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Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

Robert J. Maxwell Interesting and informative brief war-time documentary that takes through aerial gunnery school with a Kansas boy, Burgess Meredith, who learned how to shoot by downing crows that were eating his crops. Ronald Reagan is the captain who encourages him. Tom Neal is an instructor. Classmate Dane Clark is as close as the production should get to a stereotypical New York wise guy.It's not bad, for what it is. I believe there is a feature film floating around in the ether starring Chester Morris in "Aerial Gunner." It covers much of the same ground as this training camp film but is mucked up with an unnecessary romance and equally gratuitous conflict among the men.You know why it's interesting? Because every young boy wants to shoot a gun. They don't necessarily want to kill anyone. They just want to hit a target with a projectile. The dynamics of baseball are identical. The bat moves; the ball moves; and you try to hit one with the other. Golf likewise involves making a projectile (the golf ball) move to its target (the little hole in the ground with the flag sticking out of it). Bocce ball and darts ditto.There's no drama in the film. It's not like Randall Jarell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.""From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose."This is a flag waver from beginning to end and the viewer has to put up with a bit of corn, but the film isn't long. And it does have an educational narrative.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . while the other was sentenced to eight years in the White House shooting gallery. That's the story of THE REAR GUNNER, where Burgess Meredith is blasting away at the Enemy, and Ronald Reagan is just his pilot, along for the ride. It is men like Meredith's R.E.L.A. "Peewee" Williams who are presented as the REAL war heroes, "the budding Galahads of Gunnery." Though some of these "Freedom Fighters" seem to be in it primarily to improve their odds of winning carnival midway shooting gallery Kewpie doll prizes (like PeeWee's classmate, "Benny"), most of these "flexible gunners" were too small to make their high school football teams, making them the perfect fit for the cramped quarters of the B-24 bomber gunnery positions. PeeWee wins a Distinguished Service Medal for his success in launching sneak attacks from the rear position. He's shown here bringing down several Japanese Zero fighter planes, thanks to his boyhood pursuit of gunning down "black killer" crows in Kansas. (The latter were decimating the duck population.) One might sum up by saying that PeeWee won one (or two, or three) for the Gipper.

TxReb The Aircraft in the movie is a B-24 Liberator and not a B-17 Flying Fortress. The B-17 was the first long range heavy bomber used by the U.S.A.A.F. The B-24 could carry a heavier bomb load. The B-24 could fly longer range than the B-17, which is was designed to augment in the arsenal of air power. The rear gun position did not look as in the movie, but was probably used to allow the viewer to see Burgess Meredith. The top turret shown in the film was never used on the B-24 or the B-17. That turret would have been found on the Martin bomber of the 30s and not used afterwards. In several shots they also showed Lockheed Hudsons as the bomber being flown. Hudsons were used greatly by the Brits, especially in their "moonlight squadron" operations. Agents were flown in Hudsons to occupied territory in the Hudson, although this was not the only use for the Hudson. A multitude of craft were used to parachute them.

Ken (Silents) Following Pearl Harbor, Hollywood rushed to turn out films that would help to win the war. They produced more than features. There were countless cartoons and short subjects that were intended to inform the public, boost morale, encourage support of the Red Cross and other organizations that were helping at home and over seas or recruit men into the service. There were also films that were shown only to members of the armed forces. These films either trained them or entertained them."Rear Gunner" is one of the best examples of how Hollywood pitched in and worked to boost morale and also recruit men into the service. It has a mission and it does it with pride and a very solid conviction. This film is a real time machine of its era showing the American attitude towards the war. It is also interesting to get a glimpse of just what a rear gunner did and how he learned to do it.Burgess Meredith was one of the finest and most versatile film actors of the 20th century. Unfortunately most people today know him only for his appearance in the "Grumpy Old Men" films. In "Rear Gunner" he takes a part that is about as standard as they come. There's very little in the words to indicate anything about Pee-Wee's personality. But Meredith takes this shallow part and makes Pee-Wee a real guy. He's quiet and smart without a hint of arrogance, exactly the kind of guy Americans at least claimed to admire then. And Pee-Wee's gentle stutter works well because Meredith soft pedals it thus making it seem real."Rear Gunner" allows us to reach through the screen and touch the American mind from WWII. It also happens to be entertaining.