Publisher's Synopsis
Collection of five classic war epics. 'Battle of the Bulge' (1965) is an account of Germany's last major European offensive of World War II at the Ardennes in Belgium, in December 1944. Germany, under the command of Hessler (Robert Shaw), plans an attack with the secret Panzer division, but they are desperately short of fuel and their immediate objective is to capture a big allied fuel deposit, without the allies knowing. Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan and Dana Andrews co-star. 'Escape to Victory' (1981) focuses on a group of Nazi officers who come up with a propaganda event in which an all-star Nazi football team will play a match against Allied Prisoners of War. The prisoners agree, planning on using the game as a means of escape from the camp. In 'Kelly's Heroes' (1970) a group of soldiers led by Kelly (Clint Eastwood) capture a German general in occupied France during the Second World War. He reveals the location of a bank housing 14,000 bars of Nazi gold, which Kelly and his men set out to steal. The only problem is that the bank lies 30 miles behind enemy lines. In 'The Dirty Dozen' (1967), set in 1944, twelve Death Row convicts are selected by Major Reisman (Lee Marvin) for a suicide mission. With the aid of his assistant, Sergeant Bowren (Richard Jaeckel), Reisman gradually moulds his gang of murderers, rapists, thieves and psychotics into a tough fighting unit. He leads them into occupied France in an attempt to infiltrate a chateau where the Nazi top brass are holding a summit. Stanley Kubrick's 'Full Metal Jacket' (1987), set during the Vietnam War, details the dehumanising effect of military combat, as experienced by Vietnam conscripts under the training of sadistic Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey). The second half of the film follows one of the recruits, Joker (Matthew Modine), onto the battlefield as he is thrown into the war at the height of the Tet Offensive.