Battle Circus - DVD

This entirely African American-conceived and produced ensemble drama is the result of a collaboration of a pair of pioneering Black artists writer Ishmael Reed and filmmaker Bill Gunn, who wrote and directed the underground classic Ganja & Hess and wrote the screenplay for Hal Ashby's The Landlord. Originally intended to air on public television in 1980, it went unseen for many years; the original tapes have been carefully restored by Kino Lorber and the film is now available in it's full-length version for the first time in decades!

A guitar-picking good ol' boy. A clean-cut all-American. A Navajo. A bookworm. A lumberjack. A slum kid. All enter Marine boot camp to be trained, hardened and ready to answer their country's Battle Cry. Scripted by Leon M. Uris from his own novel, directed by action master Raoul Walsh and starring a who's who of '50s movie stars, Battle Cry is an epic ode to World War II Marine heroism and homefront sacrifice. The saga follows recruit

Groucho, Chico and Harpo provide big-top bedlam At the Circus. Groucho and Chico work a badge skit, Chico and Harpo scour a strongman's bedroom for evidence, Groucho extols "Lydia the Tattooed Lady," and logic, like the orchestra at the film's antic conclusion, is cut adrift and out to sea. You can learn a lot from Lydia.