Year: 1968
Nominations: Best Supporting Actor (John Cassavetes), Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Effects - Sound Effects
Wins/Snubs: It only won Best Sound Effects, and George Kennedy took Supporting Actor for Cool Hand Luke (which is totally deserved, what a performance!). I had never seen this - a huge blind spot on my part. Considering that in many ways Inglorious Basterds is a bigger spin on this story, I'm surprised I didn't force myself to watch it sooner. It's really amazing - a serious war movie with a lot of humor. Lee Marvin (aka Liberty Valance) stars as a WWII Major Reisman who is tasked with a nearly impossible mission to infiltrate a Nazi mansion and blow it up, taking out as many Germans as possible. To help him, he's given a dozen prisoners who will get their freedom if they survive. During training they get pissed that there's no hot water for non-officers, so they refuse to shave or bathe, hence the name "Dirty Dozen". They're not idiots (most of them), and they train hard for the top-secret mission that, of course, runs into problems. They infiltrate well, even though one guy dies in the parachuting, but when someone has to scale the roof, his foot falls through changing his ability to get the grenades in the right place. The whole thing really falls apart when one of the prisoners, a crazy guy (Telly Savalas) kidnaps one of the women with the officers and begins shooting her. But everyone is well trained enough to cover and a long firefight ensues. I would have no problem supporting all of these nominations, particularly the win for Effects. For the 1960s, they're particularly well done.
Of course, since I saw Sleepless in Seattle first, the scene below is all I could think of watching the end.
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