The Dirty Dozen (1967)

#### *"TRAIN THEM! EXCITE THEM! ARM THEM! ...THEN TURN THEM LOOSE ON THE NAZIS!"*

***The Dirty Dozen*** is a 1967 American war film directed by Robert Aldrich,[3] released by MGM, and starring Lee Marvin. The picture was filmed in the United Kingdom and features an ensemble supporting cast including Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, Robert Webber, and Donald Sutherland. The film is based on E. M. Nathanson's novel of the same name that was inspired by a real-life group called the "Filthy Thirteen".

The film premiered in the US on June 15, 1967, and, in the UK on September 21, 1967.

In Britain, in March 1944, the Advance Section Communications Zone (ADSEC) of the US Army is responsible for planning detail for the D-Day invasion. ADSEC commander Major General Sam Worden has orders for Major John Reisman, an OSS officer, and Reisman's former commander Colonel Everett Dasher Breed of the 101st Airborne Division. 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 ADSEC Major Max Armbruster.

Worden assigns Reisman an unusual and top-secret mission, code-named Project Amnesty. He is to train a small band of the Army's worst convicts (selected for him) and turn them into commandos to be sent on a virtual suicide mission, the airborne infiltration and assault on a château near Rennes in Brittany. The chateau will be hosting a meeting of dozens of high-ranking German officers, the elimination of whom will hamper the German military's ability to respond to D-Day by disrupting the chain of command. Those who survive the mission will be pardoned and returned to active duty at their former ranks. However, as Reisman repeatedly tells the men, few of them will be coming back from this one.

Several TV films 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 on February 4, 1985 (August 29, 1986 on UK television), leading a group of military convicts in a mission to kill a German general who was plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

In The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (March 1, 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. Ernest Borgnine again reprised his role of General Worden.

The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission (February 14, 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.

On April 3, 1988, FOX aired a short-lived television series, among the cast was John Slattery, who played Private Leeds in eight of the show's 11 episodes.

The surviving cast members provided the voices of the toy soldiers in Joe Dante's Small Soldiers.