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One of my all time favorites.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

How Sleep the Brave is one of the more peculiar offerings from jack-of-all-genres Lindsay Shonteff and his late producer-wife Elizabeth Gray (or 'Lyndon James Swift' and 'Elizabeth Laurie' as they're billed here). Once earmarked as a competent gun for hire filmmaker capable of delivering black and white chillers like Devil Doll and second feature sex films like Permissive, Shonteff's latter day projects tend to be out of time James Bond spoofs, a genre most other filmmakers put to bed at the end of the Sixties. By the early Nineties Shonteff was this genre's one and only practitioner.A cheapjack Vietnam War epic produced at a time when such a subject spelled poison at the box office, How Sleep the Brave is another demonstration of Shonteff's stunning indifference to trends or public taste. The end result was by and large a financial failure for the director and remains seen by only the few. Gavcrimson encountered a tape of the film at the bottom of a bargain bin under the nonsense re-title 'The Forgotten Parallel'. In a typical tightwad move the (quite literally) bottom of the barrel video distributor had heavily edited the film to fit on a bog standard one hour tape. Despite Shonteff's stated serious intentions which include ending the film with a quote from the commander of the Viet Cong Forces in Vietnam puzzlingly over the suicidal heroism demonstrated by American troops, How Sleep the Brave is bereft of much intelligence and is distinguished from your run of the mill euro-war movie only by its poverty row status. The film was shot in the UK, or more specifically with Berkshire locations posing as Vietnam, an audacious touch that only ultra low-budget practitioners like Shonteff or Mancunian action man Cliff Twemlow would have dared to pull off. A bunch of nobody actors play an inexperienced platoon trapped behind enemy lines and surrounded by the Viet Cong. From a tent in the middle of a field their hot-headed, cigar chomping boss makes a futile attempt to save them by sending out a helicopter. Most of the film alternates between the men bitching to each other about Vietnamese prostitutes and being polished off at the hands of 'Charlie'. You can tell when anything tragic is about to occur because Shonteff insists on scoring every casualty to a 'Greensleeves' type instrumental number. Shonteff also uses his Permissive technique of cryptically flashing forward to the horrors to come, and earns his chops as a low budget man by convincingly passing off leafy English locations as anything but. Unfortunately the latter piece of deception dictates much of How Sleep the Brave be shot in tight close-ups which combined with the sameness of the film's woodland settings makes this a visually repetitious experience. Kitted up in rented soldiers uniforms the Brit actors manage to maintain convincing American accents, but their performances aren't helped by abysmal dialogue like 'I should be at home selling grass, man', as well as a script seemly written by someone in the throws of Tourette's syndrome. The characters all remain clichéd gung-ho action men with little attempt made to get under their skin, nor is there any effort to shed light on the motivations of the Viet Cong. The film invests the Chinese actors with as much personality as extras in a badly dubbed kung-fu film. In the end How Sleep the Brave is about as insightful as a Vietnam recreation by a bunch of paintball enthusiasts, which is sadly what the film often resembles. The fact that it pre-dates 80's Hollywood fixation for Vietnam alongside having Berkshire double as a war zone gives the film a passing curiosity value.. but not enough to warrant tracking it down.

I watched How Sleep The Brave as a teenager in the early eighties and was blown away by it. Yes, my friend and I laughed at the English-looking countryside (we had no idea at the time that it actually was made in England!), but we both thought it was a fantastic film about the realities of battle in the Vietnam war. "Worst Vietnam Movie Ever?" - no way! OBVIOUSLY the film was low budget but if you can see past that you will find yourself with an engrossing and moving film experience.When Platoon came out a few years later I was amazed at the similarities to How Sleep The Brave. Platoon was in the news for weeks with talk about America exposing and coming to terms with the realities of the Vietnam war, and generally blowing sunshine up Oliver Stone's a*se. Well I reckon Olly watched How Sleep The Brave and got the idea for Platoon! I immediately picked up on the use of haunting classical music to accentuate the tragedy, futility and brutality of the war. How Sleep The Brave was way ahead of the rest with it's ideas and techniques on the treatment of the subject.Generally I see the film as a fantastic finished product of a great idea on a very low budget. It delivers the message and then some. I haven't seen the film since that first time, but I will try to rent it out again and may post more comments with my current thoughts.

Saw this film way back when it was first released in England, being very young at the time this film made quite an impact on me. The English countryside may not be convincing but the brutal and bloody action is, very graphic and a strong stomach recommended. If you live in England and have trouble tracking the film down it was re-released as COMBAT ZONE by Castle Home Video.

Worst Vietnam movie ever made? From what I remember (I saw this in the early 80s) it was the most realistic depiction of the stupidity of war since Paths of Glory and until Saving Private Ryan.Storyline gave way (to a certain extent) to simply showing it like it must have been - normal guys forced into being unfeeling killers, simply because the likelihood of your colleagues getting killed made it not worthwhile getting to know them well.See it for yourself, it won't be everyone's cup of tea but it's worth a look.