the attractions in West World is the Gunslinger (Brynner), a robot programmed to instigate gunfights. The firearms issued to the park guests have temperature sensors that prevent them from shooting humans or anything else living, but allow them to "kill" the "cold-blooded" androids. The Gunslinger's programming allows guests to outdraw it and "kill" it, always returning the next day for a new duel.
The technicians running Delos notice problems beginning to spread like an infection among the androids: the robots in Roman World and Medieval World begin experiencing an increasing number of breakdowns and systemic failures, which are said to have spread to West World. When one of the supervising computer scientists scoffs at the "analogy of an infectious disease," he is told by the Chief Supervisor (Alan Oppenheimer), "We aren't dealing with ordinary machines here. These are highly complicated pieces of equipment, almost as complicated as living organisms. In some cases, they've been designed by other computers. We don't know exactly how they work."
The malfunctions become less peripheral and more central when an android rattlesnake succeeds in injuring Blane in West World, and, against its programming, an android refuses a guest's sexual advances in Medieval World. The failures escalate until Medieval World's robotic Black Knight kills a guest in a swordfight. The resort's supervisors, in increasing desperation, try to regain control by shutting down power to the entire park, but this traps them in the control rooms, unable to turn the power back on while the robots run amok on reserve power.
Martin and Blane, passed out drunk after a bar-room brawl, wake up in West World's bordello, unaware of the breakdown. When the Gunslinger challenges the two men to a showdown, Blane treats the confrontation as a typical amusement until the robot outdraws, shoots and actually hits him, mortally wounding him. Martin runs for his life as the robot implacably follows him.
Martin flees to the other areas of the park, but finds only dead guests, damaged robots, and a panicked technician who is shortly shot by the Gunslinger. Martin climbs down through a manhole in Roman World to the underground control area and discovers that the resort's technicians suffocated when the ventilation system shut down. The Gunslinger stalks Martin through the underground corridors. Ambushing it, Martin throws acid into its face then he bolts, returning to the surface in the Medieval World castle. With its optical inputs damaged by the acid, the Gunslinger is unable to track him normally, resorting to infra-red scanning, and Martin sets it on fire with a torch. He tries to rescue a woman chained up in a dungeon, but when he tries to give her water, she short-circuits, revealing she is an android. The burned hulk of the Gunslinger attacks him one last time on the dungeon steps before succumbing to its damage. Martin, apparently the sole human survivor, sits in a state of near-exhaustion and shock, as the irony of Delos' slogan resonates: "Have we got a vacation for you!"
Cast[edit]
Yul Brynner as the Gunslinger
Richard Benjamin as Peter Martin
James Brolin as John Blane
Majel Barrett as Miss Carrie
Alan Oppenheimer as the Chief Supervisor
Victoria Shaw as Medieval Queen
Norman Bartold as Medieval Knight
Production[edit]
Script[edit]
Crichton says he did not wish to make his directorial debut with science fiction but "that's the only way I could get the studio to let me to direct. People think I'm good at it I guess."[2]
The script was written in August 1972 and was offered to all the major studios. They all turned down the project except for MGM, then under head of production Dan Melnick. Crichton:

MGM had a bad reputation among filmmakers; in recent years, directors as diverse as Robert Altman, Blake Edwards, Stanley Kubrick, Fred Zinneman and Sam Peckinpah had complained bitterly about their treatment there. There were too many stories of unreasonable pressure, arbitrary script changes, inadequate post production, and cavalier recutting of the final film. Nobody who had a choice made a picture at Metro, but then we didn't have a choice. Dan Melcnick... assured [us]... that we would not be subjected to the usual MGM treatment. In large part, he made good on that promise.[5]
Crichton says preproduction was difficult, with MGM demanding script changes up to the day of shooting and the leads not being locked down until 48 hours beforehand. He says he had no control over casting[2] and MGM originally would only make the film for under a million dollars but later increased this amount by $250,000.[1] Crichton says that of the budget, $250,000 went on the cast, $400,000 on crew and the remainder on everything else (including $75,000 for sets).[6]
Shooting[edit]
Westworld was filmed in several locations, including the Mojave Desert, the gardens of the Harold Lloyd Estate, and several sound stages at MGM.[3] It was shot with Panavision anamorphic lenses by Gene Polito, A.S.C.
Richard Benjamin later said he loved making the film:

It probably was the only way I was ever going to get into a Western, and certainly into a science-fiction Western. It’s that old thing when actors come out here from New York. They say, “Can you ride a horse?” And you say, “Oh, sure,” and then they’ve got to go out quick and learn how to ride a horse. But I did know how to ride a horse! So you get to do stuff that’s like you’re 12 years old. All of the reasons you went to the movies in the first place. You’re out there firing a six-shooter, riding a horse, being chased by a gunman, and all of that. It’s the best! [Laughs.][7]
The Gunslinger's appearance is based on Chris Adams, Brynner's character from The Magnificent Seven. The two characters' costumes are nearly identical.[8]
In the scene when Richard Benjamin's character splashes the Gunslinger in the face with acid, Brynner's face was covered with an oil-based makeup mixed with ground Alka-Seltzer. A splash of water then produced the fizzing effect.
The score for Westworld was composed by American composer Fred Karlin. It combines ersatz western scoring, source cues, and electronic music.[9]
Crichton later wrote that since "most of the situations in the film are cliches; they are incidents out of hundreds of old movies" that the scenes "should be shot as cliches. This dictated a conventional treatment in the choice of lenses and the staging."[10]
The movie was shot in thirty days. In order to save time, Crichton camera-cut.[11]
The original script ended in a fight between Martin and the gunslinger which resulted in the gunslinger being torn apart by a rack. Crichton said he "had liked the idea of a complex machine being destroyed by a simple machine" but when attempting it felt "it seemed stagey and foolish" so the idea was dropped.[12] He also wanted to open the film with shots of a hovercraft travelling over the desert, but was unable to get the effect he wanted so this was dropped as well.[12]
Digital image processing[edit]
Westworld was the first feature film to use digital image processing. John Whitney, Jr. digitally processed motion picture photography at Information International, Inc. to appear pixelized in order to portray the Gunslinger android's point of view.[4] The approximately 2 minutes and 31 seconds worth of cinegraphic block portraiture was accomplished by color-separating (three basic color separations plus black mask) each frame of source 70 mm film images, scanning each of these elements to convert into rectangular blocks, then adding basic color according to the tone values developed.[13] The resulting coarse pixel matrix was output back to film.[14] The process was covered in the American Cinematographer article Behind the scenes of Westworld[15] and in a 2013 New Yorker online article.[16]
Post-production[edit]
Once the film was completed, MGM authorised the shooting of some extra footage. A TV commercial to open the film was added; because there was a writers strike in Hollywood at the time, this was written by Steven Frankfurt, a New York advertising executive.[17]
Release[edit]
Box office[edit]
The film was a financial success, earning $4 million in rentals in the US and Canada rentals by the end of 1973[18]becoming MGM's biggest box office success of that year.[2]
Book tie-in[edit]
Crichton's original screenplay was released as a mass-market paperback in conjunction with the film.[19]
Critical reception[edit]
Variety magazine described the film as excellent and that it "combines solid entertainment, chilling topicality, and superbly intelligent serio-comic story values".[20]
The film has a rating of 84% at Rotten Tomatoes.[21] Reviewing the DVD release in September 2008, The Daily Telegraph reviewer Philip Horne described the film as a "richly suggestive, bleakly terrifying fable — and Brynner's performance is chillingly pitch-perfect."[22]
American Film Institute lists
AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills - Nominated[23]
AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains: Robot Gunslinger - Nominated Villain[24]
AFI's 10 Top 10 - Nominated Science Fiction Film[25]
After making the film, Crichton took a year off. "I was intensely fatigued by Westworld," he said later. "I was pleased but intimidated by the audience reaction... The laughs are in the wrong places. There was extreme tension where I hadn't planned it. I felt the reaction, and maybe the picture, was out of control."[2]
For him the picture marked the end of "about five years of science fiction/monster pictures for me".[2] He took a break from the genre and wrote The Great Train Robbery.
Crichton did not make a film for another five years. He did try, and had one set up "but I insisted on a certain way of doing it and as a result it was never made."[26]
Sequel[edit]
A sequel to Westworld, Futureworld, was filmed in 1976, and released by American International Pictures, rather than MGM. Only Yul Brynner returned from the original cast to reprise his Gunslinger character. Four years later, in 1980, the CBS television network aired a short-lived television series, Beyond Westworld, expanding on the concepts and plot of the second film with new characters. Its poor ratings caused it to be canceled after only three of the five episodes aired.
Network TV airings[edit]
Westworld was first aired on NBC television on 28 February 1976.[27] The network aired a slightly longer version of the film than was shown theatrically or subsequently released on home video. Some of the extra scenes that were added for the US TV version are:[citation needed]
Brief fly-by exterior shot of the hovercraft zooming just a few feet above the desert floor. Previously, all scenes involving the hovercraft were interior shots only.
The scenes with the scientists having a meeting in the underground complex was much longer giving more insight into their "virus" problem with the robots.
A scene with a couple of techs talking in the locker room about the work load of each robot world.
There was a longer discussion between Peter and the sheriff after his arrest when he shot the Gunslinger.
During the scene where robots are going crazy,there was a scene in Medieval World where a guest is getting tortured on the Medieval rack. At first he tries joking while getting dragged to the rack and saying "What is this, a joke? Hey! I paid in advance!" But then he really gets desperate and says "I really don't want to do this!" and then starts to scream as he gets placed on the rack and stretched and then his arms are pulled out of their sockets. One still shot shows piece of this scene with guest on rack while one of the robots wearing some kind of hood is standing next to him.
Gunslinger's chase of Peter through the worlds was also extended.
There was a scene added in which Gunslinger is splashing water on his face from the sink after being hit with the acid, he recovers and then there was a close-up of his face when he turns arounds real fast and his silver eyes turned into black and crazy look.
Remake[edit]
Beginning in 2007, trade publications reported that a Westworld remake starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was in production, and would be written by Terminator 3 screenwriters Michael Ferris and John Bracanto.[28][29][30] Tarsem Singh was originally slated to direct, but has since left the project. Quentin Tarantino was approached, but turned it down.[31] On January 19, 2011, Warner Bros announced that plans for the remake were still active.[32]
TV series[edit]
In August 2013, it was announced that HBO had ordered a pilot for a Westworld TV series which will be produced by J.J. Abrams, Jonathan Nolan, and Jerry Weintraub. Nolan and his wife Lisa Joy will write and executively produce the series with Nolan directing the pilot episode.[33] Production is set to begin in Summer 2014 [34] in Los Angeles.[35]
In popular culture[edit]
Writer/Director Michael Crichton used similar plot elements - a high-tech amusement park running amok, a central control paralyzed by a power failure - in his novel Jurassic Park.
A fifth season episode of The Simpsons, The Boy Who Knew Too Much, features a chase scene that references a similar scene in Westworld.[36] The sixth season episode Itchy & Scratchy Land also parodies and freely quotes Westworld.[37] Set in a futuristic theme park, the robots of Itchy & Scratchy Land rebel against their programming and attempt to kill the Simpson family.[37]
In Iron Man 3, Tony Stark quips at his aggressor Eric Savin, saying "You like that, Westworld?", in comparison of Savin's and the Gunslinger's mental slowness, indestructible persistence, and bald heads.[38]
The "analogy of an infectious disease" made by the computer scientists in the conference early in the film concerning the central processor malfunctions being experienced by the androids may be the first reference to an induced software malfunction, aka a computer virus, in a motion picture.[citation needed] Veith Risak's pioneering article on a self-replicating computer program had been published in a technical journal in 1972, the year before Westworld was released.
References[edit]
1.^ Jump up to: a b Crichton p x
2.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Author of 'Terminal Man' Building Nonterminal Career: CRICHTON GELMIS, JOSEPH. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] 04 Jan 1974: d12.
3.^ Jump up to: a b "Westworld". Tcm.com. Retrieved 2012-04-29.
4.^ Jump up to: a b A Brief, Early History of Computer Graphics in Film, Larry Yaeger, 16 Aug 2002 (last update), retrieved 24 March 2010
5.Jump up ^ Crichton p ix
6.Jump up ^ Crichton p x-xi
7.Jump up ^ "Richard Benjamin on Peter O’Toole, celebrity treasure hunts, and Woody Allen" By Nathan Rabin AC Club Nov 15, 2012 accessed 18 June 2014
8.Jump up ^ Friedman, Lester D. (2007). American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations. Camden: Rutgers University Press. p. 100. ISBN 0-8135-4023-2.
9.Jump up ^ "Film Score Monthly CD: Coma/Westworld/The Carey Treatment". Filmscoremonthly.com. Retrieved 2012-04-29.
10.Jump up ^ Crichton p xiii
11.Jump up ^ Crichton p xvi
12.^ Jump up to: a b Crichton p xix
13.Jump up ^ "Ed Manning BlocPix". Atariarchives.org. Retrieved 2014-02-28.
14.Jump up ^ Chapter 4: A HISTORY OF COMPUTER ANIMATION 3/20/92 (note that this article is in error about the year the film was made)[dead link]
15.Jump up ^ American Cinematographer 54(11):1394-1397, 1420-1421, 1436-1437. November 1973.
16.Jump up ^ David A. Price, How Michael Crichton’s "Westworld" Pioneered Modern Special Effects, newyorker.com, May 16, 2013.
17.Jump up ^ Crichton p xvii
18.Jump up ^ 'Big Rental Films of 1973', Variety, 9 Jan 1974 p19
19.Jump up ^ Michael Crichton (Author). "Amazon Listing for Westworld". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2014-02-28.
20.Jump up ^ Variety staff (1 January 1973). "Westworld". Variety (magazine). Retrieved 14 November 2013.
21.Jump up ^ "Westworld (1973)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 24 June 2010.
22.Jump up ^ Philip Horne (20 September 2008). "Westworld: DVD of the week review". London: The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 24 June 2010.
23.Jump up ^ "AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills Nominees" (PDF). Retrieved 2014-02-28.
24.Jump up ^ "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains Nominees" (PDF). Retrieved 2014-02-28.
25.Jump up ^ American Film Institute. "AFI's 10 Top 10 Ballot". Afi.com. Retrieved 2014-02-28.
26.Jump up ^ Director Michael Crichton Films a Favorite Novelist By MICHAEL OWEN. New York Times (1923-Current file) [New York, N.Y] 28 Jan 1979: D17.
27.Jump up ^ "TV Tango Saturday Night Movies Broadcast Date for Westworld". Retrieved 2014-06-14.
28.Jump up ^ "Westworld Headed Back To Screen". Empire (magazine). 12 August 2005. Retrieved 24 June 2010.
29.Jump up ^ Michael Fleming (13 March 2002). "Arnold back for 'Westworld,' 'Conan' redos". Variety (magazine). Retrieved 24 June 2010.
30.Jump up ^ Sci-Fi Wire: Billy Ray Talks Westworld Remake, June 2007
31.Jump up ^ Hostel: Part II DVD commentary track.
32.Jump up ^ Kit, Borys. "EXCLUSIVE: 'Lethal Weapon,' 'Wild Bunch' Reboots Revived After Warner Bros. Exec Shuffle". The Hollywood Reporter.
33.Jump up ^ Hertzfeld, Laura (August 30, 2013). "HBO orders 'Westworld' adaptation from J.J. Abrams". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved September 2, 2013.
34.Jump up ^ Fienberg, David. "Press Tour: July 2014 HBO Executive Session Live-Blog". Retrieved July 11, 2014.
35.Jump up ^ Laratonda, Ryanne. "LOS ANGELES FILM & TV PRODUCTION LISTINGS". Retrieved July 2, 2014.
36.Jump up ^ Silverman, David (2004). The Simpsons season 5 DVD commentary for the episode "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
37.^ Jump up to: a b Martyn, Warren; Wood, Adrian (2000). "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge". BBC. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
38.Jump up ^ Christan Blauvelt: "Iron Man 3 Burning Questions: What Is Westworld? How Does Extremis Work? And What's Next for Tony Stark?". Hollywood.com (Retrieved 12-05-2013).
External links[edit]
Westworld at the Internet Movie Database
Westworld at the TCM Movie Database
Westworld at AllMovie
Westworld at Rotten Tomatoes


