1941 (1979)

Hysterical Californians prepare for a Japanese invasion in the days after Pearl Harbor.

Director:

Steven Spielberg

Writers:

Robert Zemeckis (screenplay), Bob Gale (screenplay)

Stars:

John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Treat Williams

Nominated for 3 Oscars. Another 3 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Dan Aykroyd	...	Sgt. Frank Tree
Ned Beatty	...	Ward Douglas
John Belushi	...	Capt. Wild Bill Kelso
Lorraine Gary	...	Joan Douglas
Murray Hamilton	...	Claude Crumn
Christopher Lee	...	Capt. Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt
Tim Matheson	...	Capt. Loomis Birkhead
Toshirô Mifune	...	Cmdr. Akiro Mitamura (as Toshiro Mifune)
Warren Oates	...	Col. 'Madman' Maddox
Robert Stack	...	Maj. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell
Treat Williams	...	Cpl. Chuck 'Stretch' Sitarski
Nancy Allen	...	Donna Stratton
Lucille Benson	...	Gas Mama (Eloise) (as Lucille Bensen)
Jordan Cohen	...	Macey Douglas (as Jordan Brian)
John Candy	...	Pvt. Foley

Storyline

Hysteria grips California in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. An assorted group of defenders attempt to make the coast defensible against an imagined Japanese invasion, in this big budget, big cast comedy. Members of a Japanese submarine crew scout out the madness, along with a Captain in Germany's Kreigsmarine (Navy).

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Plot Keywords:

year in title | year 1941 | slapstick comedy | california | female rear nudity | 

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Taglines:

Paranoia meets pandemonium.

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Genres:

Action | Comedy | War

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Certificate:

PG

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Japanese German Spanish

Release Date:

14 December 1979 (USA)

Also Known As:

The Night the Japs Attacked

Filming Locations:

Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, Oregon, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$35,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$2,701,898, 16 December 1979

Gross USA:

$31,755,742

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$92,455,742

Company Credits

Production Co:

Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, A-Team

Technical Specs

Runtime:

118 min 146 min (director's cut) 142 min (TV)

Sound Mix:

Stereo (35 mm prints) 70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) Stereo (Todd-AO)

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The coastal start sequence location is the same as the location in The Goonies (1985), which was co-written and executive-produced by Spielberg. It's where they look through the stone and match up the rocks while looking for the treasure.

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Goofs

When Kelso fires his machine guns while on the ground, the canopy on his plane is open, then closed, then we see him close it again.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Title Card: On December 7, 1941, the Naval Air Arm of the Imperial Japanese Fleet, in a surprise attack, struck the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor and hurtled an unsuspecting America into World War II.
Title Card: American citizens were stunned, shocked and outraged at this treacherous attack. On the West Coast, paranoia gripped the entire population as panic-stricken citizens were convinced that California was the next target of the Imperial Japanese Forces.
Title Card: Major General Joseph W. Stilwell, ...
[...]

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Crazy Credits

During the closing credits shooting explosions are seen.

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Alternate Versions

There is one single difference in music between the 6-channel and 4-channel/mono mixes, according to expanded soundtrack liner notes: the cue "The Sub Commander", about a minute long. The biggest change between the two is that in the standard version, there are four uses of timpani near the end, but in the alternate version used on the 70mm 6-channel release, there is no timpani on the third of the four spots. On home video, the standard appears on the theatrical edition Blu-ray, while the alternate is found on extended edition DVD and Blu-ray as well as the music-only extended track on DVD.

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Connections

Featured in Spielberg on Spielberg (2007)

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Soundtracks

Over There
(uncredited)
Written by George M. Cohan
Performed by Slim Pickens

User Reviews

A comic war epic snatched from real headlines!

As outlandish and hysterical as the war insanity of 1941 may seem, the plot tracks almost exactly a real incident reported the night of Feb. 24, 1942, in Los Angeles that began when Navy intelligence reported an attack by unidentified objects on their radar could be expected within the next 10 hours. Early the morning of the 25, radar tracked objects 120 miles west of Los Angeles and a blackout was ordered, triggering a flood of reports about enemy planes. Planes wre reported by the coast artillery near Long Beach (25 of them at 12,000 feet). Four batteries of anti aircraft guns at Santa Monica opened fire on a balloon with a flare and all hell broke loose, with so much ack-ack and searchlights scanning the sky that utter confusion reigned for at least three hours with reports of swarms of planes (hundreds in some cases) flying in at every altitude imaginable. Some 1,440 rounds of ammunition were fired at airplanes that never dropped a single bomb. There were reports four enemy planes had been shot down, including one that supposedly landed in flames at a Hollywood intersection. If this all sounds familiar, read on. At dawn, the only damage found was caused by stray ack-ack fire and traffic wrecks during the blackout. The Navy said the next day there were no enemy planes. The Army interviewed people and decided there were at least one to five planes over LA. The War Department then announced the planes must have come from secret air fields in California or Mexico or from Japanese submarines. The next day the Los Angeles Times criticized the "considerable public excitement and confusion" caused by the alert that scared 2 million people. One California politician wanted to know if it was a calculated prank to move California's defense industries inland to other states. The Washington Post followed on Feb. 27 with condemnation of the military's stubborn silence on the issue and the New York Times jumped in on Feb. 28 by calling the entire episode "incredible" and a display of "expensive incompetence." The movie is a wonderful glimpse of this real hysteria, a real incident and with quotes pulled right out of newspaper articles. When Robert Stack wants to know "where are the bombs?" that is the same question the Air Force and Navy asked when reports came in about the thousands of planes attacking LA. All this information is available from government files on Air Force history from the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C. The Japanese, by the way never flew planes over LA, but did fly over Seattle, they said after the war. I LOVE 1941. It got everything absolutely right. Right down to Belushi's plane crashing into the street and crazies going off searching for hidden airfields near Bakersfield or Barstow or where ever. This was NOT a comedy. It was just about comical people. It should have won an Oscar for BEST DOCUMENTARY.