With Tarantino’s Basterds currently carving up critical opinion in the style of 1940s Berlin, we figured it was a perfect excuse to crack open the beers and watch a few two-fisted, boy’s own adventure WWII flicks. It’s all very well going on about Rambo and Arnie in Predator, but when it comes to kicking goose-stepping Nazi ass, you need a different calibre of hero entirely.

Join us as STS dons it’s goggles and fleece-lined RAF jacket, pops a pipe in it’s gob, and, in our very best BBC English, concocts some cockamamey mission to rescue Winston Churchill’s secret exploding cigars from a Bavarian castle. This type of who dares wins needs a very special set of protagonists, so join us as we bring you 6 of the best: Nazi Fighters!

1: Indiana Jones – Raiders of the Lost Ark

Nazis. He hates those guys. In between all the religious iconography/claptrap and occasional subcontinental detours, we sometimes forget that those is Nazi faces getting melted off by Jesus, and Dr. Henry Jones Jnr is the ideal earthly apostle of two-fisted SS head cracking. He’s interested in history for it’s own sake, and is more concerned with filling a museum than winning the war, but that hasn’t stopped him from working as a triple agent in both World Wars, stealing a U-boat, disfiguring senior SD officials in bar fights, punching a bald Nazi Ubermensch through a plane propeller, and even banging into little Adolf himself at one point. Dr. Jones is a man of science, but that doesn’t mean he won’t shoot first,and commune directly with Jehovah later. His fedora-beheaded silhouette makes him the ideal operative for jungle and desert warfare, and he may even let you keep a few camels at the end of it all.

2: Nick Rivers – Top Secret!

OK, so a light blue high-school wind-cheater isn’t your typical choice of uniform, and neither is waiting until 1955 to get involved, but that doesn’t stop teen surf and song sensation Rivers from sticking it to the Hun in fine fashion. An innovative display of weapons (an enormous, high-voltage dildo) and a range of superb disguises (a pantomime cow) mean he’s perfect for deep cover work. Whether it’s ordering flaming Hog’s balls for dinner, or crashing a submarine into a castle, Rivers may not have much upstairs, but he knows exactly how to combat history’s most notoriously uptight armed force-with Rock N’ Roll baby!

3: Morris Shaeffer – Where Eagles Dare

Any STS readers -and a few ex-staff writers- who have a gun fetish will know that a standard German-issue ZK-383 submachine gun generates around 65lbs of recoil force per square foot. That’s enough to break your wrist. At one point during classic whack-a-fascist-fest Where Eagles Dare, Clint Eastwood’s Lietenant Morris Shaeffer holds one in each hand, and mows down an entire legion of sausage munching right-wingers in a hail of lead. Lets face it, on a mission this stupid, you could probably use an ultraviolent killing machine with a dry sense of humour, and Shaeffer gets our vote. Pause for a moment if you will to consider the film’s poster. Look at it! Where Eagles dare has absolutely everything a WWII flick needs, fist fights on the top of cable cars, Michael Redgrave shouting, beautiful double agents – it’s got it all. The fact that it’s got sod all to do with the realities of conflict, and absolutely everything to do with the blitz spirit makes it even better, and when it comes to wiping out truckloads of limping, eye-patch wearing SS fairies, Morris is the best there is.

4: Michael Redgrave – The Dambusters.

Every mission needs a commander, and when your squad consists of dangerous lone-wolves, then you need someone who can ignore unfortunate pluralisation and get on with the job at hand. Someone who reeks of quiet courage. Possibly someone who smokes a pipe. There’s only one operative who springs to mind: Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave. His knowledge of bouncing bomb trajectories is second to none, and his eclectic sexual practices make him perfectly suited to understand the perverse workings of the Nazi mind. The only man on the team to have an entire squadron of Lancaster bombers formed just to test out a crackpot theory he’s had. If it’s war winning you’re interested in, then the velvet-voiced, stiff upper lipped Redgrave’s your man!

5: Hellboy – Hellboy

An unusual choice to be sure, seeing as he is himself the product of obscure Axis technology and Satanic powers from beyond the veil of sleep, that doesn’t mean Big Red can’t be trusted. Fitting surprisingly easily into the Germanic pantheon -he has a penchant for LederHosen and comes equipped with his own Alpenhorn – the cigar chomping demonoid will come in handy when you need to punch through the wall of Castle Wolfenstein. Of course, it’s been widely and accurately reported – mainly on the ‘Fortean Times’ message boards – that Hitler’s stinking lapdogs were well into the Harry Potter side of things, so having someone who knows his Tuetons from his tentacles probably couldn’t hurt either.

6:Vasily Zeitsev – Enemy at the Gates.

If there’s an abiding lesson to be learned from history; “Don’t F**K with Russia” has to be up there. Vasily may or maynot believe in the cause, or uniting the proletariat, but he sure likes to shoot people in the head. Wether it’s taking Ed Harris down with a well-placed bullet to the bonce, charming the combat fatigues off Rachel Weiss’ perfectly formed Soviet issue bottom, or facing down an incensed Bob Hoskins, Zeitsev is a man who thinks fast in a crises. Every team needs a sniper, and with the addition of Jude Law’s ill-equipped peasant sharp shooter, this squad just got a whole lot better looking, and a whole lot more dangerous too.