[hide]
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Works by Michael Crichton


Novels
The Andromeda Strain (1969) ·
 The Terminal Man (1972) ·
 The Great Train Robbery (1975) ·
 Eaters of the Dead (1976) ·
 Congo (1980) ·
 Sphere (1987) ·
 Jurassic Park (1990) ·
 Rising Sun (1992) ·
 Disclosure (1994) ·
 The Lost World (1995) ·
 Airframe (1996) ·
 Timeline (1999) ·
 Prey (2002) ·
 State of Fear (2004) ·
 Next (2006) ·
 Pirate Latitudes (2009) ·
 Micro (2011, with Richard Preston)
 

Novels written
 under pseudonyms
Odds On (1966) ·
 Scratch One (1967) ·
 Easy Go (1968) ·
 A Case of Need (1968) ·
 Zero Cool (1969) ·
 The Venom Business (1969) ·
 Drug of Choice (1970) ·
 Dealing: or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1970) ·
 Grave Descend (1970) ·
 Binary (1972)
 

Non-fiction
Five Patients (1970) ·
 Jasper Johns (1977) ·
 Electronic Life (1983) ·
 Travels (1988)
 

Film
 adaptations
The Andromeda Strain (1971) ·
 Dealing: or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1972) ·
 The Carey Treatment (1972) ·
 The Terminal Man (1974) ·
 The First Great Train Robbery (1979) ·
 Rising Sun (1993) ·
 Jurassic Park (1993) ·
 Disclosure (1994) ·
 Congo (1995) ·
 The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) ·
 Sphere (1998) ·
 The 13th Warrior (1999) ·
 Timeline (2003) ·
 The Andromeda Strain (2008)
 

Film writer
 or director
Pursuit (1972) ·
 Extreme Close-Up (1973) ·
 Westworld (1973) ·
 Coma (1978) ·
 The First Great Train Robbery (1979) ·
 Looker (1981) ·
 Runaway (1984) ·
 Physical Evidence (1989) ·
 Jurassic Park (1993) ·
 Rising Sun (1993) ·
 Twister (1996)
 

TV series and computer game
Beyond Westworld (1980) ·
 Amazon (1984) ·
 ER (1994–2009) ·
 Westworld (TBA)
 

 


Categories: 1973 films
English-language films
American films
1970s action thriller films
1970s science fiction films
American action thriller films
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Android films
Films directed by Michael Crichton
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The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
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  (Redirected from Wolves of the Calla)
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The Dark Tower V:
 Wolves of the Calla
Wolvescalla.jpg
First edition cover

Author
Stephen King
Cover artist
Bernie Wrightson
Country
United States
Language
English
Series
Dark Tower
Genre
Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Western
Publisher
Grant

Publication date
 November 4, 2003
Media type
Print (Hardcover)
Pages
714
ISBN
978-1-880418-56-7
Preceded by
Wizard and Glass
Followed by
Song of Susannah
Wolves of the Calla is the fifth book in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. This book continues the story of Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers, and Oy as they make their way toward the Dark Tower. The subtitle of this novel is Resistance. Prior to the novel's publication, two excerpts were published: "Calla Bryn Sturgis" was published in 2001 on Stephen King's official site, and "The Tale of Gray Dick" was published in 2003 in McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. Both excerpts were incorporated in revised form into the novel. Wolves of the Calla was nominated for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2004.[1]


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Influences
3 References
4 External links

Plot summary[edit]
After escaping the alternate Topeka and the evil wizard Randall Flagg, Roland's ka-tet travel to the farming village of Calla Bryn Sturgis where they meet the townsfolk, as well as Father Callahan, who was originally introduced in 'Salem's Lot. He and the townsfolk request the ka-tet's assistance in battling against the Wolves of Thunderclap, who come once a generation to take one child from each pair of the town's twins. After a few months of being away, the children are then returned "roont" (ruined) - mentally handicapped and destined to grow to enormous size and die young. The Wolves are due to come in about a month's time.
Father Callahan also tells the gunslingers his remarkable story of how he left Maine following his battle with the vampire Kurt Barlow in the novel 'Salem's Lot. Since that encounter he has gained the ability to identify Type-3 vampires with a blue aura. After some time he begins killing these minor vampires as he finds them; however, this makes him a wanted man amongst the "low men" and so Callahan must go into exile. Eventually he is lured into a trap and dies, allowing him to enter Mid-World in 1983, much as Jake did when killed in The Gunslinger. He appears near the Calla with an evil magic ball called Black Thirteen, and is found by the Manni people in a place called The Doorway Cave.
Not only do Roland of Gilead and his ka-tet have to protect the Calla-folken from the Wolves, they must also protect a single red rose that grows in a vacant lot on Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street in mid-town Manhattan of 1977. If it is destroyed, then the Tower (which is the rose in another form) will fall. In order to get back to New York to prevent this they must use the sinister Black Thirteen. To add to that, Roland and Jake have noticed bizarre changes in Susannah's behavior, which are linked to the event recounted in The Waste Lands when Susannah coupled with the demon in the stone circle. Roland informs Eddie that Susannah has been impregnated by the demon, and though he fears for her safety he remains surprisingly calm. They promise to keep the fact that they know a secret from Susannah, but later Susannah reveals to the ka-tet that she herself has come to grips with it, and knowledge of a second personality living in Susannah named Mia "daughter of none" is shared.
Jake finds out that his new friend Benny Slightman's father is a traitor by following him to a military outpost between the Calla and Thunderclap known as "The Dogan" (which is also featured in The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home). Jake tells Roland, who shows mercy by not killing Slightman, instead leaving him alive for his son and Jake's sake. The wolves attack, using weapons resembling the snitches found in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (which are actually stamped 'Harry Potter Model') and lightsabers found in George Lucas' Star Wars, and are revealed to be robots and to have Doctor Doom-like visages. The gunslingers, along with some help from a few plate-throwing women in the Calla, defeat the wolves, all the while with the children safely hidden in a rice patch nearby. Mia takes over the body of Susannah and flees to the doorway cave, where she uses Black Thirteen to transport herself to New York.
Influences[edit]
Stephen King has acknowledged multiple sources of influence for this story, including Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, its stepchild The Magnificent Seven, Sergio Leone's "Man with No Name" trilogy, and other works by Howard Hawks and John Sturges, among others.
Many direct references to popular culture are noted either by characters or via narration within the book's text. Such instances include: several of the Wolves carrying weapons that resemble lightsabers and a "messenger robot" similar in demeanor to the android C-3PO from the Star Wars movies, with the look of an Isaac Asimov robot; the Wolves themselves seeming to bear a physical resemblance to Doctor Doom from the Marvel Comics comic books,[2] and flying grenades named "sneetches" that are stated as being from the Harry Potter product line (a direct reference to the Golden Snitch from the J. K. Rowling books, and to the Dr. Seuss characters). Also, in minor reference to the Harry Potter series, King makes use of the same font (for chapter titles) used in all seven Harry Potter books.
King also references an earlier, uncollected short story from the late 1980s called "The Reploids", which deals with people sliding between realities and also features denominations of money featuring President Chadbourne.
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ "2004 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-22.
2.Jump up ^ "The 50 Greatest Comic Book Characters". Empire. 2008. Retrieved 2009-04-05.
External links[edit]
The Dark Tower official website (requires Macromedia Flash 6)


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Potshot (novel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Potshot
Potshot.jpg
First edition

Author
Robert B. Parker
Country
United States
Language
English
Series
Spenser
Genre
Detective novel
Publisher
Putnam

Publication date
 2001
Media type
Print (hardcover & paperback) and audio CD
Pages
352 pp
ISBN
0-399-14710-1
OCLC
49931032
Preceded by
Hugger Mugger
Followed by
Widow's Walk
Potshot is the 28th Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker. The story follows the fictional Boston-based PI Spenser as he tries to identify the killer of a widow's husband. As is often the case, Spenser's probing uncovers much more than just a simple—or single—murder.
Plot[edit]
Spenser is approached by a beautiful blonde widow who wants him to find the identity of the murderer of her late husband. He agrees, but this case will take him away from Boston to Arizona and the resort town of Potshot.
Questioning all of the victim's acquaintances yields little information. However, the couple had just recently moved from Los Angeles, so Spenser heads there to talk to their old neighbors. His visit there is very fruitful, but raises as many questions as it answers.
Returning to Potshot, Spenser follows-up on what he found out from old neighbors in LA. Meanwhile, he is investigating a band of thugs that live on the outskirts of town in an area called "The Dell". Everyone is convinced that they killed the victim, and had publicly threatened him.
"The Dell" gang is led by a man who calls himself The Preacher. He organized the gang from a ragtag group of drunks and junkies. Now, with leadership, they are bullying the townspeople and extorting protection money from local businesses. After a public confrontation with the gang, the town's leaders ask Spenser if he can rid the town of the menace.
They agree to pay a healthy sum for the service, so Spenser forms a small private band of mercenaries composed of several associates, most of them criminals or people with criminal backgrounds. But he hires them for their shooting skills, which will be needed for the coming battle.
The further Spenser digs, however, he finds that all is not what it seems in Potshot and the killing of the widow's husband may just be the tip of the iceberg of a much larger conspiracy.
Recurring characters[edit]
Spenser
Dr. Susan Silverman, Ph.D (first appeared in God Save the Child)
Hawk (first appeared in Promised Land)
Tedy Sapp (first appeared in Hugger Mugger)
Chollo (first appeared in Stardust)
Vinnie Morris (first appeared in The Widening Gyre)
Bobby Horse (first appeared in Stardust)
Bernard J. Fortunado III (first appeared in Chance)
External links[edit]
Page on the book from Parker's official website


