Gunga Din (1939)

Actors: Joe McGuinn (actor), Victor McLaglen (actor), Eduardo Ciannelli (actor), Charles Bennett (actor), Abner Biberman (actor), Montagu Love (actor), Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (actor), Richard Farnsworth (actor), Olin Francis (actor), Robert Coote (actor), Cary Grant (actor), Lumsden Hare (actor), Sam Harris (actor), Cecil Kellaway (actor), Art Mix (actor),

Plot: Based loosely on the poem by Rudyard Kipling, this takes place in British India during the Thuggee uprising. Three fun loving sergeants are doing fine until one of them wants to get married and leave the service. The other two trick him into a final mission where they end up confronting the entire cult by themselves as the British Army is entering a trap. This is of the "War is fun" school of movie making. It has the flavour of watching Notre Dame play an inferior high school team.

Keywords: 1880s, 19th-century, ambush, army, based-on-poem, battle, battlefield, bayonet, bolt-action-rifle, brawl
Genres: Adventure, War,
Taglines: Barbaric Splendor - Gasping Magnitude - Adventure ! INSPIRED BY RUDYARD KIPLING'S HEROIC LINES (original one-sheet poster) Armies and elephants...Love and laughter...Breathless adventure tuned to the rolling thunder of red drumfire in seething India. RKO RADIO'S TOWERING SHOW OF SHOWS! (original print ad - all caps) Here they come!...The reckless, lusty, swaggering sons of the thundering guns of Kipling's storied India...In the picture whose action sweeps the screen like a cyclone! STAGED ON A SCALE THAT BEGGARS WORDS! (original print ad - all caps) Out of the stirring glory of Kipling's India they come!...Three red-blood and gunpowder heroes...roaring for battle or ready for love! Armies and elephants!...Love and laughter!...Breathless adventure inspired by Kipling's heroic odyssey of fighting in India!...Astride its eye-staggering scenes, three lusty sons of the sword...reckless in love, ruthless in war and dauntless in peril! Out of the stirring glory of Kipling's seething world of battle they roar -- red-blood and gunpowder heroes all!...The stalwart, lusty, swaggering Sergeants Three...Rash and reckless battalioneers, who'd rather fight than and the lips they're always seeking!...Like towering giants astride the bristling hills that hide the bandit hordes of India...Headlong through the terrors of the Temples of Tantrapur...Onward pushing the thin red line of Empire through a land the white man rules, but never conquers!...It's big!...It's grand!...It's glorious!...No wonder it was more than a year in the making!...No wonder it taxed all Hollywood's resources to give the screen a sweep and a scope and an emotional blaze that it never had before!...DON'T LET ANYTHING KEEP YOU FROM SEEING IT! (ad appears to have word or phrase missing: ...who'd rather fight than [missing word or phrase] and the lips they're always seeking!) RKO RADIO'S GIANT SHOW OF SHOWS! (original print ad - all caps)

Quotes:

Colonel Weed: [reading from the poem by the journalist, Rudyard Kipling] "Though I've belted you and flayed you / By the living God that made you / You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din."

Sgt. 'Mac' MacChesney: Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Cutter, you ain't leaving this village without my permission. Give me that bottle.::Sgt. Archibald Cutter: MacChesney, I've been a soldier for fourteen years. I know my duties as well as you do. But you're not talking to a soldier now, you're talking to an expedition. I'm an expedition!

Sgt. Archibald Cutter: Eight feet away from where I'm sitting, right here, there's enough gold to make me sole owner and proprietor of a pub as big as the Crystal Palace. Best pub in Hampshire.

Sgt. Archibald Cutter: You're mad!::Guru: Mad? Mad. Hannibal was mad, Caesar was mad, and Napoleon surely was the maddest of the lot. Ever since time began, they've called mad all the great soldiers in this world. Mad? We shall see what wisdom lies within my madness. For this is but the spring that precedes the flood. From here we roll on. From village to town. From town to mighty city. Ever mounting, ever widening, until at last my wave engulfs all India!

Sgt. Archibald Cutter: Now you're all under arrest. Her Majesty's very touchy about having her subjects strangled.

Guru: You seem to think warfare an English invention. Have you never heard of Chandragupta Maurya? He slaughtered all the armies left in India by Alexander the Great. India was a mighty nation then while Englishmen still dwelt in caves and painted themselves blue.

Sgt. Archibald Cutter: How can we get a nice little war going?

Gunga Din: The salute satisfactory?::Sgt. Archibald Cutter: That's the idea. Only... you want these fingers to fan the eyebrows more like this.::[makes a salute]::Sgt. Archibald Cutter: The breeze from them fingers oughta almost blow these eyebrows off. Now try it again.::[Din salutes, Cutter smiles]::Sgt. Archibald Cutter: Very good. Very good indeed. Eh... That one almost blew your turban off, didn't it?

Sgt. 'Mac' MacChesney: You ain't so stupid as you look.

Sgt. 'Mac' MacChesney: It just goes to show you what a piece of dry goods will do.