Cross of Iron (1977)

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]To the wild blue yonder.

[00:00:09]Hello and welcome to my review of Cross of Iron, 1977.

[00:00:16]My first Sam Peckinpah movie. So, that's a big honor.

[00:00:21]And Peckinpah is one of my favorite directors.

[00:00:25]Of course, I need to do a review of The Wild Bunch. It's one of the best westerns ever made.

[00:00:31]And his use of slow motion and rapid-fire editing along with the introduction of, you know, the massive amounts of blood and very well done, though. It's very well done. It's uh It's hard to quantify.

[00:00:49]I have a little audio clip from Cub of Lone Wolf Cub channel. Let's see what he has to think about this movie.

[00:00:57]I want to get the Iron Cross. Which Cross of Iron, I've seen it back then, but I don't care for war movies in general. But, I recognize that many people liked it because it was so brutal or something like that.

[00:01:12]Well, there's your modern German perspective on the movie, so brutal.

[00:01:16]And it is a brutal movie, but I think Cub misses the heart of the movie. This is uh so popular because it's an anti-war movie. That's a very well done war movie, and I think those are the most effective anti-war movie.

[00:01:31]And kind of like All Quiet on the Western Front, this focuses on enlisted German soldiers.

[00:01:38]Although you do have the officers, I think I think the heart of the movie is the squad. You're kind of following the squad like in The Big Red One, where you follow a particular squad through the movie. You're following a German squad on the Eastern Front. And what's so amazing as a historian the way they set up the shots that these look like actual dugouts from the Eastern Front. These are how they built them. This is what they look like. And he uses actual T-34 tanks. He uses the actual guns that they use. Look at this. That's That's a German machine gun. You never see it.

[00:02:21]It's so big and heavy. Most Most productions are not going to bother with that kind of technical detail.

[00:02:29]And the movie's about the Iron Cross, the highest decoration of the German Empire and later the German Reich.

[00:02:37]And it's about honor more than anything else. The dishonor of a guy trying to steal another man's glory.

[00:02:45]And a guy who doesn't care about medals at all who cares about, you know, things being right, things being done right. It's about honor and pride. It's about when you're in this kind of situation, what do you have left?

[00:03:01]You have your honor.

[00:03:03]You got You get to fight for the people around you.

[00:03:07]Demarcation.

[00:03:09]It's such a good movie. I don't As usual, I'm not going to spoil the movie, but I'm going to tell you it's one of the best movies ever made by Peckinpah.

[00:03:18]And best one of the best war movies ever made. It's amazing.

[00:03:24]Oh, Cub had a special message for Godzilla.

[00:03:29]Germans have no fear of Godzilla attacks.

[00:03:33]We are completely safe here because Godzilla knows not to mess with Germans.

[00:03:40]I had asked Cub why uh Godzilla had never attacked Germany.

[00:03:45]I was not aware that uh apparently Godzilla fears German. back to that armor. So, this movie gets five out of five smoking hot German MP 40 submachine gun.

[00:03:59]It's a great movie, people.

[00:04:02]So, I'm going to stop talking and let's enjoy a few moments of the movie together.

[00:04:07]>> [screaming]