Whaaaaaaat? No Virgil ‘Cooler King’ Hilts? No barking mad Edward Woodward? No Winston Churchill – circa ‘Churchill; The Hollywood Years’ natch- ?? There must be tons more to choose from right? Where the bloody hell is Richard Attenborough? Over to you then STS’ers; I expect a crack legion of highly skilled Nazi Bashers in my comments box by the end of the week – the future of the free world is in your hands; get on with it you ‘orrible lot you!

Sky Movies have scored a particularly big coup – managing to get Quentin Tarantino to curate a weekend on one of their channels.

The banana-faced auteur will take over Sky Movies Indie from the 14th August – and will be talking about his latest work – Inglourious Basterds as well as introducing some of his favourite films. The line up is as follows -

Friday 14th August
8.00pm – Tarantino on Psycho
8.20pm -  Psycho (1998)
10.10pm – Tarantino on There Will Be Blood
10.25pm – There Will Be Blood

Saturday 15th August
8.00pm – Tarantino on McCabe & Mrs Miller
8.10pm – McCabe And Mrs Miller
10.15pm – Inglourious Basterds Special
10.45pm – Tarantino on Death Proof
11.oopm – Death Proof

Sunday 16th August
8.00pm – Tarantino on Sunshine
8.15pm – Sunshine
10.05pm – Tarantino on Taxi Driver
10.20pm – Taxi Driver
12.20am – Inglourious Basterds Special

Anyone with an ounce of film knowledge who has watched one of Tarantino’s films will know that he doesn’t so much make movies as create a patchwork of other films and pop culture to create something much greater than the sum of its parts. And – probably due to the nature of film channels – his line up does not reflect his influences. If I was given a weekend to fill with ‘Tarantino Movies’ – I’d probably go for a more eclectic bunch.

My choices would be -

• City On Fire
• Rio Bravo
• Kaante (sort of parallel rather than a reference)
• Bande a Parte
• I Spit On Your Grave
• Kelly’s Heroes
• The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin
• Foxy Brown

Any more for a weekend of Tarantino?

There’s been a fair bit of talk around the STS office bemoaning the demise of the traditional war movie – so it was with baited breath that we took our seats for what was originally touted as an all-action knucklefest a la Where Eagles Dare. What we got was something quite different, but none the worse for it.

It’s 1944 and occupied France is the setting as Brad Pitt and a crack team of Jewish soldiers embark on a mission to wipe out Nazi high command – at a film premiere. A mission complicated by the cinema owner, a Jewish survivor who is out for revenge.

Tarantino will always be known for dialogue, but even for him it’s a brave move to open a post Saving Private Ryan WWII film with a long, rambling conversation without a whizzing bullet to be seen. In the scene, callous Nazi Col. Landa toys with a squirming French Farmer accused of harbouring Jewish escapees and this lengthy character introduction is typical throughout, wrong-footing your expectations as seemingly major players arrive, only to be killed moments later. Even the eponymous Basterds only make fleeting appearances and money maker Brad Pitt has less screen time than many supporting characters. While the lengthy chat segments sometimes slow the pace down to a commando crawl, it’s always involving and ultimately adds to the precision plotting.

The acting on display is often striking, Pitt works hard, his words rumbling through an almost incomprehensible southern accent, while speeches are delivered in English and German with aplomb. Again, dialogue is king and it’s a pleasure to watch. One scene in particular sees allied troops sweating as they try to outfox ruthless SS man August Dehl. Michael Fassbinder’s Brit Officer shines in particular with a roguish charm seemingly channeled from 40s Hollywood. The implied threats and bargains are wonderful, ratcheting up the tension, every sentence uttered with conviction and demanding analysis.

Despite this, the movie is also very funny. Screwball laughs emerge from the almost constant yakking. Again, Christophe Waltz as Landa is a standout here, his character cruel and complicated but tempered with just the right amount of camp. He is both effeminate and threatening, conveying keenness of mind and deadly singularity of purpose beneath a raffish, socially aware exterior. Between them, he and Pitt carry the movie. Their performances are engaging and knowing, but resolutely grounded in the peculiar reality of the movie.

That construction is highlighted too. The whole shebang kicks off with the self-aware caption ‘once upon a time… In Nazi occupied France…’ History provides the stage, but is kept well out of the way as the tale unfolds. Tarantino’s obsession with movies is apparent from the get-go, whilst the ending is a typical, over-the-top, only-in-the-movies piece that riffs on Spaghetti westerns. Whilst this fast and loose attitude to our finest hour could cause offense if taken seriously, overall it’s a fun return to the days when war films were two-fisted boy’s own tales, where there was never a doubt that the bad guys would get what was coming to them eventually.

Of course, this being Tarantino, it’s not actually about the war at all. It’s about other movies. With a soundtrack and shot-list cobbled together lovingly from other films, the core of the script revolves around a film critic and a cinema owner – ultimately the only two characters with the ability to face down evil and combat Nazi propaganda. Another love letter to cinema, sometimes deliberately contrived but none the worse for it, Inglourious Basterds sees Tarantino back on fantastic and fun form.