One quick question: After they invade the chateau and manage to get all the people locked in the bomb shelter, they go outside and start throwing grenades into the vents. Why is it that all the people in the shelter start grabbing at the grenades like they’re fighting over candy. Surely they know that they’re grenades above thier heads. Clearly they can’t pull them into the bunker, and they’re not going to be able to flick them back out of the vent with just thier fingertips. I’d think they would try to get AWAY from them instead of right under them. Or did I miss something?
desperation i would guess…trying anything to get them out of there…normal human response
Damn… I thought this would be about the game show on In Living Color. Carry on.
They also knew that they were in a room where a lot of gasoline had just been dumped into and that when the grenades went off, it was going to be BBQ time.
Desperate people do desperate acts, however irrational it may seem to an observer.
This happened before the gasoline was dumped in. I guess the only think I can think of is what other people where saying, just desperation.
Before the gas was poured in? I thought they poured the gas first? I mean… wouldn’t you knowing you have limited time at the top dump in the gas then the grenades… that way it doesn’t blow up in your face while you dump the gas in?
And yeah the people are attempting to flick the grenades back out. If your in a trapped space with a grenade and no real place to hide from the blast you’d probably try to get rid of it too. No matter how futile the gesture is.
[sub]This is actually one of my fave movies. Mom used to watch it fairly often when I was little and she likes war movies of a similar nature. I wish I’d seen The Great Escape earlier as I liked that one too.[/sub]
My question is, would the episode being described here ordinarily be considered a war crime?
How about when the one guy upstairs lets the French house staff go, but slaughters the remaining Germans standing there with their hands raised?
I think it was sort of an afterthought.
War crimes? Of course. The whole point of the movie was that they were 21 miserable pus-bags, wholely without redeeming value. Why would you expect them to behave in a moral or honorable manner? Telly Savalas as “Maggot” was the highlight of the movie for me.
Crap. That should read “12 miserable pus-bags…”
I am Dyslexia of Borg. Your ass will be laminated.
The mission had no specific value in and of itself, they were basically assigned to kill every German officer they could since so many gathered there and it would help sow confusion behind the German lines once the D-Day invasion started. Since the Dozen were disposable and had proven themselves capable in a training exercise, they were given a mission that could be helpful to the Allied cause if it succeeded, but do no damage if they FUBARed it.
The gas and grenades plan was improvised on the fly, and the grenades (with pins still in) were tossed in first, because the people were still poking at them when the gas came down. Jefferson set the whole thing off with other grenades tossed into the vent opening as the remaining DD members prepared to escape.
I’d agree the people were flicking at the grenades from desperation, but also because it made for better visuals in the movie than lots of German officers and women cowering in the far corners of the bunker waiting to die.
Don’t know if it would be considered a war crime but the lone soldier was following Reisman’s orders to “free the French and kill the Germans.” Considering that the whole mission was hush hush top secret, most everyone involved was killed and given a clean record after the fact, those who did survive (of the DD, Wladislaw basically) were given a clean record and returned to active duty, and the fact the Allies won the war I doubt anyone would want to raise stink or bring war crimes charges anyway. Even Maggot’s cold-blooded murder of a German civilian was only witnessed by Jefferson who was killed in action before he could tell anyone about it.
It’s been a while since I saw it, but I seem to recall them dumping satchels full of grenades into one or more of the vents without pulling any pins, I don’t remember whether it was before or after the gasoline. The purpose of the “extra” grenades was presumably to collectively act as larger and more reliable detonators, triggered once Jim Brown makes his final run, dropping one last, armed, grenade down each vent.
I think scumpup’s assessment of the “war crime” issue is not too far off the mark. I think the climax is meant to seem a bit shocking and barbaric, but also to imply that such is the nature of war, anything else being mere hypocrisy – an amplification of the theme more comically illustrated in the Dozen’s antics leading up to the capture of the enemy headquarters during the earlier wargames scene. I also think a measure of irony/poetic justice was intended in the idea of herding a bunch of Nazis into a chamber and then dumping something through a ceiling vent to massacre them.
There is a specific scene were Lee Marvin tells Jim Brown to leave the pins in. Jim Brown looks puzzled for a second, then smiles and starts dumping in sacks of grenades.
The Dirty Dozen has to be one of the top 5 guy movies.
Oh, please please!! Can I have this as a sig line???
As to the OP, the others are right. No pins were pulled until the final one that Jim Brown had…
Okay I remember that now. I had completely forgotten (It’s been a few years since I last saw it)