Product Details

• Actors: Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Carroll O'Connor, Donald Sutherland
• Directors: Brian G. Hutton
• Format: Widescreen
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: June 1, 2010
• Run Time: 158 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001XURJCS
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,569 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
  • #22 in Movies & TV > Blu-ray > Military & War
• For more information about "Kelly's Heroes / Where Eagles Dare (Action Double Feature) [Blu-ray]" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Kelly's Heroes, a tongue-in-cheek 1970 variation on The Dirty Dozen looks less fresh than it did in the year of its release, but it still has some enjoyable moments. Clint Eastwood stars along with Donald Sutherland, Harry Dean Stanton, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Carroll O'Connor, and Gavin MacLeod in the story of American soldiers who try to steal gold behind enemy lines in World War II. Sutherland's hippie G.I. doesn't have the sardonic and timely appeal he did during the Vietnam War, but the film's irreverence and several of the performances are worth a visit. --Tom Keogh

Scorned by reviewers when it came out, Where Eagles Dare is a concentrated dose of commando death-dealing to legions of Nazi machine-gun fodder that has acquired a cult over the years. In 1968 Clint Eastwood was just getting used to the notion that he might be a world-class movie star; Richard Burton, whose image had been shaped equally by classical theater training and his headline-making romance with Elizabeth Taylor, was eager to try on the action ethos Eastwood was already nudging toward caricature. Alistair MacLean's novel The Guns of Navarone had inspired the film that started the '60s vogue for World War II military capers, so he was prevailed on to write the screenplay (his first). The central location, an impregnable Alpine stronghold locked in ice and snow, is surpassing cool, but the plot and action are ultra-mechanical, and the switcheroo gamesmanship of just who is the undercover double (triple?) agent on the mission becomes aggressively silly. --Richard T. Jameson

Product Description

Kelly's Heroes

They were goldbricks until they found out about the gold bricks – a fortune in Nazi-confiscated bullion! Clint Eastwood reups with the director of his Where Eagles Dare for the action-filled and tongue-in-cheek tale of GIs who decide to get something extra out of the war. Eastwood’s title character masterminds a scheme to slip behind enemy lines and steal the loot. Co-stars include a trio on the verge of big-time TV success: Carroll O’Connor, Telly Savalas and Gavin MacLeod. Plus, Don Rickles plays the expectedly outspoken Crapgame. And in the same year as his starmaking M*A*S*H, Donald Sutherland is Oddball, World War II’s only hippie. Dig it!


Where Eagles Dare

The mission is clear. Get in. Get the general. Get out. Commandos charged with freeing a U.S. general from an Alpine fortress should also be told to trust nothing – including the search-and-rescue orders just issued. Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood go Where Eagles Dare in this twisty World War II thriller written by action master Alistair MacLean (The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra) and directed by Brian G. Hutton (Kelly’s Heroes). Known for fiery dramatic roles, Burton ventures into the realm of movie pyrotechnics with dynamic efficiency. And Eastwood’s cool-fire presence heightens one searing action sequence after another. The film became Eastwood’s then-largest hit and its studio’s #1 moneymaker of the year.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two Grand Daddy's Of Their Genre's Hold Up Quite Well!! Blu-Ray Review, July 6, 2010

By 

Rick L. Parrish - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kelly's Heroes / Where Eagles Dare (Action Double Feature) [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

First the real question. The transfers are pristine and look great. The sound is much better on both this go round. Worth the upgrade? Yes, definitely.

The movies themselves are really trend setters for their time and tho Kelly's Heroes is the more dated of the two (ironically mainly because of the studio's attempt to update it to a sixtie's teen audience despite it's WWII movie status)...it's still worth a soda and a box of popcorn (and that'll pay for them right there!) to hear Donald Sutherland say "Stop making with the negative waves...Man"...as he manages to slip some sixties love generation comic relief into the proceedings (his appearance as the visiting General thorn in Robert Ryan's side in The Dirty Dozen is almost as hilarious and helped Sutherland rock the 60's at the movie theater leading up to the seminal MASH in 1970). Heroes is a solid heist caper set in the middle of Wartime which makes it oddball enough -even for then. The motley crew featuring Don Rickles in his first 'close to persona' appearance post his Beach Party epics, are savvy acting vets and deliver the goods. Particularly the Nazi Tank Commander to whom they eventually spread their gold fever. One other appearance of note is an early Carroll O'Conner comic gem as a Give 'Em Hell General that displayed his flair before Archie Bunker immortalized him. All in all a very satisfying movie from an era that turned out too many psychedelic wrecks attempting to capture the times. These guys reflected it perfectly and did it in a WWII vehicle long before Hawkeye and Pierce...go figure!!!

