MovieChat Forums > Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977) Discussion > Which version?

Which version?

posted 18 years ago by nghg-1
22 replies | jump to latest

Good news about the imminent DVD release, but I'm curious about which version of the film it will be. I've seen three over the years. There was a full length (approx 140 minutes, I think) version with a lot more discussion about Vietnam (and which only turned up on the BBC in the late 1980s); a shorter version (approx 110 minutes?) which hacked out much of the Vietnam sub-text and played in the cinemas on its first release in the UK; and an even shorter version of about 85 minutes (called Nuclear Countdown) which cut out ALL the politics, presented only the action and made no sense whatsoever.

I'm praying that Warners gives us the full length version because that was easily the best.

[–] dvdpunk 18 years ago

i hope its the 140 minutes version that Warners gives it.

[–] jloper 17 years ago

This movie was based on a book by Walter Wager, titled Viper Three. In the original book, there was no subplot about Major Dell (Burt Lancaster's character) being railroaded into jail because of Vietnam - in the book Dell was simply a cold SOB who seized the missiles because he wanted the money. (In the book, the missiles were Minuteman II missiles instead of Titan missiles.) IIRC, the book ends with Dell about to open a door and surrender to the President of the USA, unlike the movie where he takes the President hostage and then both get shot to death.

[–] phantomsever 17 years ago

I first saw this presented in either "Saga" or "Argosy" magazine back in the late '60s or early '70s. I forget whether it was serialized over several issues or presented merely as a short story one month. I'm glad it made it to the big screen though and really excited about the upcoming DVD release.

[–] RobynHarris 16 years ago

I also read Viper Three when it came out 30 years ago. The book was interesting and entertaining and went into far more detail on how Dell (I believe he was a General in the book, and in command of ICBM silo security.) was able to believably bypass launch release protocols and get his hands on the keys. As I recall, Dell had been discharged from the Air Force and sent to prison as part of what he considered a politcally motivated attack. He was out strickly for money, or failing that, for the world's most dramatic mass murder/suicide plan.

I remember this as being one of the few movies I have ever seen better than the book it was based on. The subplot about Vietnam added great deal of complexity and depth to Dell and made him a much more sympathetic character than the unmitigated thug of the book.

The Vietnam subplot of the movie had one of the most chilling lines of dialog I have ever heard in a movie and I still think about it today in terms of the "RealPolitik" practice by America around the world.

---

President David Stevens:
So you're telling me that the Vietnam War was
fought to prove to the Russian's that we were inhuman.

Secretary of State Zachariah Guthrie:
Not precisely Mr. President, It was fought to prove to
the Russian's that we were capable of inhuman acts.

President David Stevens: (sarcsastically)
I admire your ability to make so measured a distinction.

[–] Eric-62-2 16 years ago

The only thing "chilling" to me about that Vietnam dialogue is how utterly fraudulent and dishonest it is. The Vietnam War was fought to try to save an ally, South Vietnam, from falling to a Soviet-backed totalitarian regime. And when it comes to "inhuman acts" that occurred in that war, the VC massacres at Hue during the Tet Offensive, the brutal treatment by Hanoi's government of American POWs, and the subsequent tragedies of the Boat People and the Cambodian Holocaust have more than vindicated those who saw the war as a just struggle in which the only "inhuman" thing done by America was their betrayal of an ally, and a failure to WIN the war.

[–] egads 16 years ago

Only?

http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2420

[–] Eric-62-2 16 years ago

Losing the war and making the sacrifice of 50,000 American soldiers in vain to placate the anti-war movement through the betrayal of our allies is the only "inhuman" thing America can be accused of doing in that war (though I can expand that to the broader issue of failure to win what was a just cause, no matter how much Hollywood likes to say otherwise)

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] JJC-3 14 years ago

by Eric-62-2 (Tue Jul 8 2008 15:05:39) Ignore this User | Report Abuse

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Losing the war and making the sacrifice of 50,000 American soldiers in vain to placate the anti-war movement through the betrayal of our allies is the only "inhuman" thing America can be accused of doing in that war (though I can expand that to the broader issue of failure to win what was a just cause, no matter how much Hollywood likes to say otherwise)

==

Eric baby it was a known commodity during LBJ's admin that we (the USA) could never hope to win the war. Henry Kissenger wrote a paper on the subject long before the actual event documenting the possibility of the occurance.

