MovieChat Forums > Guns at Batasi (1964) Discussion > Maybe one of the first films predicting ...

Maybe one of the first films predicting PC?


I thought it interesting that the ending showed that even though you do what is right in defending yourself and your comrades against a turncoat like Boniface who sets up himself as a non elected dictator , you wind up getting the short end of the stick.

Boniface should have had charges brought up against him but in order to keep the black population quiet, it was Lauderdale who was hung out to dry with an insinuation that charges may be brought up on him.

We see the same thing happening today in all strata of society. Some folks get a free pass because of their skin color and others are penalized because of it.

This movie was ahead of it's time.

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I can state from first hand experience that weaselry and abandonment of the republic was already well advanced in 1964, and the UK was not far behind the US in this department. And it's not about color.

The best even today in advanced societal decay is as good as the best ever, and the same for the worst, but over the years the proportion of self-compromised humans in Western civilization has risen steadily.

It seems I don't have the memory faculty remaining to give you a list offhand of comparable films of the period, but I will direct your attention to a much older film, Til The End of Time (1946). This film addresses the problems of GI's coming home from WW2 with disabilities. There is a scene in which some punks calling themselves the "American War Patriots" introduce themselves to the real heroes and mention their organization has "certain restrictions": "no Catholics, jews, or negroes."

You can imagine the reaction. The real Americans clearly see what they have been fighting AGAINST; a fight breaks out, and they hand the bums their rear end, despite one of the heroes being on artificial legs and using crutches.

The scene where Robert Mitchum tells off the bums just before the fight is one you'll cheer just as much as Richard Attenborough's classic "you're very much mistaken" exclamation to the mutineer in Guns at Batasi. "You know we had a friend named Maxie Klein. If Maxie was here he'd probably spit right in your eye. But Maxie's dead in Guadalcanal. So just for him, I'M going to spit in your eye." And he does just that!

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It also featured that naive woman politician who thought she could reason with Boniface, only to be instantly betrayed and captured. Sadly, morons like her were likely responsible for throwing Lauderdale under the bus, and now they entirely populate the Houses of Parliament.

Real men of duty with common sense and good values are vanishing and it’s causing western civilisation to collapse.

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Exactly. I can sort of understand that attitude at the time - there was the 'wind of change' and liberals/progressives in the west thought that all they had to do was give independence to African colonies and they would become model states, but the last sixty years has shown this clearly was misguided. And yet so-called 'progressives' still cling to this outdated idea.

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It’s like when ‘progressives’ escape Blue states which have turned into crime and faeces infested shitholes by Democrat policies, and move into pleasant, free, low tax, well-run Red states, only to then vote Blue and eventually turn their new home into another shithole. They’re more virus than human.

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