Where Eagle's Dare is really a ride along for Clint Eastwood who had just achieved his superstar status prior to this one's release, so even tho it's always been billed since it's original run as a Clint Eastwood movie it's really Richard Burton's show all the way. It was his first and only attempt to forge himself into an Action/Adventure leading man and he succeeds admirably. Heaven (and Elizabeth) knows why he didn't do more! The plot while seeming a simple straight forward WWII rescue mission turns mind-twister in the final third and the movie features really spectacular stunt sequences. There's action, suspense, and skullduggery aplenty for fans of this type of film and as I said before a surprisingly effective action star performance from Richard Burton coupled with an almost as silent as his 'man with no name' cowboy turn, as the token American on a British mission, from Eastwood. Great fun and since it's a period piece - it holds up well.

Highly Recommended

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great war films, July 1, 2010

By 

gellerfan "gell3334" (FLUSHING, NEW YORK United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Kelly's Heroes / Where Eagles Dare (Action Double Feature) [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

The seventies saw a spate of enjoyable war themed movies being released, from The Dirty Dozen to Eye Of The Needle. WED and Kelly's Heroes were among the best of the bunch, lighter and more energetic than today's dark tales such as Valkyrie, Saving Pvt. Ryan etc, good though they may be.

Anyone who is going to purchase this is already familiar with the plotlines, so I won't delve into a synopsis- see IMDB or Amazon for that.

Allies vs. Nazis has always made for good theater, and Eastwood as an action hero is tops, with stellar casts including Richard Burton in WED and Telly Savalas and Don Rickles in KH.
The price point for the Blu-ray discs as a combo is great and the transfers are superb, though not restored and remastered, as some reviewers have lamented.

Still, the clarity of the picture and the vibrancy of the colors is, in my opinion, superior to the previous DVD releases. I compared WED on standard DVD and Blu-ray by simultaneously playing them, one in my sony BDP350 and the other my upconverting Toshiba HD-DVD players. There was no contest, the blu-ray was remarkably detailed, and colors excellent, the 2:35 widescreen a must for viewing the entire film as it should be seen. (mind you, I love my HD-DVD and always felt that it was a better standard for high def than Blu -ray, but alas Toshiba lost that battle........sigh)

You simply can't go wrong with this combo set!

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars WED is too dark by default, loses lots of detail, June 11, 2010

By 

R. Noble (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kelly's Heroes / Where Eagles Dare (Action Double Feature) [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

I bought this Blu-ray for Where Eagles Dare, and had hopes for an improvement over the DVD version, which was already pretty good. Sadly, during the transfer the brightness was turned down so low that much of the image is now lost in the shadows. For example, many scenes are now so dark that you can't see the actor's faces. In other cases, big items (like airplanes) are lost in the darkness of the mountain backgrounds. This was not a problem on the DVD version. It's especially regrettable since in the brighter scenes, the blu-ray does offer a sharp image. I can only wonder if the person doing the transfer actually looked at the results. (Note that another reviewer feels the brighter DVD image was a problem, and the darker blu-ray is more faithful to the original version shown in theaters 42 years ago. I saw it back then, but make no claims to remember the brigtness level in the theater on that day so long ago. Maybe others have a better ability to remember such things.)

UPDATE 6/18/10: A commenter suggested I try altering my LCD video settings. These settings work well for every other disc I own, plus OTA broadcast and streaming Netflix over Roku, but what the heck, I tried it. I had to choose a setting with very, very high contrast and backlight levels, but it made a real difference. The movie looked a lot better and the details became much more clear. Was the result better than the DVD version (viewed with my regular LCD settings)? To my eye, maybe it's a 5% or 10% improvement. I wonder how or why the default settings are so dim on this BR disc? Another reviewer (on blu-ray.com) had the same experience I did. But I think if you really like the movie, it's probably worth getting the BR disc and turning up the brightness and contrast when you watch it.