From the late 60's to the end our sole purpose in Vietman WAS to show the Russkies and the rest of the Communist world that we would not give up even in the face of an obvious lost cause or unwinnable war, which was Vietnam!

Once Walter Cronkite was able to "see the light" in this area the Pres. Johnson decided not to go for a 2d term and the real protests started!

It MAY have been a JUST cause but it was an unwinnable war and thousands of American boys were MURDERED by BOTH political parties to show the Russkies we could stand in there to the 15th and final round of an unwinnable fight against a superior opponent. And THAT SIR is a FACT!!! Whether you or anyone else chooses to believe it or not!

[–] Eric-62-2 14 years ago

****Eric baby it was a known commodity during LBJ's admin that we (the USA) could never hope to win the war.****

Oh yes, we could have. All LBJ had to do was have the guts to take advantage of the fact that after the Tet Offensive, the Viet Cong was finished as a viable fighting force. For the entire rest of the war, it was the regular North Vietnamese Army, which demonstrated in 1972 that it couldn't succeed against a sustained American response that shouldered the burden of the Communist cause. All LBJ had to do was what Nixon did in 1972 and *escalate* and try to break Hanoi's head with a bombing campaign, mining of the harbors etc. which would *not* have brought about any kind of Soviet or Chinese intervention on behalf of Hanoi.

And Walter Cronkite was to put it bluntly, full of it when he made his "We are losing" declaration, just like so much of press coverage of Tet was garbage (see Peter Braestrup's excellent book "Big Story"). This garbage coverage included devoting not one word to the accounts of VC atrocities in Hue, while instead giving us a distorted account of the infamous General Loan execution of a VC prisoner that was designed to paint a false picture of our South Vietnamese allies.

The amazing thing is that when we left Vietnam in 1973, we left a nation that was still independent and which was given pledges of support in assistance and in enforcing the treaty just signed if violated by Hanoi. It was only when a Democrat Congress hijacked by the New Left, which always wanted America to lose the war, started cutting off aid to Saigon and making it clear that Hanoi could march in with no fear of reprisal, that the sacrifice of 50,000 Americans was made vain. And in the wake of that, Hanoi then proceeded to engage in acts of barbarism and slaughter (as did the Khmer Rogue in next door Cambodia) that demonstrated once and for all that this was a war America should have tried to win.

Thank goodness the same crowd that wanted America to lose in Iraq didn't get their way this time and President Bush went with the surge strategy.

[–] mayanlongcount-513-831895 11 years ago

those of us alive at the time and over the age of 10 know of the 50k deaths. and the larger number of deaths stateside from accidents and diseases, etc. what the film did and what we should really take the time to think about is the INSANITY of war. bloodbaths conducted by charismatic psychopaths. the CPs have ruined so many lives and killed so many. why do we find ways to justify it. human advancement on hold til we dump the CPs. get used to that idea.

general dell as portrayed in the film was heroic. as good as lancaster's portrayal of labiche in the war movie over paintings.

[–] Eric-62-2 11 years ago

A guy who decides to blow up the world to force the US government to do things his way only *and* who insists on profiting from it no less with ten million dollars is "heroic?"

Here's the double irony. In "Seven Days In May" Burt Lancaster plays an Air Force general who tries to overthrow the US government (without I might add threatening to kill billions in the process) beacuse the President has been too soft on communism. General Scott is the villain because in the end as Kirk Douglas says to his face, "he disgraced the uniform he wore". We are supposed to regard him as an evil megalomaniac.

But General Dell though, conspires with sleazy death row inmates and threatens to kill BILLIONS to in effect overthrow the US government by forcing the President to do things *his* way (not much different from the same ulterior motive of General Scott of "Seven Days In May") AND wants to profit with ten million dollars of the taxpayers money to boot. Like General Scott he is doing this despicable action to make some supposedly nobler point that in this case is his demand that the United States stop being tough on communism ever. We're supposed to prostrate ourselves before the world and apologize for having defended an ally against a naked attempt to take over it and impose a totalitarian government on it (as Hanoi did) and in the process make the Soviet Union of Leonid Brezhnev (the ruler at the time of this film, who had butchered in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and would do so again in Afghanistan)come out smelling like a rose by contrast because after all, it's no big deal what they do right?