[hide]
v ·
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Novels by Robert B. Parker


Spenser novels



Novels

The Godwulf Manuscript (1973) ·
 God Save the Child (1974) ·
 Mortal Stakes (1975) ·
 Promised Land (1976) ·
 The Judas Goat (1978) ·
 Looking for Rachel Wallace (1980) ·
 Early Autumn (1981) ·
 A Savage Place (1981) ·
 Ceremony (1982) ·
 The Widening Gyre (1983) ·
 Valediction (1984) ·
 A Catskill Eagle (1985) ·
 Taming a Sea Horse (1986) ·
 Pale Kings and Princes (1987) ·
 Crimson Joy (1988) ·
 Playmates (1989) ·
 Stardust (1990) ·
 Pastime (1991) ·
 Double Deuce (1992) ·
 Paper Doll (1993) ·
 Walking Shadow (1994) ·
 Thin Air (1995) ·
 Chance (1996) ·
 Small Vices (1997) ·
 Sudden Mischief (1998) ·
 Hush Money (1999) ·
 Hugger Mugger (2000) ·
 Potshot (2001) ·
 Widow's Walk (2002) ·
 Back Story (2003) ·
 Bad Business (2004) ·
 Cold Service (2005) ·
 School Days (2005) ·
 Hundred-Dollar Baby (2006) ·
 Now and Then (2006) ·
 Rough Weather (2008) ·
 Chasing the Bear: A Young Spenser Novel (2009) ·
 The Professional (2009) ·
 Painted Ladies (2010) ·
 Sixkill (2011)
 


Adaptations

Spenser: For Hire ·
 A Man Called Hawk ·
 TV Movies
 


Other
Wilderness (1979) ·
 Love and Glory (1983) ·
 Poodle Springs (1989) ·
 Stardust (1990) ·
 Perchance to Dream (1991) ·
 All Our Yesterdays (1994) ·
 Night Passage (1997) ·
 Trouble in Paradise (1998) ·
 Hush Money (1999) ·
 Family Honor (1999) ·
 Perish Twice (2000) ·
 Gunman's Rhapsody (2001) ·
 Death in Paradise (2001) ·
 Shrink Rap (2002) ·
 Stone Cold (2003) ·
 Melancholy Baby (2004) ·
 Double Play (2004) ·
 Appaloosa (2005) ·
 Blue Screen (2006) ·
 Sea Change (2006) ·
 Spare Change (2007) ·
 Now and Then (2007) ·
 Edenville Owls (2007) ·
 High Profile (2007) ·
 Stranger in Paradise (2008) ·
 The Boxer and the Spy (2008) ·
 Resolution (2008) ·
 Brimstone (2009) ·
 Night and Day (2009) ·
 Split Image (2010) ·
 Blue-Eyed Devil (2010)
 

 


Categories: 2001 novels
Spenser (novel series)
Novels set in Arizona


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The Dirty Dozen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article is about the film. For other uses, see Dirty Dozen (disambiguation).

The Dirty Dozen
Dirty moviep.jpg
Original poster by Frank McCarthy

Directed by
Robert Aldrich
Produced by
Kenneth Hyman
Written by
Nunnally Johnson
Lukas Heller
Novel:
E. M. Nathanson
Starring
Lee Marvin
Ernest Borgnine
Charles Bronson
Jim Brown
John Cassavetes
Richard Jaeckel
George Kennedy
Trini Lopez
Ralph Meeker
Robert Ryan
Telly Savalas
Donald Sutherland
Robert Webber
Clint Walker
Music by
Frank De Vol
Cinematography
Edward Scaife
Edited by
Michael Luciano
Distributed by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release dates
June 15, 1967
Running time
150 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
Budget
$5.4 million[1]
Box office
$45,300,000[2]
The Dirty Dozen is a 1967 war film directed by Robert Aldrich, released by MGM, and starring Lee Marvin. The picture was filmed in England and features an ensemble supporting cast including Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas and Robert Webber. The film is based on E. M. Nathanson's novel of the same name that was possibly inspired by a real life group called the "Filthy Thirteen". In 2001, the American Film Institute placed the film number 65 on their 100 Years... 100 Thrills list.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot 1.1 Act one – Identification and "recruiting" the prisoners
1.2 Act two – Training
1.3 Act three – The mission
2 Cast
3 Production 3.1 Casting
4 Reception and criticism
5 Awards
6 Box office performance
7 Basis in fact
8 Sequels and adaptations
9 See also
10 References
11 External links

Plot[edit]
In England, in the spring of 1944, Allied forces are preparing for the D-Day invasion. Among them are Major John Reisman (Lee Marvin), an OSS officer; his commander, Regular Army Major General Sam Worden (Ernest Borgnine); and his former commander Colonel Everett Dasher Breed (Robert Ryan). Early in the film the personalities of the three men are shown to clash and the characters of the individualistic Reisman and the domineering Breed are established. Reisman is aided by his friend, the mild-mannered Major Max Armbruster (George Kennedy).
Major Reisman is assigned an unusual and top-secret pre-invasion mission: gather a small band of the Army's worst ex-soldier convicts (some awaiting execution) and turn them into commandos to be sent on a suicide mission, an airborne infiltration and assault on a chateau near Rennes in Brittany. The chateau will be hosting a meeting of dozens of high-ranking German officers, the elimination of which will presumably hamper the German military's ability to respond to D-Day. Those felons who survive the mission will have their sentences commuted and returned to active duty. However, Reisman repeatedly tells the men that few of them will be coming back home.
Reisman is assigned twelve convicts (the dirty dozen), all either serving lengthy sentences or destined to be executed. Notable members include slow-witted Vernon Pinkley (Donald Sutherland); Robert Jefferson (Jim Brown), an African American soldier convicted of killing a man in self defence; Samson Posey (Clint Walker), a gentle giant who becomes enraged when pushed; Joseph Wladislaw (Charles Bronson) a taciturn coal miner recruited for his ability to speak German, convicted of shooting his squad's medic; A.J. Maggott (Telly Savalas), a misogynist, religious fanatic, and probably insane; and Victor Franko (John Cassavetes), a former member of the Chicago organized-crime Syndicate who has extreme problems with authority.
Under the supervision of Reisman and military police Sergeant Bowren (Richard Jaeckel), the group begin training. After being forced to construct their own living quarters, the twelve individuals are trained in combat by Reisman and gradually learn how to operate as a group. For parachute training they are sent to the base operated by Colonel Breed. Under strict orders to keep their mission secret, Reisman's men run afoul of Breed and his troops, especially after Pinkley poses as a general and inspects Breed's troops. Angered at the usurpation of his authority, Breed attempts to discover Reisman's mission and then attempts to get the program shut down. Major Armbruster suggests a test of whether Reisman's men are ready: during practice maneuvers which Breed will be taking part in, the "Dirty Dozen" will attempt to capture the Colonel's headquarters. During the maneuvers, the men use various unorthodox tactics, including theft, impersonation, and rule-breaking, to infiltrate Breed's headquarters and hold him and his men at gunpoint. This proves to the General that Reisman's men can be used for the mission and that the operation is a go.
The night of the raid the men are flown to France, and practise a rhyme they have learned which details their roles in the operation. There is a slight snag when upon landing in a tree one of the Dozen, Jiminez (Trini Lopez) breaks his neck and dies, but as trained the others proceed with the mission. Wladislaw and Reisman infiltrate the meeting disguised as German officers while Jefferson and Maggott sneak onto the top floor of the building. The others set up in various locations around the chateau.
The plan falls apart when Maggott sees one of the women who had accompanied the officers, abducts her at knifepoint, and orders her to scream. The German officers downstairs ignore her, thinking she is just having sex. Maggott stabs her and begins shooting, alerting the German officers. Jefferson kills Maggott because he has compromised the mission and gone nuts.
As the officers and their companions retreat to an underground bomb shelter, a general firefight ensues between the Dozen and the German guards. After as planned Wladislaw and Reisman lock the Germans in the bomb shelter, the Dozen pry open the ventilation ducts to the shelter and drop unprimed grenades down, then pour gasoline inside. Jefferson throws a primed grenade down each shaft and sprints for their vehicle, but is shot down as the grenades explode. Reisman, Bowren, Wladislaw, and Franko, the last remaining survivors of the assault team, are making their escape on a German half-track when Franko, shouting triumphantly that he has survived, is shot by a stray round. Back in England only Reisman, Bowren and Wladislaw (the sole surviving felon) have managed to get out alive.
The film unfolds in three major acts.
Act one – Identification and "recruiting" the prisoners[edit]
After witnessing a hanging in a military jail in London, Major Reisman is briefed on the mission at General Worden's headquarters. As the credits to the film are rolling he walks along the line of 12 prisoners and stares at each of them as Sergeant Bowren (Richard Jaeckel) reads out their sentences.

Name
Portrayed by
Sentence
Franko, V. R. John Cassavetes Death by hanging
Vladek, M. Tom Busby 30 years' hard labor
Jefferson, R. T. Jim Brown Death by hanging
Pinkley, V. L. Donald Sutherland 30 years' imprisonment
Gilpin, S. Ben Carruthers 30 years' hard labor
Posey, S. Clint Walker Death by hanging
Wladislaw, T. Charles Bronson Death by hanging
Sawyer, S. K. Colin Maitland 20 years' hard labor
Lever, R. Stuart Cooper 20 years' imprisonment
Bravos, T. R. Al Mancini 20 years' hard labor
Jiminez, J. P. Trini Lopez 20 years' hard labor
Maggott, A. J. Telly Savalas Death by hanging
On March 19, Reisman visits Franko, Wladislaw, Maggott, Posey and Jefferson in their cells. Some details of their crimes are revealed and he uses a different approach with each in an effort to gain their cooperation.
Act two – Training[edit]
Depicts the unit building their own compound and training for the mission. It highlights the interpersonal conflicts between the men, some of whom see the mission as a chance for redemption and others as a chance for escape. The second act places the mission, and the characters, in jeopardy when a breach of military regulations on Reisman's part forces General Worden, at Breed's urging, to have the men – now dubbed the "Dirty Dozen" by Sergeant Bowren because of their refusal to shave or bathe as a protest against their living conditions – prove their worth as soldiers at 'divisional maneuvers', a wargame in "Devonshire".
Act three – The mission[edit]
The final act, which was a mere footnote in the novel, is an action sequence detailing the attack on the chateau. The men recite the details of the attack in a chant in order to remember their roles:
1.Down to the road block, we've just begun
2.The guards are through
3.The Major's men are on a spree
4.Major and Wladislaw go through the door
5.Pinkley stays out in the drive
6.The Major gives the rope a fix
7.Wladislaw throws the hook to heaven
8.Jimenez has got a date
9.The other guys go up the line
10.Sawyer and Lever are in the pen
11.Posey guards points five and seven
12.Wladislaw and the Major go down to delve
13.Franko goes up without being seen
14.Zero-hour – Jimenez cuts the cable, Franko cuts the phone
15.Franko goes in where the others have been
16.We all come out like it's Halloween
Note: When Jimenez dies, his duties are performed by Gilpin. In turn, Gilpin's duties are performed by Lever.
Cast[edit]
Lee Marvin as Maj. John Reisman
Ernest Borgnine as Gen. Sam Worden
Charles Bronson as Joseph Wladislaw
Jim Brown as Robert T. Jefferson
John Cassavetes as Victor R. Franko
Richard Jaeckel as Sgt. Clyde Bowren
George Kennedy as Maj. Max Armbruster
Ralph Meeker as Capt. Stuart Kinder
Robert Ryan as Col. Everett Dasher Breed
Telly Savalas as Archer J. Maggott
Donald Sutherland as Vernon L. Pinkley
Clint Walker as Samson Posey
Trini Lopez as Pedro Jiminez
Robert Webber as Brig. Gen. Denton
Al Mancini as Tassos R. Bravos
Tom Busby as Milo Vladek
Ben Carruthers as Glenn Gilpin
Stuart Cooper as Roscoe Lever
Colin Maitland as Seth K. Sawyer
Robert Phillips as Cpl. Morgan
Production[edit]



