trenchwalker Posted 1 October , 2003 Share Posted 1 October , 2003 this recent horror film on the great war. Is so bad it will make you cringe. i mean it is a good as a horror film which is ok. But it is'nt til i looked at a documentuary on it. The writer went on to talk about why he made the film to show the horror of the great war as it was.The film included such things as: ww2 no4 enfields with 1960s eqypitian S.L.R Bayonets french ww1 gas masks and what looks like a bunch of blokes running threw northern ireland or vietnam. sorry to sound like a freak but if you see it and have any idea of the great war you want get past the fifth scene. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark A Posted 1 October , 2003 Share Posted 1 October , 2003 I know what you mean. Although I'm a screen writer by trade and I'm perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief when I'm watching films, most WW1 films annoy me. Deathwatch was a bad film full stop and being a WW1 buff the inaccuaracies with equipment made me even more angry (sad I know). I thought The Trench was bad as well- I mean how many cliched WW1 characters could they have crammed into one film (and the studio sets were pretty ropey was well.)? I keep trying to convince my writing partner that we should write a screenplay about WW1 but I hear Birdsong is being made/has been made and that should be a big and hopefully dramatically interesting (and accurate) release. Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Pete Wood Posted 1 October , 2003 Share Posted 1 October , 2003 Oh yes, the Trench was a stinker. I can count the videos that I've switched off within 20 minutes, on one finger, and no points for guessing which film that was. But the guy who owns my local video store was very nice and let me have "All Quiet on the Western Front" (again!!) for free..... I didn't know that Birdsong had been made into a film; it was a book I really enjoyed. I think I could happily sit through two hours of that on the silver screen. Any more details on the company behind it, or the stars involved....?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trenchwalker Posted 1 October , 2003 Author Share Posted 1 October , 2003 oh thank god im not the only one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staffsyeoman Posted 1 October , 2003 Share Posted 1 October , 2003 According to the Internet Movie Database (which also logs TV movies) no sign of a Birdsong movie just yet. I checked on titles (only 'birdsong' being the thrilling sounding account of a competition in Belgium in 1938..) and Sebastian Faulks. Nothing yet. As for Deathwatch.... a normally respectable and reliable source of film reviews (which I shall not embarass further by naming..) said 'On the western front in 1917, a platoon of British troops capture a Nazi trench...' Ooh! Time travelling too! I feel p'raps I should buy it for 'completist' reasons, but won't be rolling it out for annual reviewing.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Hone Posted 2 October , 2003 Share Posted 2 October , 2003 It is definitely in production. I posted what details I knew on a thread some time ago. I'll dredge my memory to see what I can recall. It may have been held up by the commercial failure of the films of 'Charlotte Gray' (Faulks' follow-up to Birdsong) and 'Captain Correlli's Mandolin'. I was responding to a story in one of the broadsheets that there are currently several World War One films in production, one of which at least was making great play of its historical research and accuracy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw Posted 2 October , 2003 Share Posted 2 October , 2003 Tricky one this because absolute historical accuracy doesn't make people go to see a film. That said, one would expect a film maker to try hard to capture the feeling of the time. So the wrong bayonet or rifle I can forgive if the film stands up as a believable work of drama. Indeed I would say that £'s spent say on better actors and script would be a better investment than £'s spent making sure every Lee Enfield and piece of webbing is absolutely correct to please the "anoraks". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark A Posted 2 October , 2003 Share Posted 2 October , 2003 Agree with you there Ian, not enough is put into investing time on the script. Always amazes me that the writing, surely the building block of any film, gets such short shrift. I think Deathwatch was so disappointing because everything about it was so sloppy, from the script and up into the production. I remember Deathwatch came out roughly around the same time as a WW2 horror film. I think it was called The Bunker (?). I think it was set during the German retreat to Berlin in the face of the Russian advance. Has anyone seen it? M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trenchwalker Posted 2 October , 2003 Author Share Posted 2 October , 2003 THE BUNKER that was a fairly good film that was accurate with the uniform and equipment. the film fallows a group of german soldier somewhere in the ardeene during the retreat from the americans . where there is a last line of defence a bunker held by a 15 yr old boy and a old veteren of the great war.then a section of normal soldiers appear out of the woods which they think they are being chased by the americans.then a couple more men appear. Except these are a bunch of hard cases from the adolf hitler ss group. who have been with that section of men b4 except last time they met they shot the son of the ww1 vet in the bunker. whos ghost haunts the bunker slowerly killing off the men.until its the 15yr old left. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynthia Posted 2 October , 2003 Share Posted 2 October , 2003 Hi MarkA, I wonder if you might email me off the Forum? I wanted to ask you something, but when I sent the email to you it came back saying it was 'undeliverable"??!! My email is c.panton@csuohio.edu. Thanks. Cynthia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark A Posted 2 October , 2003 Share Posted 2 October , 2003 Hi there Cynthia- Have e-mailed you off forum. Also, I've updated my e-mail on the forum as well. Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Lines Posted 2 October , 2003 Share Posted 2 October , 2003 Deathwatch is probably aimed at teenagers looking for a mildly scary film like scream 1,2 & 3 and people like me who enjoy a bit of mindless violence and carnage with little or no story rather than WW1 enthusiasts. What appealed to my 15 year old and his mosh pit dwelling mates was some bloke wielding a club with nails in it whilst in "full on" swearing mode rather than historical accuracy. The writer was probably duty bound to make the comments that he made. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trenchwalker Posted 3 October , 2003 Author Share Posted 3 October , 2003 . What appealed to my 15 year old and his mosh pit dwelling mates was some bloke wielding a club with nails in it whilst in "full on" swearing actually come to think about it i have met a couple of blokes like that at the odd re enactment. 'i went to blackpool once killed a man there, yeah it was quite good' the name barney hines come to mind when you see that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McIntee Posted 4 October , 2003 Share Posted 4 October , 2003 THE BUNKER that was a fairly good film that was accurate with the uniform and equipment. the film fallows a group of german soldier somewhere in the ardeene during the retreat from the americans . where there is a last line of defence a bunker held by a 15 yr old boy and a old veteren of the great war.then a section of normal soldiers appear out of the woods which they think they are being chased by the americans.then a couple more men appear. Except these are a bunch of hard cases from the adolf hitler ss group. who have been with that section of men b4 except last time they met they shot the son of the ww1 vet in the bunker. whos ghost haunts the bunker slowerly killing off the men.until its the 15yr old left. Bought the DvD having never really heard about it before. Being a world war buff I was drawn to the setting of the film. It works resonably well as a horror film, as a bunker is usually dark, gloomy, wet and the acoustics make it a bit sinister too. The one thing that got me was, why set it as a story about German soldiers and then cast british actors? If they are German soldiers they should speak German! Never heard of Deathwatch before. "The Last Battalion" though, what did people here make of it? John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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