Oh, but to get around this, Aldrich has to invent out of thin air a non-existent "document" to justify his agenda preaching. The fact that in the real world there was no such document, and that in fact if the United States could not "win" then why was it that Hanoi didn't win until AFTER US troops were gone and only AFTER all forms of military aid and assistance was cut off by a cowardly US Congress between 1973 and 1975? That's the inconvenient point the likes of Aldrich could never have the guts to address because the overriding obsession was to believe the basic act of the Cold War struggle itself was evil, and that perspective was rendered dishonorable for all time by the events of 1989-1991 in Eastern Europe and the USSR.

This movie could have been interesting if it stuck to the source material. Instead, Robert Aldrich gave us the kind of crap that Oliver Stone would later run with to new and even more despicable heights.

[–] Alfriend 9 years ago

Our soldiers were put into an impossible situation. But that aside, the U.S. could have made an ally of Ho Chi Minh as early as 1945 and for the next for years when Ho wrote to Pres. Truman, to the Congress, etc seeking an audience and support. Truman flatly turned him down because he was supporting France's control over the country which the US supported with money and arms and intelligence via the CIA and more throughout the 1950's. Our government did more to turn Ho over to the Russians and the Chinese than anything else.
The thing most people don't realize is that the US government, not the people, as much as it claims to be about freedom is most often not in favor of free governments who prefer to nationalize their own resources as has occurred numerous times since WW2 from the CIA backed overthrow of the democratic government in Iran in the early 50's through to the same CIA backed overthrow of Chile in the early 70's with numerous US backed coups before and since, including the Bush named new Hitler Saddam Hussein who was like Noriega a US stooge until they no longer served a purpose.
Our soldiers over there and everywhere are Heroes, but the various dem and gop goverments that have sent them into battle since WW2 are not.

[–] Eric-62-2 8 years ago

False. Ho Chi Minh was never a potential ally because as all who knew him could attest he was a fanatical international Communist who did not see Communism as a mere means to an end for independence. Even anti-French non-Communist Nationalists fighting for independence were unacceptable to him. Had the United States extended friendship to him, the net effect would have been the US being played for suckers. He was trying to use potential US friendship for the sole purpose of crowding out all other nationalists fighting the French so he could emerge on top in control of a country where fealty to Moscow and international communism would have come first above all other things.

And of course those instincts were proved right by the human rights atrocities committed by Ho and his successors, which always get swept under the rug by those obsessed with seeing the communists as the "good guys" in the Vietnam War.

[–] Alfriend 8 years ago

"all who knew him".

Oh yeah that's a verifiable statement.

Ho was a nationalist first and foremost. He was more than anything seeking to free his nation from Colonial rule.

As for his instincts that an utter joke! The North Vietnamese with the same brutality that had been perpetrated on them by the French and the Americans. Nothing was swept under the rug. North Vietnamese atrocities were well known at the time as were those by the American forces. However it took a long time for all the horrors perpetrated by the US through the sheer and utter decimation of the nation and people from the millions of tons of bombs, agent orange and a host of chemicals dumped all over the Vietnam and surrounding nations that has caused lasting reproductive deformities and conditions that still exist to this day.

As for some facts regardless of what "all who knew him' thought. This is what Ho wrote to Truman. I know you'll find a million excuses to challenge this letter, but do please provide some facts other than your fore sighted opinions and generalities.

"Following the Second World War, the French returned to Indochina. Ho Chi Minh, having declared Vietnamese independence in September 1945, sought American support. He explained why Vietnam deserved American help in a letter to President Truman the following February."

"Ho Chi Minh letter to Harry S. Truman, 16 February 1946.

I avail myself of this opportunity to thank you and the people of United States for the interest shown by your representatives at the United Nations Organization in favour of the dependent peoples.

Our VIETNAM people, as early as 1941, stood by the Allies' side and fought against the Japanese and their associates, the French colonialists.

From 1941 to 1945 we fought bitterly, sustained by the patriotism of our fellow-countrymen and by the promises made by the Allies at [the summits in ] YALTA, SAN FRANCISCO AND POTSDAM.

When the Japanese were defeated in August 1945, the whole Vietnam territory was united under a Provisional Republican Government which immediately set out to work. In five months, peace and order were restored, a democratic republic was established on legal bases. and adequate help was given to the Allies in the carrying out of their disarmament mission.