 Aldbury – scene of the wargame


 Bradenham Manor – Wargames HQ
Although Robert Aldrich had tried to buy the rights to E.M. Nathanson's novel The Dirty Dozen while it was just an outline, MGM succeeded in May 1963. The novel was a best-seller upon publication in 1965.
Filming took place at the MGM British Studios, Borehamwood and the English prison camp location scenes were filmed at Ashridge in Hertfordshire. Wargame scenes were filmed at the village of Aldbury and Bradenham Manor in Buckinghamshire featured as 'Wargames Headquarters'. Beechwood Park School in Markyate was also used as a location during the school's summer term, where the training camp and tower were built and shot in the grounds. The main house was also used, appearing in the film as a military hospital.[3]
The château was built especially for the production, by art director William Hutchinson. It was 240 ft wide and 50 ft high, surrounded with 5,400 sq. yds. of heather, 400 ferns, 450 shrubs, 30 spruce trees and 6 weeping willows. Construction of the faux château proved problematic. The script required its explosion, but it was so solid that 70 tons of explosives would have been required for the effect. Instead, a cork and plastic section was destroyed.
The film is remembered for being the one during which Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown announced his retirement from football at age 29. The owner of the Browns, Art Modell, demanded Brown choose between football and acting. With Brown's considerable accomplishments in the sport (he was already the NFL's all-time leading rusher, was well ahead statistically of the second-leading rusher, and his team had won the 1964 NFL Championship), he chose acting. Despite his early retirement from football, Brown remains the league's eighth all-time leading rusher, the Cleveland Browns all-time leading rusher, and the only player in league history to have a career average 100 yards per game. In some form of tribute, Art Modell himself said in Spike Lee's Jim Brown: All American documentary, that he made a huge mistake in forcing Jim Brown to choose between football and Hollywood and if he had it to do over again, he would never have made such a demand. Modell fined Jim Brown the equivalent of over $100 per day, a fine which Brown said that "today wouldn't even buy the doughnuts for a team".
Casting[edit]
The cast included many World War II US veterans, including (but not limited to) Robert Webber and Robert Ryan (US Marines), Telly Savalas (US Army) and Charles Bronson (Army Air Forces), Ernest Borgnine (Navy) and Clint Walker (Merchant Marine). Marvin served as a Private First Class in the US Marines in the Pacific War and provided technical assistance with uniforms and weapons to create realistic portrayals of combat, yet bitterly complained about the falsity of some scenes. He thought Reisman's wresting the bayonet from the enraged Posey to be particularly phony. Aldrich replied that the plot was preposterous, and that by the time the audience had left the cinema, they would have been so overwhelmed by action, explosions, and killing, that they would have forgotten the lapses.
John Wayne was the original choice for Reisman, but he turned down the role because he objected to the adultery present in the original script, which featured the character having a relationship with an Englishwoman whose husband was fighting on the Continent.[4] Jack Palance refused the "Archer Maggott" role when they wouldn't rewrite the script to make his character lose his racism; Telly Savalas took the role instead.[5]
Six of the Dozen were experienced American stars whilst the "Back Six" were actors resident in the UK, Englishman Colin Maitland, Canadians Donald Sutherland and Tom Busby, and Americans Stuart Cooper, Al Mancini and Ben Carruthers. According to commentary on The Dirty Dozen: 2-Disc Special Edition when Trini López left the film early, the death scene of Lopez's character where he blew himself up with the radio tower was given to Busby[6] (in the film, it is Ben Carruthers' character Glenn Gilpin who is tasked with blowing up the radio tower while Busby's character Milo Vladek is shot in front of the château). Lopez's character dies off camera during the parachute drop which begins the mission.[7] The same commentary also states that the impersonation of the General scene was to have been done by Clint Walker who thought the scene demeaning to his character who was a native American. Aldrich picked out Sutherland for the bit.[8]
Reception and criticism[edit]
In response to the violence of the film, Roger Ebert, in his first year as a film reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote sarcastically:

I'm glad the Chicago Police Censor Board forgot about that part of the local censorship law where it says films shall not depict the burning of the human body. If you have to censor, stick to censoring sex, I say...but leave in the mutilation, leave in the sadism and by all means leave in the human beings burning to death. It's not obscene as long as they burn to death with their clothes on.[9]
In another contemporary review, Bosley Crowther called it "an astonishingly wanton war film" and a "studied indulgence of sadism that is morbid and disgusting beyond words"; he also noted:

It is not simply that this violent picture of an American military venture is based on a fictional supposition that is silly and irresponsible.... But to have this bunch of felons a totally incorrigible lot, some of them psychopathic, and to try to make us believe that they would be committed by any American general to carry out an exceedingly important raid that a regular commando group could do with equal efficiency – and certainly with greater dependability – is downright preposterous.[10]
Crowther called some of the portrayals "bizarre and bold":

Marvin's taut, pugnacious playing of the major ... is tough and terrifying. John Cassavetes is wormy and noxious as a psychopath condemned to death, and Telly Savalas is swinish and maniacal as a religious fanatic and sex degenerate. Charles Bronson as an alienated murderer, Richard Jaeckel as a hard-boiled military policeman, and Jim Brown as a white-hating Negro stand out in the animalistic group.[10]
Variety was more positive, calling it an "exciting Second World War pre-D-Day drama" based on a "good screenplay" with a "ring of authenticity to it"; they drew particular attention to the performances by Marvin, Cassavetes, and Bronson.[11]
The Time Out Film Guide notes that over the years, "The Dirty Dozen has taken its place alongside that other commercial classic, The Magnificent Seven:

The violence which liberal critics found so offensive has survived intact. Aldrich sets up dispensable characters with no past and no future, as Marvin reprieves a bunch of death row prisoners, forges them into a tough fighting unit, and leads them on a suicide mission into Nazi France. Apart from the values of team spirit, cudgeled by Marvin into his dropout group, Aldrich appears to be against everything: anti-military, anti-Establishment, anti-women, anti-religion, anti-culture, anti-life. Overriding such nihilism is the super-crudity of Aldrich's energy and his humour, sufficiently cynical to suggest that the whole thing is a game anyway, a spectacle that demands an audience.[12]
The film currently holds a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 21 reviews.[13]
Awards[edit]
The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning in the category Best Sound Effects.[14]
Actor in a Supporting Role (John Cassavetes)
Film Editing (Michael Luciano)
Sound
Sound Effects (John Poyner) (Won)
Box office performance[edit]
The Dirty Dozen was a massive commercial success. Produced on a budget of $5.4 million, it grossed $45.3 million, earning domestic rentals of $24.2 million in North America.[15] It was the 5th highest grossing film of 1967 and MGM's highest grossing movie of the year.
Basis in fact[edit]
The Dirty Dozen is not the story of a real unit. In the prologue to the novel, Nathanson states that, while he heard a legend that such a unit may have existed, he was unable to find any corroboration in the archives of the US Army in Europe.
However, there was a unit called the "Filthy Thirteen", an airborne demolition unit documented in the eponymous book,[16] and this unit's exploits inspired the fictional account. Barbara Maloney, the daughter of John Agnew, a private in the Filthy Thirteen, told the American Valor Quarterly that her father felt that 30% of the movie's content was historically correct, including a scene where officers are captured. Unlike the Dirty Dozen, the Filthy Thirteen were not convicts; however, they were men prone to drinking and fighting and often spent time in the stockade.[17][18]
Both the Germans and Soviets used convicted men in high risk operations during the war.[citation needed]
Sequels and adaptations[edit]
Three years after The Dirty Dozen was released, Too Late the Hero – a film also directed by Aldrich – was described as a "kind of sequel to The Dirty Dozen".[19] The 1969 Michael Caine film Play Dirty follows a similar theme of convicts-recruited-as-soldiers. Although the novel rights were purchased well before filming began on The Dirty Dozen David Wolper's production of The Devil's Brigade (starring William Holden), which was released one year later in 1968, is often considered to be a pale imitation of The Dirty Dozen - except that it is based on the true story of the 1st US/Canadian Special Forces Unit. The plot and story structure of the two movies, however. are very similar. In the first act, the men are selected for a special mission (these are convicted US Army prisoners in The Dirty Dozen, while in The Devil's Brigade, they are a mix of US Army foul-ups and elite Canadian paratroops). In the second act, which is fairly comedic, they train and bond together (in The Dirty Dozen, this occurs in England, while in The Devil's Brigade, it occurs in Montana). In both cases, the unit is almost disbanded and must prove themselves in a practice mission, which is also light-hearted in style (In The Dirty Dozen this involves Allied war games in England, while in The Devil's Brigade it involves an initial reconnaissance mission against an enemy town in Italy). In both cases, the climax is serious in tone and bloody (A commando mission against a Nazi chateau near Normandy, France, in The Dirty Dozen and an assault on Mount La Difensa, on the Italian front in The Devil's Brigade). Many of the stars are killed in both climax scenes. In real life the 1st Special Service Force is considered to be the forerunner of the US Green Berets and the present day Canadian Special Forces.
Several made-for-TV movies were produced in the mid- to late-1980s which capitalized on the popularity of the first film. Lee Marvin, Richard Jaeckel, and Ernest Borgnine reprised their roles for The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission in 1985, leading a group of military convicts in a mission to kill a German general who was plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler.[20] In The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (1987), Telly Savalas, who had played the role of the psychotic Maggott in the original film, assumed the different role of Major Wright, an officer who leads a group of military convicts to extract a group of German scientists who are being forced to make a deadly nerve gas.[21] Ernest Borgnine again reprised his role of General Worden. The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission (1988) depicts Savalas's Wright character and a group of renegade soldiers attempting to prevent a group of extreme German generals from starting a Fourth Reich, with Erik Estrada co-starring and Ernest Borgnine again playing the role of General Worden.[22] In 1988, FOX aired a short-lived television series, among the cast was John Slattery, who played Private Leeds in eight of the show's eleven episodes.[23]
See also[edit]
Survival film, about the film genre, with a list of related films
Do Aankhen Barah Haath
Silmido
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Alain Silver and James Ursini, Whatever Happened to Robert Aldrich?, Limelight, 1995 p 269
2.Jump up ^ "The Dirty Dozen, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Retrieved March 8, 2012.
3.Jump up ^ "Dirty Dozen film at Beechwood - Local History Questions". Hemel Hempstead Gazette. Retrieved July 27, 2010.[dead link]
4.Jump up ^ p.537 Roberts, Randy & Olsen, James Stuart John Wayne: American 1997 University of Nebraska Press
5.Jump up ^ "Actor Jack Palance Won't Play Racist for $141,000". Jet: 59. March 10, 1966.
6.Jump up ^ Commentary The Dirty Dozen: 2-Disc Special Edition
7.Jump up ^ Film The Dirty Dozen: 2-Disc Special Edition
8.Jump up ^ Patterson, John (September 3, 2005). "Total recall". The Guardian (London). Retrieved May 25, 2010.
9.Jump up ^ Roger Ebert (1967-07-26). "The Dirty Dozen". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2010-03-29.
10.^ Jump up to: a b Bosley Crowther (1967-06-16). "The Dirty Dozen (1967)". NYT Critics' Pick (The New York Times). Retrieved 2010-03-29.
11.Jump up ^ Variety staff (1967). "The Dirty Dozen". Variety. Retrieved 2010-03-29.
12.Jump up ^ "The Dirty Dozen". Time Out Film Guide. Time Out. Retrieved 2010-03-29.
13.Jump up ^ The Dirty Dozen
14.Jump up ^ "The 40th Academy Awards (1968) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-08-25.
15.Jump up ^ "Big Rental Films of 1967", Variety, 3 January 1968 p. 25. These figures refer to rentals accruing to the distributors.
16.Jump up ^ Amazon.com: The Filthy Thirteen: From the Dustbowl to Hitler's Eagle's Nest: The True Story of the 101st Airborne's Most Legendary Squad of Combat Paratroopers: Richard Killblane, Jake McNiece: Books
17.Jump up ^ Associated Press, April 11, 2010
18.Jump up ^ The Filthy Thirteen: The U.S. Army's Real "Dirty Dozen" American Valor Quarterly online, Winter 2008-09. Retrieved April 10, 2010
19.Jump up ^ "Cinema: Jungle Rot". Time. June 8, 1970. Retrieved 2010-03-29. "War may be getting a bad name, but it still pays at the box office. Ask Director Robert Aldrich. His 1967 film The Dirty Dozen made millions by drafting a gang of incorrigible convicts into a mission behind enemy lines. Too Late the Hero is a kind of sequel to The Dirty Dozen, based once again on a World War II suicide mission."
20.Jump up ^ The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission at the Internet Movie Database
21.Jump up ^ The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission at the TCM Movie Database
22.Jump up ^ The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission at the TCM Movie Database
23.Jump up ^ Dirty Dozen: The Series at the Internet Movie Database
External links[edit]
The Dirty Dozen at the American Film Institute Catalog
The Dirty Dozen at the Internet Movie Database
The Dirty Dozen at AllMovie
The Dirty Dozen at the TCM Movie Database


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The Guns of Navarone (novel)
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The Guns of Navarone
Gunsofnavaronebook.jpg
First edition cover (UK)

Author
Alistair MacLean
Cover artist
John Rose[1]
Country
United Kingdom
Language
English
Publisher
Collins (UK)

Publication date
 1957
Media type
Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages
288
Preceded by
HMS Ulysses
Followed by
South by Java Head
The Guns of Navarone is a 1957 novel about the Second World War by Scottish writer Alistair MacLean that was made into the film The Guns of Navarone in 1961. The Greek island of Navarone does not exist and the plot is fictitious; however, the story takes place within the real historical context of the Dodecanese Campaign - the Allies' campaign to capture the German-held Greek islands in the Aegean Sea in 1943. The story is based on the Battle of Leros, and Leros island's coastal artillery guns - among the largest naval artillery guns used during World War II - that were built and used by the Italians until Italy capitulated in 1943 and subsequently used by the Germans until their defeat.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot introduction
2 Plot
3 Literary significance
4 Film, TV, radio or theatrical adaptations
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

