I was justa bit curios to see what you gentlemen would choose as your favirite prisoner of war escape movie? And the reason(s) why?

I'm talking about classics such as:

Colditz w/ Sir John Mills and Eric Portman.

The Password Is Courage w/ Dirk Bogarde.

The Great Escape w/ Steve McQueen, James Donald, Karl-Otto Alberty etc.

Stalag 17 w/ William Holden, Don Taylor etc.

Escape From Sobibor w/ Rutger Hauer.

Escape of the Birdmen w/ Richard Basehart.

Kapo: An old but very realistic foreign made film.

My choice will be left out until/if I get some hits here. ;-D

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

Stalag 17 is one of my all time favorite movies--not just one of my all time favorite POW movies. The Great Escape is another one of my favorties. I've seen Escape From Sobibor once before and thought it was quite good. Can't say I've seen another of the others though. One other POW movie that I really enjoyed that's not on your list is The One That Got Away. It's about Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, the only German to be taken prisoner in Britain and return to Germany.

I have seen King Rat, Bridge on the River Kwai, Hart's War, and Von Ryan's Express and I wasn't too impressed by any of them. Not WWII, but there was a made for TV movie on A&E last year about John McCain's stay in the Hanoi Hilton. I thought it was pretty good. Faith of my Fathers was the name of the movie, based on the book by McCain with the same title.

The Great Escape is my personal favorite escape film, I could honestly watch it once a week, there are so many great actors in this film, including the greatest film nazi of all Karl-Otto Alberty, (I really like his second name ). Although I prefer him as the Tiger commander in Kelly's Heroes.

Stalag 17 is a very close second, and King Rat & Bridge on the River Kwai were also good. I don't have much to say for Hart's War. I haven't seen either Colditz or The One That Got Away, but they both sound great and I've just put them on my blockbuster video list.

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"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance." Socrates

I actually don't like Escape Movies - perhaps there were just too many of them on TV in the 70s/80s....but if pushed, I'd go for 'The Great Escape' for much the same reasons as Otto. The cast is terrific and some scenes are classic.

I'd quite like to see 'Escape From Sobibor' again - only saw it once on TV many years ago.

The UK BBC TV series, 'Colditz', screened in 1973, was a very expensive series for the time and several episodes were, IMHO, superior to many 'Escape Movies'.....

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Still love 'The Wooden Horse'.

Great choices and some good additions to the list. One I forgot to list yesterday is: The Grande Illusion--a WWI pow escape movie. Another pow escape movie that i'd like to mention that I think is very good, and quite different from the average escape movie is: Hannible Brooks. Oliver Reed, Til Kiwi, Wolfgang Priess, Helmut Lohner and Michael J. Pollard, were all very good in this movie. This is the movie where Oliver Reed (Hannible) is choseen to take care of "Lucy" the Elephant, at a zoo in Munich. The zoo gets bombed, Lucy was injured, and they are given orders to walk the elephant to another zoo elsewhere. One might think it a dumb movie but, it has many elements that I think makes it a great movie.

Have to agree with Otto on the actor: Karl-Otto Alberty. I always did enjoy watching him in what movies I have seen him in. Alberty was also great in The Winds of War and War and Remembrance maxi-series as well as Major Diepel in: Battle of the Bulge.

At any rate, it really is a difficult choice for me to make on which I liked the most. It was between these three choices:

1) Colditz.
2) The Password Is Courage.
3) The Great Escape. (Not necessarily listed in order of preferance)

I chose Colditz, as my favorite escape movie due to Sir John Mills and Eric Portman's great acting. It's a tie between the other two.

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

I'm not too much into this kind of movies either, I always have the feeling that once's you've seen one, you've seen all of them. However there is a classical black and white film called "the Cow and the Prisonner" with Fernandel I really appreciate because it shows something esle than just the "heroes and the bad ones". It's about a French pow who manages to escape through Germany with the help of the German farmers who don't like Nazis. His crazy idea is to cross the entire country with his "Kg" coat and walking with a cow. It's so incredible that he just walks through every control post, by keeping cool and saying that he is a pow waliking the cow back to the farm. His buddies who tried a more traditional escape are eventually busted, be he manages his escape.

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Hmm i saw a good POW film ages ago, and I have forgotten the title, the name ect but at the end two POWs escape in a Fire engine. They are driving down the road and a German army collum stops to let some escaped prisoners escape!

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I'm with Martin, I too would like to see Escape From Sobibor again as it was more of a factual film.

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Regards, Richard

There back this Xmas 2008

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Ahhh, your thinking of one of my all time favorites: The Password is Courage. It has Dirk Bogarde as British SgtMaj Coward. He and his fellow companion--the Corporal; are the ones who escape in the fire engine. I love that movie and are hoping it will make it to region 1-or 0, DvD.

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

Forgot to mention that just yesterday at Wal-Fart, I picked up a copy of Colditz, which has the guy who played Maj Dick Winters of Band of Brothers fame. It's a 2-part mini-series--and sight unseen (and never heard of before seeing it at Wally-World (fart excluded this time) I picked it up for under $10.00.

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

The password is courage is indeed an awesome film.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

What was the name of the movie in which Sylvester Stallone played along with Pele?? That movie wasnt bad.

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

Victory it was called. Pretty good movie. I'm partial to Stallone. He's one of those actors that you either love or hate.

Escape to Victory, pretty fun film thats for sure. A bunch of guy did a re-enactment of it over here a last year at an event and it was awesome.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

yes im not a fan of stallone either.... but I love Pele!!

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

I would have to go with 'The Great Escape'. An all star cast to boot. I have never watched 'The Password is Courage'. Might have to look it up.

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

Definately do so. I saw this great movie for the first time and was on cable TV on Presidential election day. This was when the great Ronald Reagan was re-elected as President. I remember it so because they kept scrolling election returns while the movie was playing.

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

The Great Escape is in a class all its own. But I am a HUUUGE Steve McQueen fan. Stalag 17 is also very good. Does anyone know the name of the prisoner film that depicts germans in the UK?

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I find it odd that 'Escape from Sobibor' is always seen as a POW movie. Sobibor was an extermination camp for Jews primariy. They were certainly not seens as POWs, and the Geneva convention never came anywhere near them. In the same way the Soviet soldiers who were sent there, though originally POWs, were to be exterminated in the same way. It's a bit like calling Auschwitz a 'POW camp'!

Paul