Screenhead

Before you start wondering how I get incredible access to all the very latest movies that haven’t even come out yet, you should pay close attention to one thing–the spelling of the above title.  This is not Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds”, this is the ORIGINAL “Inglorious Bastards”, from 1978.

Yes, the guys at Severin Films have jammed a very large straight pin in the massive gas sack that is Quentin Tarantino’s ego and sent it whizzing all around the room by presenting, clearly, the fact that Tarantino’s version is really a remake, though as we’ll discover, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

This version, the ORIGINAL version, revolves around a group of criminals who would receive the death sentence in a World War II Allied prison camp, but instead break out, with the plan to shoot their way into Switzerland, but instead find themselves neck-deep in a suicide mission.

After only about ten minutes in, I was positively enamored with this movie.  Sure, a war movie is generally at least kind of good–there aren’t that many BAD war movies, though they do exist–but this one is a class all by itself.  There’s plenty of action, and more than enough comedy to go around.  These guys are flat-out great; they may have been examples of the very worst the army had to offer, but they really knew how to get a job done.  They’ve got thieves and killers and compulsive gamblers, but when it comes time to do a job, they really know how to get it done.

Even better, there will be a variety of adventures for our inglorious bastards to slog their way through, and they will approach them all with a style all their own.  It’s downright amazing what these guys are going to get into, and it’s actually even more amazing how they get out of it.  More than once I found myself grinning, chuckling, and muttering at my TV, “Those magnificent, inglorious bastards”.

I think they saw me coming when they titled this thing.  I really do.

Despite the fact that this movie is over thirty years old, it’s aged well.  Clearly some remastering has been done in the DVD translation, but the effects aren’t half bad, the props are downright authentic and the set designs and background are top-notch and absolutely realistic.

In fact, I’m hard pressed to say anything BAD about this movie.  Believe me, I’ve gone over this with a fine-tooth comb and I’m having a hard time finding anything wrong.  Oh, sure, by TODAY’S standards, the whole thing’s somewhat lesser-grade, and maybe it was a good idea for Tarantino to go and slap a fresh coat of paint on this one with some modern, updated effects tech and some more explosions.  A potato-masher grenade explosion really shouldn’t look like a gust of compressed air firing up from the ground.

Despite this, there’s absolutely no way such a thing will ever get in the way of you enjoying this movie.  If you have even the vaguest enjoyment of war movies, then you’re going to go nuts over this one.

Inglorious Bastards is a fantastic war movie that aged well over the years, and is more than deserving of a remake that I personally have high hopes for.  And around here, it’s SO good that it’s going to get a clean ten out of ten.  There’s just nothing wrong with it worth noticing.

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