Plot introduction[edit]
The story concerns the efforts of an Allied commando team to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea, and prevents over 1,200 isolated British soldiers from being rescued. The story is based on the real events surrounding the Battle of Leros in World War II.
The Guns of Navarone brings together elements that would characterise much of MacLean's subsequent works: tough, competent, worldly men as main characters; frequent but non-graphic violence; betrayal of the hero(es) by a trusted associate; and extensive use of the sea and other dangerous environments as settings. Its three principal characters — New Zealand mountaineer-turned-commando Keith Mallory, American demolitions expert "Dusty" Miller, and Greek resistance fighter Andrea — are among the most fully drawn in all of MacLean's work.
Plot[edit]
The island of Navarone, off the Turkish coast, has been heavily fortified as the Germans attempt to stifle British naval activity in the Aegean. A force of twelve hundred British soldiers is now marooned on the nearby island of Kheros (another variation of the island Keros, which is situated to the west of Amorgos) and the Royal Navy is planning to send ships to rescue them. The heavy radar-controlled guns controlling the only deepwater channel that ships can use must be silenced at all costs.
Commando attacks have failed and after a bombardment by B-24 Liberator bombers fails to destroy the guns, Captain James Jensen RN, Chief of Operations for SOE in Cairo, decides to launch a desperate last-ditch attempt which he has already planned in case the bombing is unsuccessful. He has drawn together a team of specialist saboteurs to infiltrate the island via the "unclimbable" south cliff and get into the fortress to destroy the guns. They have less than one week.
The team meet for the first time in Alexandria. They comprise:
Captain Keith Mallory - a New Zealand officer with the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG). Mallory was a pre-war mountain climber, nicknamed "The Human Fly". He has been operating in the mountains of German-held Crete.
Andrea - a former Lt. Colonel in the Greek army, a ruthless fighter and close friend and confidante of Mallory.
Corporal Dusty Miller - an American explosives expert who transferred from the R.A.F. to the LRDG. Miller is described as a stringy, cynical man who doubts their chances of success.
Petty Officer Telegraphist Casey Brown - a Royal Navy engineer and veteran of the Special Boat Service. He is a native of Clydeside and worked as a testing and installation engineer pre-war.
Lt Andrew Stevens R.N.V.R. - Stevens is a young naval officer chosen as navigator. Like Mallory, he speaks fluent Greek and is an experienced mountaineer but considers himself an abject coward.
The team travel via MTB and plane to Castelrosso, a British-held island. Here, they discover an eavesdropper, Nikolai the base laundry boy, who allegedly speaks no English but is spying on them anyway. They demand that he be arrested and held incommunicado, but the story implies that this does not happen.
In an ancient caïque they sail towards Navarone. They carry papers identifying themselves as collaborators with, and couriers for, the German commandant of the island. They are intercepted by a German patrol boat, which appears to be expecting them. They sink it and kill all the crew.
They are wrecked in a storm but manage to land on the island, having lost much of their equipment. They climb the 'unclimbable' south cliff, but Stevens slips and is badly injured.
Evading German guards, they travel through heavy snow and rough terrain and are met by Louki, the steward of the exiled owner of the island, and Panayis, his enigmatic friend. They bring much needed food. By radio, Jensen tells the team that they have less time than was planned for. The ships are coming through that very night. But whilst resting in a cave, they are captured by a troop of German specialist mountain soldiers led by Oberleutnant Turzig, who recognises Mallory as a famous climber. They are taken to the town of Margaritha where they are ruthlessly interrogated by Hauptmann Skoda. Thanks to Andrea's diversionary behaviour, they turn the tables on them and Skoda is shot. With Turzig and the others securely tied up, they escape and make their way to the town of Navarone. They are harassed by troops and planes who are also apparently expecting them.
With no medical facilities available, Stevens is clearly dying and beyond help. He asks to be left behind and feels curiously at peace. Miller discovers that much of his equipment has been damaged. Suspicion falls on Panayis, who is also suspected of being a double agent. He admits nothing, but the evidence is damning. Miller shoots him.
Mallory and Miller manage to enter the fortress housing the guns, whilst the others create a diversion. They set the explosives and then get out to meet the others. They steal a boat and rendezvous with the destroyer HMS Sirdar, which is leading two others through the deepwater channel. Just in time, the explosives do their work, the guns are destroyed and the ships continue on their way to rescue the soldiers.
Literary significance[edit]
In 1990 the British Crime Writers' Association placed The Guns of Navarone 89th on its The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list.
The success of the book's film adaptation prompted Alistair MacLean to write the only sequel of his writing career, Force 10 from Navarone (1968).
Film, TV, radio or theatrical adaptations[edit]
in 1997, BBC Radio 2 produced a two-hour adaptation for radio written by Bert Coules and directed by Patrick Rayner. The cast included:
Toby Stephens as "Mallory"
David Rintoul as "Andrea"
Michael Williams as "Commodore Jensen"
John Guerrasio as "Miller"
Alex Norton as "Brown"
Peter Kenny as "Stevens"
The Guns of Navarone was also produced as an abridged audio book with Patrick Allen narrating.
See also[edit]
The Guns of Navarone (film)
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ http://www.ebay.com/itm/GUNS-NAVARONE-Alistair-MacLean-RARE-1st-Ed-1957-thrilling-naval-adventure-/300466311957
External links[edit]
Book review at Alistairmaclean.de (German)
Book review at AlistairMacLean.com


[hide]
v ·
 t ·
 e
 
Works by Alistair MacLean


Novels
HMS Ulysses (1955) ·
 The Guns of Navarone (1957) ·
 South by Java Head (1957) ·
 The Last Frontier (1959) ·
 Night Without End (1959) ·
 Fear Is the Key (1961) ·
 The Dark Crusader (1961) ·
 The Golden Rendezvous (1962) ·
 The Satan Bug (1962) ·
 Ice Station Zebra (1963) ·
 When Eight Bells Toll (1966) ·
 Where Eagles Dare (1967) ·
 Force 10 From Navarone (1968) ·
 Puppet on a Chain (1969) ·
 Caravan to Vaccarès (1970) ·
 Bear Island (1971) ·
 The Way to Dusty Death (1973) ·
 Breakheart Pass (1974) ·
 Circus (1975) ·
 The Golden Gate (1976) ·
 Seawitch (1977) ·
 Goodbye California (1978) ·
 Athabasca (1980) ·
 River of Death (1981) ·
 Partisans (1982) ·
 Floodgate (1983) ·
 San Andreas (1984) ·
 Santorini (1986)
 

Adaptations
The Guns of Navarone (1961) ·
 The Secret Ways (1961) ·
 The Satan Bug (1965) ·
 Ice Station Zebra (1968) ·
 Where Eagles Dare (1968) ·
 When Eight Bells Toll (1971) ·
 Puppet on a Chain (1971) ·
 Fear Is the Key (1972) ·
 Caravan to Vaccarès (1974) ·
 Breakheart Pass (1976) ·
 Golden Rendezvous (1977) ·
 Force 10 from Navarone (1978) ·
 Bear Island (1979) ·
 The Hostage Tower (1980) (TV) ·
 River of Death (1989) ·
 Death Train (1993) (TV) ·
 Night Watch (1995) (TV) ·
 The Way to Dusty Death (1995) (TV)
 

 


Categories: 1957 novels
World War II novels
Novels by Alistair MacLean
Greece in World War II
Novels set in Greece
British novels adapted into films
William Collins, Sons books


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The Guns of Navarone (film)
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Coordinates: 37°52′53″N 25°39′7″E

The Guns of Navarone
GunsofNavarone.jpg
film poster by Howard Terpning

Directed by
J. Lee Thompson
Produced by
Carl Foreman
Screenplay by
Carl Foreman
Based on
The Guns of Navarone
 by Alistair MacLean
Starring
Gregory Peck
David Niven
Anthony Quinn
Stanley Baker
Anthony Quayle
Music by
Dimitri Tiomkin
Cinematography
Oswald Morris, BSC
Edited by
Alan Osbiston
Production
 company
Highroad Productions

Distributed by
Columbia Pictures
Release dates
22 June 1961

Running time
158 minutes
Country
United Kingdom
 United States
Language
English
Budget
$6 million
Box office
$28,900,000
The Guns of Navarone is a 1961 British-American action/adventure war film directed by J. Lee Thompson. The screenplay by producer Carl Foreman was based on Alistair MacLean's 1957 novel The Guns of Navarone, which was inspired by the Battle of Leros during the Dodecanese Campaign of World War II. The film stars Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn, along with Stanley Baker and Anthony Quayle. The book and the film share the same basic plot: the efforts of an Allied commando team to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea, and prevents 2,000 isolated British troops from being rescued.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production
4 Reception 4.1 Awards
5 Sequel
6 In popular culture
7 References
8 External links

