mlevans Talk about your films you wish you had seen on the big screen! I honestly thought Nikolai Mullerschon's upcoming 'Der Rote Baron' was the first movie about Manfred von Richtofen. Then I happened upon 'Von Richtofen and Brown,' thinking it was a documentary when I ordered it.To my surprise, it was a full-fledged movie and quite a good one. I just wish I had seen it on the big screen instead of a small box on my 17-inch computer screen (because this DVD wouldn't play on my TV/DVD player)! Filmed in 1971, 'Von Richtofen and Brown' has some of the best World War I combat sequences I've seen. (OK, MAYBE Howard Hughes' scenes from 'Hell's Angels' would have been more breathtaking, had they been in color!) To see the fabled Flying Circus taking off in living color is worth the price of the DVD itself. This film is exquisitely done! The bulk of the flying sequences were done with vintage WWI planes and the crashes convincingly done with models.Overall, it seems historically accurate, too. Only the ending is a bit disappointing (though not surprising) in this regard. It came out in 1971, two years after P.J. Carisella and James W. Ryan's book, 'Who Killed the Red Baron?' had blown the lid off the myth of Capt. Arthur 'Roy' Brown shooting down the baron. As Carisell and Ryan surmised, and as Dale Titler confirmed in his 'The Day the Red Baron Died' in 1971, Australian anti-aircraft gunners almost without question fired the fatal slug that killed von Richtofen as he chased Lt. Wilfred May and was chased by Brown.Other than this and Herman Goering's erroneous presence during the bulk of the film, I found it accurate and quite entertaining – even on a 14 x 7 inch screen! B-horror/gangster director Roger Corman turned in nice work. My only complaint is that, since they were letting myth ease into the picture, why didn't they go ahead and include the baron's 'wife of six weeks?' This myth of him secretly marrying the nurse that nursed him back to health after the first of his two crashes could have made an interesting subplot. Maybe Mullerschon will tackle this myth – or maybe he'll stick 100 percent to the facts! In either case, the baron makes for a fascinating film subject. This one is definitely worth watching.

trevor_k Hidden numerology shows up to a heavy degree in shows like the M*A*S*H TV series, 12 O'Clock High, and various movies, but this one is my favorite.What you have to figure out is what the Baron is referring to when he exclaims "I have 30 men fighting for their lives".Cross reference that to the recent picture "Aviator" where the Howard Hughes character has 24 cameras for his "Hells Angels" WWI combat picture, but needs 2 more for a total of 26.It all makes sense if you are good at counting cycles...but sounds like gibberish otherwise.Anyway, this picture may seem inaccurate historically, or even boring, but it's the "numbers" game that's the most appealing.I attended a lecture by 'Doors' drummer John Densmore a few years ago where he couldn't figure out why the "Doors" movie was so historically inaccurate. Again, look for the numbers.Rather than complaining about details and the production values, the real fun in Richthofen and Brown is the 'hidden' wisdom...and you'll find it if you look carefully.

Kevin-142 What a wasted opportunity this film is. The flying sequences are pretty good and the aeroplanes look authentic but everything else is dreadful. Lousy acting by all concerned coupled with a script that should make the writer embarrassed. These are real people that the film is about but the story is virtually complete fiction. And what was with all those awful cod-German accents (Zis time ve vill show ze Britisch, etc.). Accents like that belong in a comedy rather than a drama. Had Corman learned nothing from The Blue Max? Finally the soulless music score tries its best to kill off any sense of excitement whatsoever. That final piece sounded like the backing to a vampire being staked rather than an airman's death. I'll give it 6 out of 10 purely because of the flying sequences, otherwise it would have scored a 4.

Krusty-17 In a rare (and unfortunate) deviation from his horror genre, Roger Corman takes an unhistorical look at the life and death of Manfred von Richtofen. Little about this film is accurate, and I could go on at length about all the inaccuracies, but why bother. Corman tries to give us a glimps of things-to come in the next war when Hitler's chief henchman-in-training Herman Goring (who, by the way, was not a member of the Flying Circus until after the Red Baron was killed), played to the hilt by Barry Primus, turns his twin spandaus on some poor British Nuns serving as nurses while attacking a British airbase. Probably one of the worst movies about World War One aviation ever made. I would rather watch Darling ‘Lil, and that says a lot.