Kelly's Heroes

In the spirit of independence, here's a clip from one of my favorite movies as a kid (spoilers):



Kelly's Heroes isn't really a war movie, it's a comedy/caper set in a war environment. It is also more of a parody of the genre, in the spirit of the times-- one made by hippies. Or at least fake hippies. (M.A.S.H. was released around the same time.)

It had a remarkable cast with excellent performances by Donald Sutherland, Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Carroll O'Connor and Don Rickles. You'll see some other recognizable faces in there.

It is reported that Eastwood was not pleased with some cuts made from the film as he felt they made the characters more two dimensional and cliche. But hey, parody feeds on cliches.

Funny enough, it is considered to be one of the most accurate war movies as far as equipment and uniforms are concerned.

John Landis was a production assistant and it is said that he wrote the script for An American Werewolf in London while they were shooting this.

In this scene they even engage in meta-parody as you'll notice in the obvious nod to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

There's a decent write-up in Wikipedia