Plot[edit]
In 1943 the Axis powers decide that a show of strength might bully neutral Turkey into joining them. Their target is a command of 2,000 British soldiers marooned on the island of Keros in the Aegean Sea. Rescue by the Royal Navy is impossible because of massive radar-directed superguns on the nearby island of Navarone. Time is short, because the Germans are expected to launch an assault on the British forces.
Efforts to destroy the guns by aerial bombing have proved fruitless. So that six destroyers can pick up the stranded men, Commodore Jensen (James Robertson Justice) of Allied Intelligence gathers a team of commandos to sail to Navarone and destroy the guns. Led by Major Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), they are Captain Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck), a renowned mountaineer; Colonel Andrea Stavrou (Anthony Quinn), from the defeated Greek army; Franklin's best friend Corporal Miller (David Niven), a former university chemistry teacher and explosives expert; Greco-American Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren), a native of Navarone; and "Butcher" Brown (Stanley Baker), an engineer and expert knife fighter.
Disguised as Greek fishermen on a decrepit boat, they sail across the Aegean Sea. They are intercepted by a German E-boat and boarded. They attack and kill all the Germans and sink the E-boat. During the remainder of the voyage, Mallory confides to Franklin that Stavrou has sworn to kill him after the war, because Mallory was inadvertently responsible for the deaths of Stavrou's wife and children.
In a violent storm near the island's coast, the ship is wrecked and the group loses part of their equipment, but still manages to land on the island. Led by Mallory, who was recruited for his climbing skills, they scale the "unclimbable" cliff. But Franklin is badly injured; the injury later becomes infected with gangrene. They find that the cliff is, in fact, guarded after all. Miller suggests that they leave Franklin to be "well cared for" by the enemy. Mallory, who assumes command of the mission, feels that Franklin would be forced to reveal their plans, so he orders two men to carry the injured man on a stretcher.
Franklin tries to commit suicide, but Mallory lies to him, saying that their mission has been scrubbed and that a major naval attack will be mounted on the side of the island opposite the gun emplacement. They rendezvous with local resistance fighters, Spyros's sister Maria (Irene Papas) and her friend Anna (Gia Scala), who was captured and tortured, but escaped. She was so traumatized that she cannot speak and will not allow even Maria to see her scars.
The mission is continually dogged by German soldiers, and the group is captured by Oberleutnant Muesel (Walter Gotell) in the town of Mandrakos, when they try to find a doctor for Franklin. Muesel and Hauptsturmführer Sessler (George Mikell) of the SS fail to persuade the saboteurs to tell them where Miller's explosives are. Stavrou pretends to grovel and beg for mercy, which distracts the Germans, allowing the group to overpower their captors. They escape in German uniform but leave Franklin behind to receive medical attention.
In due course, Franklin is injected with scopolamine and gives up his disinformation, as Mallory had hoped. German units are deployed in the direction of the supposed invasion point, away from the guns. But upon infiltrating the city of Navarone, where the guns are located, Miller discovers that most of his explosives have been rendered useless and deduces that Anna is the saboteur. It transpires that she is not mute after all and was only threatened with torture, but agreed to become an informer in exchange for her release. She pleads that she was coerced, but Miller, bitter about the way that Mallory abandoned Franklin and aware she will reveal their plans once found by the Germans, insists she must be silenced. Mallory eventually, reluctantly agrees to the task, but Maria shoots Anna dead first.
The team splits up: Mallory and Miller go for the guns, while Stavrou and Spyros create a distraction in the town, and Maria and Brown steal a boat for their escape. Mallory and Miller make their way to the heavily fortified gun emplacements. Locking the main entrance behind them—which sets off an alarm—Miller sets obvious explosives on the guns and hides more below an ammunition elevator leading to the guns. The Germans cut through the thick emplacement doors, as Mallory and Miller make their escape by diving into the sea, reaching the stolen boat. Spyros and Brown are dead, and Stavrou is wounded. Mallory saves him by pulling him into the boat, and thus voiding the blood feud between them.
The Allied destroyers appear on schedule. The Germans find the explosives planted on the guns and begin to fire on the passing Allied flotilla. However, the hoist in the gun cave eventually descends low enough to trigger the hidden explosives. The guns and fortifications are destroyed in a spectacular explosion that Franklin hears from his hospital bed. As the ruined guns fall into the sea, the destroyers sound off their horns in celebration. Mallory's team safely reaches the British convoy, but Stavrou, who has fallen in love with Maria, decides to return to Navarone with her. Mallory and Miller observe the aftermath of the destruction from a destroyer.
Cast[edit]
Gregory Peck as Capt. Keith Mallory
David Niven as Cpl. Miller
Anthony Quinn as Col. Andrea Stavrou
Stanley Baker as Pvt. 'Butcher' Brown
Anthony Quayle as Maj. Roy Franklin
James Darren as Pvt. Spyros Pappadimos
Peter Grant as British Commando
Irene Papas as Maria Pappadimos
Gia Scala as Anna
James Robertson Justice as Commodore Jensen
Richard Harris as Squadron Leader Barnsby, Royal Australian Air Force
Bryan Forbes as Cohn
Allan Cuthbertson as Maj. Baker
Michael Trubshawe as Weaver
Percy Herbert as Sgt. Grogan
George Mikell as Hauptsturmführer Sessler
Walter Gotell as Oberleutnant Muesel
Tutte Lemkow as Nikolai, the laundry boy
Albert Lieven as Commandant
Norman Wooland as Group Captain
Cleo Scouloudi as Bride
Nicholas Papakonstantinou as German Patrol Boat Captain
Christopher Rhodes as German Gunnery Officer
Production[edit]
The film was part of a cycle of big-budget World War II adventures that included The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Longest Day (1962) and The Great Escape (1963). The screenplay, adapted by producer Carl Foreman, made significant changes from the novel The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean.
The film was directed by J. Lee Thompson after original director Alexander Mackendrick was fired by Carl Foreman due to "creative differences" a week before shooting started.[1] The Greek island of Rhodes provided locations and Quinn was so taken with the area that he bought land there in an area still called Anthony Quinn Bay. Some further scenes were shot on the islands of Gozo, near Malta, and Tino, in the Ligurian Sea. One of the warships in the film, the USS Slater, then a training ship in the Hellenic Navy known as Aetos (D-01), is preserved as a museum ship in Albany, New York.[2]
As described by director Thompson in the DVD commentary track, David Niven became severely ill after shooting in the pool of water underneath the cave elevator and nearly died, remaining in hospital for some weeks as other portions of the cave sequence were completed by the crew. However, since key scenes with Niven remained incomplete at that time, and it was in doubt whether Niven would be able to return at all to finish the film, the entire production was in jeopardy, and reshooting key scenes throughout the film with some other actor—and even abandoning the whole project to collect the insurance—was contemplated. Fortunately Niven was able to complete his scenes some weeks later.
The film's maps were created by Halas and Batchelor, a British team best known for their animated films.
Several members of the Greek Royal Family visited the set the day the cafe scene was filmed and appeared in the background as extras.[3]
Reception[edit]
The Guns of Navarone grossed $28,900,000 at the box office[4] and was the 2nd top-grossing film of 1961, earning a net profit of $18,500,000.[5]
Awards[edit]
WonAcademy Award Best Effects, Special Effects (Bill Warrington & Chris Greenham)
Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score (Dimitri Tiomkin)
Nominated[6]Academy Award for Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Director (J. Lee Thompson)
Academy Award for Best Film Editing (Alan Osbiston)
Academy Award for Best Original Score (Dimitri Tiomkin)
Academy Award for Best Sound (John Cox)
Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) Carl Foreman
DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (J. Lee Thompson)
Grammy Award for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture (Dimitri Tiomkin)
Sequel[edit]
In 1968, author MacLean reunited Mallory, Miller, and Stavrou in the best-selling novel Force 10 From Navarone, the only sequel of his long writing career. That was in turn filmed as the significantly different Force 10 from Navarone in 1978 by British director Guy Hamilton, a veteran of several James Bond films. The cast included Robert Shaw, Harrison Ford, and Edward Fox. The sequel was a modest success, but did not match the original critically or commercially.
In popular culture[edit]
On The Dick Van Dyke Show, in the episode "You're Under Arrest", Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) claims to have fallen asleep while watching the film at a drive-in theater.[7][8]
"The Guns of Navarone", the film's theme song, was a hit for the Jamaican first-wave ska group The Skatalites and later covered by the British second-wave ska group The Specials.
The title was parodied on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show as The Guns of Abalone and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as The Girls of Nazarone.
Mad magazine parodied The Guns of Navarone as The Guns of Minestrone.
American power metal band Jag Panzer wrote a song about the film called "The Mission (1943)". It was released on the 2004 album Casting the Stones.
The character of Vince Latello, played by Fisher Stevens, compares himself to "Gregory Peck in the 'Guns of Navarone'" during a scene in the film My Science Project.
In Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson's character Jules Winnfield compares his anger at having to clean brains from the backseat of his car to, among other things, "The Guns of The Navarone".
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ "The Guns of Navarone"
2.Jump up ^ "Aboard the U.S.S. Slater in Albany, NY". New York Traveler.net.
3.Jump up ^ Perry, Vern (June 8, 2000). "'Guns of Navarone' high-caliber". The Orange County Register. p. 31.
4.Jump up ^ Box Office Information for The Guns of Navarone. The Numbers. Retrieved 13 December 2012.
5.Jump up ^ Steinberg, Cobbett (1980). Film Facts. New York: Facts on File, Inc. p. 24. ISBN 0-87196-313-2.
6.Jump up ^ "The 34th Academy Awards (1962) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 22 August 2011.
7.Jump up ^ "The Dick Van Dyke Show, episode You're Under Arrest (Season 5, Episode 13)". IMDb. Retrieved 20 June 2013.
8.Jump up ^ "The Dick Van Dyke Show Season 5 Episode 13 You're Under Arrest". TV.com. Retrieved 20 June 2013.
External links[edit]
The Guns of Navarone at the Internet Movie Database
The Guns of Navarone at AllMovie
The Guns of Navarone at the TCM Movie Database
Movie review at AlistairMacLean.com


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Categories: 1961 films
English-language films
British films
Columbia Pictures films
Films based on military novels
World War II films
British war films
War adventure films
Films directed by J. Lee Thompson
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Films that won the Best Visual Effects Academy Award
Best Drama Picture Golden Globe winners
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Films based on works by Alistair MacLean






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Sholay
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

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Sholay
Sholay-poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster

Directed by
Ramesh Sippy
Produced by
G. P. Sippy
Screenplay by
Salim-Javed
Starring
Dharmendra
Sanjeev Kumar
Hema Malini
Amitabh Bachchan
Jaya Bhaduri
Amjad Khan
Music by
R. D. Burman
Cinematography
Dwarka Divecha
Edited by
M. S. Shinde
Production
 company
United Producers
 Sippy Films

Distributed by
Sippy Films
Release dates
15 August 1975

Running time
204 minutes[1]
Country
India
Language
Hindi
Budget
INR30 million[2]
Box office
INR150 million[3]
Sholay (About this sound pronunciation (help·info), meaning "Embers") is a 1975 Hindi action-adventure film directed by Ramesh Sippy and produced by his father G. P. Sippy. The film follows two criminals, Veeru and Jai (played by Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan), hired by a retired police officer (Sanjeev Kumar) to capture the ruthless dacoit (bandit) Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan). Hema Malini and Jaya Bhaduri also star, as Veeru and Jai's love interests. Sholay is considered a classic and one of the best Indian films. It was ranked first in the British Film Institute's 2002 poll of "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time. In 2005, the judges of the 50th annual Filmfare Awards named it the Best Film of 50 Years.
The film was shot in the rocky terrain of Ramanagara, in the southern state of Karnataka, over a span of two and a half years. After the Central Board of Film Certification mandated the removal of several violent scenes, Sholay was released with a length of 198 minutes. In 1990, the original director's cut of 204 minutes became available on home media. When first released, Sholay received negative critical reviews and a tepid commercial response, but favourable word-of-mouth publicity helped it to become a box office success. It broke records for continuous showings in many theatres across India, and ran for more than five years at Mumbai's Minerva theatre. By some accounts, Sholay is the highest grossing Indian film of all time, adjusted for inflation.
The film drew heavily from the conventions of Westerns, and is a defining example of the masala film, which mixes several genres in one work. Scholars have noted several themes in the film, such as glorification of violence, conformation to feudal ethos, debate between social order and mobilised usurpers, homosocial bonding, and the film's role as a national allegory. The combined sales of the original soundtrack, scored by R. D. Burman, and the dialogues (released separately), set new sales records. The film's dialogues and certain characters became extremely popular, contributing to numerous cultural memes and becoming part of India's daily vernacular. In January 2014, Sholay was re-released to theatres in the 3D format.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production 3.1 Origin
3.2 Casting
3.3 Filming
3.4 Alternate version
4 Themes
5 Soundtrack
6 Reception 6.1 Box office
6.2 Critical response
6.3 Awards
7 Legacy 7.1 3D re-release
8 Footnotes
9 References 9.1 Citations
9.2 Bibliography
10 External links

Plot[edit]
In the small village of Ramgarh, the retired policeman Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar) summons a pair of small-time thieves that he had once arrested. Thakur feels that the duo—Veeru (Dharmendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan)—would be ideal to help him capture Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan), a dacoit wanted by the authorities for a INR 50,000[a] reward. Thakur tells them to surrender Gabbar to him, alive, for an additional INR 20,000 reward.
The two thieves thwart the dacoits sent by Gabbar to extort the villagers. Soon afterwards, Gabbar and his goons attack Ramgarh during the festival of Holi. In a tough battle, Veeru and Jai are cornered. Thakur, although he has a gun within his reach, does not help them. Veeru and Jai fight back and the bandits flee. The two are, however, upset at Thakur's inaction, and consider leaving the village. Thakur explains that Gabbar had killed nearly all of his family members, and cut off both his arms a few years earlier, which is why he could not use the gun. He had concealed the dismemberment by always wearing a shawl.
Living in Ramgarh, the jovial Veeru and cynical Jai find themselves growing fond of the villagers. Veeru is attracted to Basanti (Hema Malini), a feisty, talkative young woman who makes her living by driving a horse-cart. Jai is drawn to Radha (Jaya Bhaduri), Thakur's reclusive, widowed daughter-in-law, who subtly returns his affections.
Skirmishes between Gabbar's gang and Jai-Veeru finally result in the capture of Veeru and Basanti by the dacoits. Jai attacks the gang, and the three are able to flee Gabbar's hideout with dacoits in pursuit. Fighting from behind a rock, Jai and Veeru nearly run out of ammunition. Veeru, unaware that Jai was wounded in the gunfight, is forced to leave for more ammunition. Meanwhile, Jai, who is continuing the gunfight singlehandedly, decides to sacrifice himself by using his last bullet to ignite dynamite sticks on a bridge from close range.
Veeru returns, and Jai dies in his arms. Enraged, Veeru attacks Gabbar's den and catches the dacoit. Veeru nearly beats Gabbar to death when Thakur appears and reminds Veeru of the promise to hand over Gabbar alive. Thakur uses his spike-soled shoes to severely injure Gabbar and destroy his hands. The police then arrive and arrest Gabbar. After Jai's funeral, Veeru leaves Ramgarh and finds Basanti waiting for him on the train. Radha is left alone again.
Cast[edit]
Dharmendra as Veeru
Sanjeev Kumar as Thakur Baldev Singh, usually addressed as "Thakur"
Hema Malini as Basanti
Amitabh Bachchan as Jai (Jai Dev)
Jaya Bhaduri as Radha, Thakur's daughter-in-law
Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh
Satyen Kappu as Ramlaal, Thakur's servant
A. K. Hangal as Rahim Chacha, the imam in the village
Sachin as Ahmed, son of the imam
Jagdeep as Soorma Bhopali, a comical wood trader
Leela Mishra as Mausi, Basanti's maternal aunt
Asrani as the Jailor, a comical character modelled after Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator[5]
Keshto Mukherjee as Hariram, prison barber and Jailor's side-kick
Mac Mohan as Sambha, Gabbar Singh's sidekick
Viju Khote as Kaalia, another of Gabbar's men whom he kills in a game of Russian roulette
Iftekhar as Inspector Khurana, Radha's Father
Helen in a special appearance in song "Mehbooba Mehbooba"
Jalal Agha in a special appearance in song "Mehbooba Mehbooba"
Production[edit]
Origin[edit]
The idea for Sholay began as a four-line snippet which screenwriter pair Salim-Javed told G. P. Sippy and Ramesh Sippy; two other producer/director teams had earlier rejected the idea.[6] Ramesh Sippy liked the concept and hired them to develop it. The original idea of the film involved an army officer who decided to hire two ex-soldiers to avenge the murder of his family. The army officer was later changed to a policeman because Sippy felt that it would be difficult to get permission to shoot scenes depicting army activities. Salim-Javed completed the script in one month, incorporating names and personality traits of their friends and acquaintances.[6]
The film was loosely styled after Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film Seven Samurai,[7] and drew heavily from the conventions of Westerns, especially Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns such as Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and John Sturges' film The Magnificent Seven (1960).[7][8] Sholay was also influenced by the westerns of Sam Peckinpah, such as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973); and by George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).[9] A scene depicting an attempted train robbery was inspired by a similar scene in North West Frontier (1959),[10] and a scene showing the massacre of Thakur's family has been compared with the massacre of the McBain family in Once Upon a Time in the West.[11] Some plot elements were borrowed from the Indian films Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) and Khote Sikkay (1973).[6]
The character Gabbar Singh was modelled on a real-life dacoit of the same name who had menaced the villages around Gwalior in the 1950s. Any policeman captured by the real Gabbar Singh had his ears and nose cut off, and was released as a warning to other policemen.[12] The character was also influenced by the villain "El Indio" (played by Gian Maria Volonté) of Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More (1965).[13] Soorma Bhopali, a minor comic relief character, was based on an acquaintance of actor Jagdeep, a forest officer from Bhopal named Soorma. The real-life Soorma eventually threatened to press charges when people who had viewed the film began referring to him as a woodcutter.[14] The main characters' names, Jai and Veeru, mean "victory" and "heroism" in Hindi.[15]
Casting[edit]
The producers considered Danny Denzongpa for the role of bandit chief Gabbar Singh, but he could not accept it as he was committed to act in Feroz Khan's Dharmatma (1975), under production at the same time.[16] Amjad Khan, who was the second choice, prepared himself for the part by reading the book Abhishapta Chambal, which told of the exploits of Chambal dacoits. The book was written by Taroon Kumar Bhaduri, the father of fellow cast member Jaya Bhaduri.[17] As cast members had read the script ahead of time, many were interested in playing different parts. Pran was considered for the role of Thakur Baldev Singh, but Sippy thought Sanjeev Kumar was a better choice.[18] Initially, Dharmendra was also interested to play the role of Thakur. He eventually gave up the role when Sippy informed him that Sanjeev Kumar would play Veeru if that happened, and would be paired with Hema Malini, who Dharmendra was trying to woo. Dharmendra knew that Kumar was also interested in Malini.[19] Sippy wanted Shatrughan Sinha to play the part of Jai, but there were already several big stars signed, and Amitabh Bachchan, who was not extremely popular yet, lobbied hard to get the part for himself.[6]
During the film's production, four of the leads became romantically involved.[8] Bachchan married Bhaduri four months before filming started. This led to shooting delays when Bhaduri became pregnant with their daughter Shweta. By the time of the film's release, she was pregnant with their son Abhishek. Dharmendra had begun wooing Malini during their earlier film Seeta Aur Geeta (1972), and used the location shoot of Sholay to further pursue her. During their romantic scenes, Dharmendra would often pay the light boys to spoil the shot, thereby ensuring many retakes and allowing him to spend more time with her. The couple married five years after the film's release.[20]
Filming[edit]