[French Aggression] delete?
But the French colonialists, who had betrayed in war-time both the Allies and the Vietnamese, have come back and are waging on us a murderous and pitiless war in order to reestablish their domination. Their invasion has extended to South Vietnam and is menacing us in North Vietnam. It would take volumes to give even an abbreviated report of the crimes and assassinations they are committing every day in the fighting area.

This aggression is contrary to all principles of international law and to the pledges made by the Allies during the World War. It is a challenge to the noble attitude shown before, during and after the war by the United States Government and People. It violently contrasts with the firm stand you have taken in your twelve point [January 1, 1942, United Nations] declaration, and with the idealistic loftiness and generosity expressed by your delegates to the United Nations Assembly, MM [James] BYRNES, [Edward] STETTINIUS and J.F. DULLES.

The French aggression on a peace-loving people is a direct menace to world security. It implies the complicity, or at least, the connivance of the Great Democracies. The United Nations ought to keep their words. They ought to interfere to stop this unjust war, and to show that they mean to carry out in peace-time the principles for which they fought in war-time.

Our Vietnam people, after so many years of spoliation and devastation, is just beginning its building-up work. It needs security and freedom, first to achieve internal prosperity and welfare, and later to bring its small contribution to world-reconstruction.

These securities and freedoms can only be guaranteed by our independence from any colonial power, and our free cooperation with all other powers. It is with this firm conviction that we request of the United States as guardians and champions of World Justice to take a decisive step in support of our independence.

What we ask has been graciously granted to the Philippines. Like the Philippines our goal is full independence and full cooperation with the UNITED STATES. We will do our best to make this independence and cooperation profitable to the whole world."

Bottom line, neither you nor I nor "all those (that you say) knew him" have any idea what would have happened if we had helped the Vietnamese people.

In the final analysis, they wanted to determine their own path just as any people should be able to do. Just as we did.

[–] Eric-62-2 8 years ago

Ho was a nationalist first and foremost. He was more than anything seeking to free his nation from Colonial rule

No, he was a Communist first and foremost who gladly would murder or betray any non-communist nationalist who wasn't committed first and foremost to Communism. His invoking of the Declaration and appeal for American aid was in the easy to follow vernacular a con job. The idea that he was going to turn into a good little democrat is fatuous revisionism concocted by anti-war Leftists in the 1960s who wanted to find an excuse to cheer for the communist side against our ally and paint the South Vietnam of the 1960s as an illegitimate institution. He wrote that letter to get money and then he was going to leave the US holding the bag when having suckered the US he would then obediently cast his lots with Uncle Joe and Comrade Mao, his two great first loves (indeed the Sino-Soviet split troubled him greatly).

Of course the fact that Ho after consolidating power in the North in 1954 was a butcher who slaughtered over 7% of the population and who caused a mass migration to the South should also give us some pause as to the depth of his alleged standing as the champion of freedom. Not to mention the butchery committed by his puppet organization the NLF during their occupation of Hue during the Tet Offensive (which far exceeded anything one could accuse the South Vietnamese of, let alone American servicemen or the American government for that matter).

It was South Vietnam that wanted to determine its OWN path, free from Communist rule. Ho Chi Minh chose to take that freedom from the South through force. The United States attempted to help an ally. There is nothing ignoble in that unless one finds Communism, the greatest mass murdering ideology of human history to be noble as well.

[–] Alfriend 8 years ago

More unproven opinions.

[–] Eric-62-2 8 years ago

Nope, that's long been proved by the scholarly record. Ho was a committed Marxist starting in the early 1920s when he spent years of training in Moscow and become a Comintern agent. According to German Marxist Ruth Fischer, who knew Ho in those days, he was "an impressively “disciplined Communist,” one who “proved time and again his profound loyalty.”. Part of that discipline included knowing how to use propaganda techniques to dupe useful progressive idiots of the West into thinking he was really just a nice little democrat reformer, and that quotation of Jefferson was just that: Working straight out of the classic Soviet propaganda manual for manipulating things to one's advantage.

Actions though over the course of decades speak louder than a handful of words uttered on one occasion. Ho's track record of barbarism and atrocities has been documented and speaks for itself. The idea he was driven into this because America didn't side with him in 1945 is fatuous nonsense concocted by revisionists in the 1960s who were cheering for the Communist side to win. The shame is how we now have a disgraceful President of our own country echoing this garbage propaganda on his many apology tours.

