B Movies and Stretching the Truth

How can you tell a B movie when you see it? The most obvious clue is that it stars a bunch of folks that you have never heard of or seen before (excluding Jean Claude Van Damme, Shannon Tweed, Shannon Whirry, Sybil Danning, Cynthia Rothrock, Linnea Quiggley, etc. all known B movie actors). The sets tend to be a lot cheaper. They don’t seem to be able to afford a decent script supervisor. For those of you wondering, the script supervisor is the person whose job it is to ensure continuity between scenes and some semblance of reality to the movie. Movies are filmed in the order that will defray costs so the scenes are not done in chronologic order. Examples of famous mistakes are:

- Julia Roberts is eating a pancake, then a bagel, then a pancake in a scene in Pretty Woman

- The windshield of the truck Arnold Schwarzenegger is driving in Terminator I shatters as he jumps into the drainage conduit and is back to normal five seconds later.

I just watched part of a movie, Freedom Strike (made in 1998) which is about a Middle East peace accord being signed on a US aircraft carrier. The only actor I recognized was Tone Loc, which should have told me something. The President arrives by helicopter (an appropriate one) as seen from the Pri-Fly tower (obviously stock footage). During the broadcast news conference, a Middle Eastern cameraman tries to assassinate the President and fails due to the efforts of a Navy SeAL (the hero). I noticed a few script supervisor moments:

- The SeAL’s haircut isn’t close to military.

- Two Middle Eastern cameramen that close to the President of the United States and on a US aircraft carrier? Are you kidding?

- The SeAL’s partner is a super-model female Marine weapons expert.

- When the President is whisked away from the “carrier” he leaves on a CH-46 helicopter from a flight deck full of them. CH-46 helicopters are never on a carrier. Clearly, the film was stock footage from an amphibious assault ship.

- The Commander of the carrier is wearing dress blues showing him to be a four-star Admiral. The commander of a carrier strike group is usually a one-star and occasionally a two-star Admiral but NEVER a four-star. I would have given them a little slack on that one because the President was on board but they lost it when the same Admiral is wearing a khaki uniform with FIVE stars on his collar. There have only been four five-star Admirals in the history of the US Navy (Leahy, King, Nimitz, and Halsey, all in World War II).

- When the bad guy runs from the hero, he runs down passageways with railings (not present on a carrier), and goes down to the engineering spaces which are unoccupied. You can’t turn around on a carrier without excusing yourself for running into someone. You have to merge into passageways like an interstate highway. In fact, during the entire chase scene, only one other person is seen. They must have had a really tight budget.

- Interestingly, the chase would actually have been conducted by the ship’s security department. There is a scene where one of the bad guys is texting a message back to his co-conspirators in Syria (not possible within the hull of the ship) and one security person walks by (the only time a security person is ever seen). Clearly, a tight budget.

- A second bad guy jumps to his death from the island (tower) of the carrier which is white (wrong) and has multiple balconies (wrong). It looked like a freighter was used.

- The Navy physician shows up to take care of the injured Syrian Ambassador in a khaki uniform with a crisp white doctor’s coat over it (no doctor wears a white coat on a Navy ship).

- They take the patient to a storage room, not to the Medical Department, and operate on him in the storage room. I don’t even have to explain how wrong that is.

- At the conclusion of the “successful” operation, I noted the patient was never prepared sterilely and is still wearing his shirt and ECG leads despite the doctor working on a chest wound.

- Additionally, the “explosive” shell is removed pristine and intact. The actual way to remove one is to remove a layer of tissue around it (a little technical, but true). The way the doctor did it in the film gets you killed. Any surgeon would know better.

- And, as usual, despite both being wounded with gunshots, both heroes are smiling and walking normally after killing the last bad guy. Contrast that to how Bruce Willis usually looks at the end of a Die Hard movie.

It reminded me of the movie GI Jane, when the script required some sort of made up mission so that Demi Moore could look heroic and competent at the end of the movie. The scenario was that an American spy satellite had fallen into Libya and there was fear that the Plutonium core could be recovered by the Libyans. I actually said “B*llsh*t!” out loud when Demi Moore declared “It’s weapons-grade”. For those of you who don’t know, there are three fissionable materials known to man (stuff you can make an atomic bomb from): Uranium-233, Uranium-235, and Plutonium-239. The power core of a satellite is made from Plutonium-238 which is a very long term source of heat but cannot fission. Therefore, it can NEVER be “weapons-grade”. The people that are making these movies really need to hire a technical expert. Dale Dye has made a good living doing that. He is in every major military film made in Hollywood, or at least it seems that way.

Granted, I have a lot more expertise in these areas than most (or maybe anyone in this strange combination) but I really wish they would take the time to do these things correctly. . Even with nothing else to do at midnight, these movies are a waste of time.