A rocky outcrop such as those used in filming Sholay

 Ramdevarabetta, near the town of Ramanagara; much of Sholay was shot in rocky locations such as this.
Much of Sholay was shot in the rocky terrain of Ramanagara, a town near Bangalore, Karnataka.[21] The filmmakers had to build a road from the Bangalore highway to Ramanagara for convenient access to the sets.[22] Art director Ram Yedekar had an entire township built on the site. A prison set was constructed near Rajkamal Studio in Mumbai, also outdoors, to match the natural lighting of the on-location sets.[23] One part of Ramanagara was for a time called "Sippy Nagar" as a tribute to the director of the film.[24] As of 2010, a visit to the "Sholay rocks" (where much the film was shot) was still being offered to tourists travelling through Ramanagara.[25]
Filming began on location on 3 October 1973, with a scene featuring Bachchan and Bhaduri.[26] The film had a lavish production for its time (with frequent banquets and parties for the cast),[27] took two and a half years to make, and went over budget. One reason for its high cost was that Sippy re-filmed scenes many times to get his desired effect. "Yeh Dosti", a 5-minute song sequence, took 21 days to shoot, two short scenes in which Radha lights lamps took 20 days to film because of lighting problems, and the shooting of the scene in which Gabbar kills the imam's son lasted 19 days.[28] The train robbery sequence, shot on the Mumbai–Pune railway route near Panvel, took more than 7 weeks to complete.[29]
Sholay was the first Indian film to have a stereophonic soundtrack and to use the 70 mm widescreen format.[30] However, since actual 70 mm cameras were expensive at the time, the film was shot on traditional 35 mm film and the 4:3 picture was subsequently converted to a 2.2:1 frame.[31] Regarding the process, Sippy said, "A 70mm [sic] format takes the awe of the big screen and magnifies it even more to make the picture even bigger, but since I also wanted a spread of sound we used six-track stereophonic sound and combined it with the big screen. It was definitely a differentiator."[32] The use of 70 mm was emphasised by film posters on which the name of the film was stylised to match the CinemaScope logo. Film posters also sought to differentiate the film from those which had come before; one of them added the tagline: "The greatest star cast ever assembled – the greatest story ever told".[33]
Alternate version[edit]
The director's original cut of Sholay has a different ending in which Thakur kills Gabbar, along with some additional violent scenes. Gabbar's death scene, and the scene in which the imam's son is killed, were cut from the film by India's Censor Board, as was the scene in which Thakur's family is massacred.[28] The Censor Board was concerned about the violence, and that viewers may be influenced to take the law into their own hands.[34] Although Sippy fought to keep the scenes, eventually he had to re-shoot the ending of the film, and as directed by the Censor Board, have the police arrive just before Thakur can kill Gabbar.[35] The censored theatrical version was the only one seen by audiences for fifteen years. The original, unedited cut of the film finally came out in a British release on VHS in 1990.[31] Since then, Eros International has released two versions on DVD. The director's cut of the film preserves the original full frame and is 204 minutes in length; the censored widescreen version is 198 minutes long.[1][31][36][b]
Themes[edit]
Scholars have noted several themes in the film, such as glorification of violence, conformation to feudal ethos, debate between social order and mobilised usurpers, homosocial bonding, and the film's role as a national allegory.
Koushik Banerjea, a sociologist in the London School of Economics, notes that Sholay exhibits a "sympathetic construction of 'rogue' masculinity" exemplified by the likeable outlaws Jai and Veeru.[38] Banerjea argues during the film, the moral boundary between legality and criminality gradually erodes.[39] Film scholar Wimal Dissanayake agrees that the film brought "a new stage in the evolving dialectic between violence and social order" to Indian cinema.[40] Film scholar M. Madhava Prasad states that Jai and Veeru represent a marginalised population that is introduced into conventional society.[41] Prasad says that, through the elements of revenge included in the plot and the application of Jai and Veeru's criminality for the greater good, the narrative reflects reactionary politics, and the audience is compelled to accept feudal order.[41] Banerjea explains that though Jai and Veeru are mercenaries, they are humanized by their emotional needs. Such dualism makes them vulnerable, in contrast to the pure evil of Gabbar Singh.[39]
Gabbar Singh, the film's antagonist, was well received by the audience, despite his pervasive sadistic cruelty.[40] Dissanayake explains that the audience was fascinated by the dialogues and mannerisms of the character, and this element of spectacle outweighed his actions, a first for Indian melodrama.[40] He notes that the picturisation of violence in the film was glamourised and uninhibited.[42] He further notes that, unlike earlier melodramas in which the female body occupies the audience's attention as an object of male fetish, in Sholay, the male body becomes the centrepiece. It becomes the battleground where good and evil compete for supremacy.[42] Dissanayake argues that Sholay can be viewed as a national allegory: it lacks a comforting logical narrative, it shows social stability being repeatedly challenged, and it shows the devaluation of human life resulting from a lack of emotions. Taken together, these elements comprise the allegorical representation of India.[43] The narrative style of Sholay, with its violence, revenge, and vigilante action, is occasionally compared by scholars to the political unrest in India at the time of its release. This tension culminated in the Emergency (rule by decree) declared by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975.[44][45]
Dissanayeke and Sahai note that, although the film borrowed heavily from the Hollywood Western genre, particularly in its visuals, it was successfully "Indianised".[46][47] As an example, William van der Heide has compared a massacre scene in Sholay with a similar scene in Once Upon a Time in the West. Although both films were similar in technical style, Sholay emphasised Indian family values and melodramatic tradition, while the Western was more materialistic and restrained in its approach.[11] Maithili Rao, in Encyclopedia of Hindi Cinema, notes that Sholay infuses the style of the Western genre into a "feudalistic ethos".[48] Ted Shen of the Chicago Reader notes Sholay's "hysterical visual style" and intermittent "populist message".[49] Cultural critic and Islamist scholar Ziauddin Sardar lampoons the film in his book The Secret Politics of Our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema, both for its caricature and stereotyping of Muslim and women characters, and for what he calls mockery of innocent villagers.[50] Sardar notes that the two most prominent Muslim characters in the film are Soorma Bhopali (a buffoonish criminal), and an impotent victim of the bandits (the imam). Meanwhile, the sole function of one female character (Radha) is to suffer her fate in silence, while the other female lead (Basanti) is just a garrulous village belle.[50]
Some scholars have indicated that Sholay contains homosocial themes.[51][52] Ted Shen describes the male bonding shown in the film as bordering on camp style.[49] Dina Holtzman, in her book Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora, states that the death of Jai, and resultant break of bonding between the two male leads, is necessary for the sake of establishing a normative heterosexual relationship (that of Veeru and Basanti).[53] According to Thomas Waugh, professor of Film Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality at Concordia University, the manner in which the male leads "clutch and caress each other's hands, shoulders, head and thighs" during the song "Yeh Dosti", although seemingly innocuous, implies homosexual gesturing.[54]
Soundtrack[edit]

Sholay

Soundtrack album by R. D. Burman

Released
1975
Genre
Feature film soundtrack
Length
28:59
Label
Universal Music India Pvt. Ltd.
 (originally Polydor Records)
R. D. Burman composed the film's music, and the lyrics were written by Anand Bakshi. The songs used in the film, and released on the original soundtrack are listed below.[55] Following that is a list of unused tracks and dialogues which were released later on an updated soundtrack.[56] The album's cover image depicts an emotional scene from the film in which Basanti is forced to sing and dance on the song "Haa Jab Tak Hai Jaan" on broken glass under the blazing sun to save Veeru's life.

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

No.
Title
Singer(s)
Length

1. "Title Music (Sholay)"    – 02:46
2. "Yeh Dosti Hum Nahin"   Kishore Kumar and Manna Dey 05:21
3. "Haa Jab Tak Hai Jaan"   Lata Mangeshkar 05:26
4. "Koi Haseena"   Kishore Kumar and Hema Malini 04:00
5. "Holi Ke Din"   Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar 05:42
6. "Mehbooba Mehbooba"   R. D. Burman 03:54
7. "Yeh Dosti Hum Nahin" (sad version) Kishore Kumar 01:49