[–] Alfriend 8 years ago

All unproven generalizations.

[–] Eric-62-2 8 years ago

Nope, factual information based on the historical record. You have zero in the way of substance to offer beyond the usual silly cliche of a dishonest pitch from 1945 that flies in the face of his entire history as a fanatical Communist. With that kind of naievte, you must own a million Brooklyn Bridge deeds! :)

[–] nickm2 8 years ago

Not only was Uncle Ho a fanatical commie but listen to these tricks of his:

He evaded arrest by dressing as a Buddhist monk;

He hid out with Mao's 'third route field army' during the early parts of the Chinese Civil War (kinda like Kim Il Sung?)

Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

[–] Alfriend 7 years ago

LOL!! Yes, Donald, dismiss my facts and points and call them what you will. Your innuendo and lack of understanding of what Ho tried to do is so old and so tired. Ho was trying to communicate directly with the USA for assistance as long ago as the end of WWI. To quote from a Time magazine article, April 13, 1998.
"The youngest of three children, Ho was born Nguyen Sinh Cung in 1890 in a village in central Vietnam. The area was indirectly ruled by the French through a puppet emperor. Its impoverished peasants, traditional dissidents, opposed France's presence; and Ho's father, a functionary at the imperial court, manifested his sympathy for them by quitting his position and becoming an itinerant teacher. Inheriting his father's rebellious bent, Ho participated in a series of tax revolts, acquiring a reputation as a troublemaker. But he was familiar with the lofty French principles of liberte, egalite, fraternite and yearned to see them in practice in France. In 1911 he sailed for Marseilles as a galley boy aboard a passenger liner. His record of dissent had already earned him a file in the French police dossiers. It was scarcely flattering: "Appearance awkward...mouth half-open."

In Paris, Ho worked as a photo retoucher. The city's fancy restaurants were beyond his means, but he indulged in one luxury--American cigarettes, preferably Camels or Lucky Strikes. Occasionally he would drop into a music hall to listen to Maurice Chevalier, whose charming songs he would never forget.

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson arrived in France to sign the treaty ending World War I, and Ho, supposing that the President's doctrine of self-determination applied to Asia, donned a cutaway coat and tried to present Wilson with a lengthy list of French abuses in Vietnam. Rebuffed, Ho joined the newly created French Communist Party. "It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me," he later explained."

Unfortunately, Wilson ignored Ho's repeated requests for a meeting, which caused Ho to have to turn away from the United States. Ho, along with many other Vietnamese anti-colonial figures, began focusing on building a homegrown revolutionary movement based on Marxism-Leninism rather than Wilsonian principles. Desperate times called for desperate measures and Ho was a patriot to his people for seeking to finally rid his country of a variety of conquerers who had controlled his country for so many hundreds of years. He was right to seek freedom, "by any means necessary", just as any American patriot would have been.

If FDR had lived longer or his successors had followed his efforts to end colonialism, it's very likely that the whole Vietnam conflict could have been avoided, but Truman and his ilk as well as the intelligence community were servants to colonialism and set back much of what FDR tried to implement both in those terms and with Russia and Communism itself.

The bottom line which you and those others here fail to understand is that the man was MAINLY concerned with his nation's independence.the fact that he was rebuffed more than once over the years by the USA, left Ho little chance to do other than what he did. If the Communists would support him in those efforts then so be it. He did it and created the pathway to ultimate victory.

And how ironic that we're now all buddy buddy with wow... the same communist country that Ho helped create. The conflict in Vietnam was ultimately a product of just what Eisenhower warned us about. Your desire to still carry the fake spectre of the so-called evil empire is at best sad. The proof of the pudding of the the hype in all this fear mongering about communism is that they never did take over Asia and the dominos didn't fall despite the fact that the USA lost the war in Asia. And now we trade with the so-called evil communist nations. It was all MIC bull crap to keep the money coming in for Corporations by insinuating an enemy and creating fear in the nation. How ironic that almost immediately after Communism fell in Russia, that there was more and more hype about the so-called terrorists. And now thats the best enemy yet as you can't fight a war against a tactic. So the money just keeps rolling in as the nation is kept in greater fear of the newest so-called enemy. ironically, many of which were created by this very nation.