Bonus tracks — Released later

No.
Title
Singers / Speakers
Length

8. "Ke Chand Sa Koi Chehra" (Qawwali) Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey, Bhupinder Singh, Anand Bakshi  –
9. "Veeru Ki Sagai" (dialogues) Hema Malini, Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan  –
10. "Gabbar Singh" (dialogues) Amjad Khan, Sanjeev Kumar, Dharmendra  –
The song "Mehbooba Mehbooba" was sung by its composer, R. D. Burman, who received his sole Filmfare Award nomination for playback singing for his effort. The song, which is often featured on Bollywood hit song compilations,[57] was based on "Say You Love Me" by Greek singer Demis Roussos.[10] "Mehbooba Mehbooba" has been extensively anthologised, remixed, and recreated.[58] A version was created in 2005 by the Kronos Quartet for their Grammy-nominated album You've Stolen My Heart, featuring Asha Bhosle.[59] It was also remixed and sung by Himesh Reshammiya, along with Bhosle, in his debut acting film Aap Kaa Surroor (2007). "Yeh Dosti" has been called the ultimate friendship anthem.[60][61] It was remixed and sung by Shankar Mahadevan and Udit Narayan for the 2010 Malayalam film Four Friends,[62] and also in 2010 it was used to symbolise India's friendship with the United States during a visit from President Barack Obama.[63]
Several songs from the soundtrack were included in the annual Binaca Geetmala list of top filmi songs. "Mehbooba Mehooba" was listed at No. 24 on the 1975 list, and at No. 6 on the 1976 list. "Koi Haseena" was listed at No. 30 in 1975, and No. 20 in 1976. "Yeh Dosti" was listed at No. 9 in 1976.[64] Despite the soundtrack's success, at the time, the songs from Sholay attracted less attention than the film's dialogue—a rarity for Bollywood. The producers were thus prompted to release records with only dialogue.[65][66] Taken together, the album sales totalled an unprecedented 500,000 units,[67] and became one of the top selling Bollywood soundtracks of the 1970s.[68]
Music critic Oli Marlow reviewed the soundtrack in 2013, calling it a unique fusion of religious, folk, and classical music, with influences from around the world. He also commented on the sound design of the film, calling it psychedelic, and saying that there was "a lot of incredible incidental music" in the film that was not included in the soundtrack releases.[69] In a 1999 paper submitted to London's Symposium on Sound in Cinema, film critic Shoma A. Chatterji said, "Sholay offers a model lesson on how sound can be used to signify the terror a character evokes. Sholay is also exemplary in its use of sound­matching to jump­ cut to a different scene and time, without breaking the continuity of the narrative, yet, intensifying the drama."[70]
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
Sholay was released on 15 August 1975, Indian Independence Day, in Mumbai. Due to lacklustre reviews and a lack of effective visual marketing tools, it saw poor financial returns in its first two weeks. From the third week, however, viewership picked up owing to positive word of mouth.[71] During the initial slow period, the director and writer considered re-shooting some scenes so that Amitabh Bachchan's character would not die. When business picked up, they abandoned this idea.[72] After being helped additionally by a soundtrack release containing dialogue snippets,[39] Sholay soon became an "overnight sensation".[30] The film was then released in other distribution zones such as Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, and Hyderabad on 11 October 1975.[73] It became the highest grossing Bollywood film of 1975, and film ranking website Box Office India has given the film a verdict of "All Time Blockbuster".[74]
Sholay went on to earn a still-standing record of 60 golden jubilees[c] across India,[30] and was the first film in India to celebrate a silver jubilee[d] at over 100 theatres.[30] It was shown continuously at Mumbai's Minerva theatre for over five years.[7] Sholay was the Indian film with the longest theatrical run until Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) broke its record of 286 weeks in 2001.[75][76]
Exact figures are not available on the budget and box office earnings of Sholay, but film trade websites provide estimates of its success. According to Box Office India, Sholay earned about INR150 million nett gross[e] (valued at about US$16,778,000 in 1975)[a] in India during its first run,[3] which was many times its INR30 million (valued at about US$3,355,000 in 1975)[a] budget,[2] earning it an "All Time Blockbuster" status.[3] Those earnings were a record that remained unbroken for nineteen years, which is also the longest amount of time that a film has held the record. Its original gross was increased further with re-releases during the late 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s.[78] It is often cited that after adjusting the figures for inflation, Sholay is one of the highest grossing films in the history of Indian cinema, although such figures are not known with certainty.[79] In 2012, Box Office India gave INR1.63 billion (US$27 million) as Sholay's adjusted nett gross,[e][3] whereas Times of India, in a 2009 report of business of Indian films, reported over INR3 billion (US$49 million) as the adjusted gross.[80]
Critical response[edit]
Initial critical reviews of Sholay were negative. Among contemporary critics, K.L. Amladi of India Today called the film a "dead ember" and "a gravely flawed attempt".[81] Filmfare said that the film was an unsuccessful mincing of Western style with Indian milieu, making it an "imitation western—neither here nor there."[81] Others labelled it as "sound and fury signifying nothing" and a "second-rate take-off" of the 1971 film Mera Gaon Mera Desh.[76] Trade journals and columnists initially called the film a flop.[82] In a 1976 article in the journal Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, author Michael Gallagher praised the technical achievement of the film, but otherwise criticised it stating, "As a spectacle it breaks new ground, but on every other level it is intolerable: formless, incoherent, superficial in human image, and a somewhat nasty piece of violence".[83]
Over time, the critical reception to Sholay greatly improved; it is now considered a classic, and among the greatest Hindi-language films.[8][84] In a 2005 BBC review, the well-rounded characters and simple narrative of the film were commended, but the comical cameos of Asrani and Jagdeep were considered unnecessary.[85] On the film's 35th anniversary, the Hindustan Times wrote that it was a "trailblazer in terms of camera work as well as music," and that "practically every scene, dialogue or even a small character was a highlight."[86] In 2006, The Film Society of Lincoln Center described Sholay as "an extraordinary and utterly seamless blend of adventure, comedy, music and dance", labelling it an "indisputable classic".[87] Chicago Review critic Ted Shen criticised the film in 2002 for its formulaic plot and "slapdash" cinematography, and noted that the film "alternates between slapstick and melodrama".[49] In their obituary of the producer G.P. Sippy, the New York Times said that Sholay "revolutionized Hindi filmmaking and brought true professionalism to Indian script writing".[7]
Awards[edit]
Sholay was nominated for nine Filmfare Awards,[88] but the only winner was M. S. Shinde, who won the award for Best Editing. The film also won three awards at the 1976 Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards (Hindi section): "Best Actor in Supporting Role" for Amjad Khan, "Best Cinematographer (Colour)" for Dwarka Divecha, and "Best Art Director" for Ram Yedekar.[89] Sholay received a special award at the 50th Filmfare Awards in 2005: Best Film of 50 Years.[90]
Legacy[edit]
Sholay has received many "Best Film" honours. It was declared the "Film of the Millennium" by BBC India in 1999.[7] It topped the British Film Institute's "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time poll of 2002,[91] and was voted the greatest Indian movie in a Sky Digital poll of one million British Indians in 2004.[92] It was also included in Time Magazine's "Best of Bollywood" list in 2010,[93] and in CNN-IBN's list of the "100 greatest Indian films of all time" in 2013.[94]
Sholay inspired many films and pastiches, and spawned a sub-genre of films, the "Curry Western",[95][96] which is a play on the term Spaghetti Western. It was an early and most definitive masala film,[97][98] and a trend-setter for "multi-star" films.[99] The film was a watershed for Bollywood's scriptwriters, who were not paid well before Sholay; after the film's success, script writing became a more respected profession.[30]

A dialogue and image of Gabbar Singh painted on the back of an auto rickshaw

 A line of Gabbar Singh (Tera kya hoga, meaning, "What will happen to you?") and a picture of him is painted on the back of an auto rickshaw, a common mode of public transport. Dialogues and characters from the film have contributed to many cultural tropes in India's daily life.
Certain scenes and dialogues from the film earned iconic status in India, such as "Kitne aadmi the" (How many men were there?), "Jo dar gaya, samjho mar gaya" (One who is scared is dead), and "Bahut yaarana laagta hai" (Looks like you two are very close) – all dialogues of Gabbar Singh.[8][100][101] These and other popular dialogues entered the people's daily vernacular.[5][101] Characters and dialogues from the film continue to be referred to and parodied in popular culture.[100][102] Gabbar Singh, the sadistic villain, ushered in an era in Hindi films characterised by "seemingly omnipotent oppressors as villains", who play the pivotal role in setting up the context of the story, such as Shakal (played by Kulbhushan Kharbanda) of Shaan (1980), Mogambo (Amrish Puri) of Mr. India (1987) and Bhujang (Amrish Puri) of Tridev (1989).[103] Filmfare, in 2013, named Gabbar Singh the most iconic villain in the history of Indian cinema,[104] and four actors were included in its 2010 list of "80 Iconic Performances" for their work in this film.[105][106][107][108]
The film is often credited with making Amitabh Bachchan a "superstar", two years after he became a star with Zanjeer (1973).[97][109] Some of the supporting actors remained etched in public memory as the characters they played in Sholay; for example, Mac Mohan continued to be referred to as "Sambha", even though his character had just one line.[110] Major and minor characters continue to be used in commercials, promos, films and sitcoms.[30][100] Amjad Khan acted in many villainous roles later in his career. He also played Gabbar Singh again in the 1991 spoof Ramgarh Ke Sholay, and reprised the role in commercials.[111] The British Film Institute in 2002 wrote that fear of Gabbar Singh "is still invoked by mothers to put their children to sleep".[112] The 2012 film Gabbar Singh, named after the character, became the highest grossing Telugu film up to that point.[113] Comedian Jagdeep, who played Soorma Bhopali in the film, attempted to use his Sholay success to create a spinoff. He directed and played the lead role in the 1988 film Soorma Bhopali, in which Dharmendra and Bachchan had cameos.[114]
In 2004, Sholay was digitally remastered and shown again to packed theatres in India, including Mumbai's Minerva, where it had run successfully 29 years earlier.[115] An attempt to remake Sholay, Ram Gopal Varma's film Aag (2007), starring Amitabh Bachchan as the villain, was a commercial and critical disaster.[116] Because of television and home media, Sholay is widely available and still popular. Twenty years after its release, Sholay was first shown on the Indian DD National television channel, where it drew the highest ratings ever for a film broadcast.[117] Video game producer Mobile2win released the "Sholay Ramgarh Express" game for mobile phones in 2004, along with other Sholay themed content such as wallpapers, video clips, and ringtones.[118]
Sholay has been the subject of two books and many articles. Wimal Dissanayake and Malti Sahai's Sholay, A Cultural Reading (1992) attempts a comprehensive scholarly study that sets the film within the broader history of popular cinema in India. Anupama Chopra's Sholay: The Making of a Classic (2001) provides an inside look at the film's production based on interviews with the director, stars, and crew members.[34][97]
Sholay has been labelled by Chopra as the gold standard in Indian cinema, and a reference point for audiences and trade analysts. Over the years, the film has reached a mythic stature in popular culture,[84] and has been called the greatest Hindi film of all time.[119] It belongs to only a small collection of films, including Kismet (1943), Mother India (1957), Mughal-e-Azam (1960) and Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994), which are repeatedly watched throughout India, and are viewed as definitive Hindi films with cultural significance.[120] The lasting effect of Sholay on Indian cinema was summarised by Anupama Chopra, when in 2004 she called it "no longer just a film, [but] an event".[121] In the 2001 book Sholay: The Making of a Classic, the noted director Shekhar Kapur stated "there has never been a more defining film on the Indian screen. Indian film history can be divided into Sholay BC and Sholay AD".[122]
3D re-release[edit]
Filmmaker Ketan Mehta's company Maya Digital was responsible for converting Sholay into the 3D format.[123] Mehta was approached by G. P. Sippy's grandson, Sasha Sippy about the project in 2010.[123] In March 2012, Shaan Uttam Singh, the grandson of producer G.P. Sippy, said that he would sponsor a conversion of the film to 3D, and release it in late 2012;[124] this was later postponed to late 2013,[125] and eventually finalised for 3 January 2014.[126] It took INR250 million (US$4.1 million) to convert Sholay to 3D.[127] Under the leadership of computer animator Frank Foster, 350 people worked to convert the film into the digital 3D format, for which every scene had to be individually restored, colour-corrected and re-composited in 3D to match the depth.[f][123] New set-pieces, particularly those suited to the new format were also included, such as digital logs which scatter in the direction of the camera during the first half of the film when the train collides with them, the gunshot scene which frees Jai and Veeru from their handcuffs, and panoramic views of Gabbar's hideout in the caves.[123] The theatrical trailer and release date were unveiled by the original script-writers Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar.[130] The two original leads, Bachchan and Dharmendra, were also involved in promoting the re-release.[131] The film was released between 500 and 1,000 screens in India, and additional screens overseas.[128][132] It earned approximately INR100 million (US$1.6 million) during its re-release, not enough to recover its conversion cost.[133]
Footnotes[edit]
a.^ Jump up to: a b c The exchange rate in 1975 was 8.94 Indian rupees (INR) per 1 US dollar (US$).[4]
b.Jump up ^ The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) notes three running times of Sholay. The version that was submitted in film format to BBFC had a running time of 198 minutes. A video version of this had a running time of 188 minutes. BBFC notes that "When a film is transferred to video the running time will be shorter by approximately 4% due to the differing number of frames per second. This does not mean that the video version has been cut or re-edited." The director's cut was 204 minutes long.[37]
c.Jump up ^ A golden jubilee means that a film has completed 50 consecutive weeks of showing in a single theatre.
d.Jump up ^ A silver jubilee means that a film has completed 25 consecutive weeks of showing in a single theatre.
e.^ Jump up to: a b According to the website "Box Office India", film tickets are subject to "entertainment tax" in India, and this tax is added to the ticket price at the box office window of theatres. The amount of this tax is variable among states. "Nett gross figures are always after this tax has been deducted while gross figures are before this tax has been deducted." Although since 2003 the entertainment tax rate has significantly decreased, as of 2010, gross earnings of a film can be 30–35% higher than nett gross, depending on the states where the film is released.[77]
f.Jump up ^ The 3D version of the film has a run-time of 198 minutes and the original shots were of standard film frame rate, i.e. 24 frames per second, therefore this version has 285,120 frames which were digitised, upscaled to High Definition (HD) and element mapped.[128][129]
References[edit]
Citations[edit]
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6.^ Jump up to: a b c d Chopra 2000, pp. 22–28.
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External links[edit]
 Wikiquote has quotations related to: Sholay
Sholay at the Internet Movie Database
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Sholay at Bollywood Hungama
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Sholay 30th Anniversary site at BBC Asian Network


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Categories: 1975 films
Hindi-language films
1970s action films
1970s adventure films
Buddy films
Film scores by Rahul Dev Burman
Films about widowhood in India
Films directed by Ramesh Sippy
Films set in Bangalore
Films shot in Karnataka
Indian action films
Indian epic films
Indian films
Indian musical films
Indian Western (genre) films
Masala films













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