Do such movies exist? If so, how do they portray the "american military" ? I sometimes imagine such movies...

The soviet heroes, acting in perfect unison with one another as they shoot down american soldiers left and right with their badly damaged (but still eminently serviceable) AK-47's. The american soldiers in the meantime, are bickering about who's in command, whether they should run away or surrender, and in any event their fancy hi-tech equipment doesn't work, comically expressed with backfiring rifles and grenades that shower their foes with confetti.

I really want to know if a soviet-version of Rambo was ever made, or some story about a soviet super-soldier who's just not gonna "take it any more", and goes after NATO singlhanded.

There HAVE to have been at least some war-type movies made in the Soviet Union between the 1950's and 1980's, right? Where and what are they? Seems just about every war movie I've ever seen is either from american or british perspective.

I can only think of 'The Beast of War' from 1988 about a tank crew in Afghanistan. I don't think it counts though, it's an American film.

__________________
All Moderation in Purple

These are not exactly war movies but there is the Soviet version of Star Trek<<link>>

And IIRC there was a TV series about a alcoholic CIA spy.

How bizarre! I'm so intrigued I must see if I can find dubbed/translated episodes.

__________________
Now while I might be amused by Cthulhians, I don't necessarily distrust them to carry out the functions of government. -- JayUtah

What's it like being a skeptic in the Middle East? Check out my blog.

I'm not sure if they had movies portraying the american military in a bad light. Soviet era literature, film etc. would be used as propaganda highlighting Soviet accomplishments and were done more to promote nationalism and pride. In most cases facism would be the opponent. They did have a Soviet James Bond.

__________________
" The universe is running away
I heard it on the news just the other day
There's this new stuff called dark energy
We can't measure and we can't see..." - from Jimmy Buffett's What if the hokey pokey is all it really is about?

There were quite a few. However, the themes tended to be quite different from those of American 80s action films.

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein is one of the most famous Soviet directors of that age, and he made several war films.

__________________
"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

Yep, they did make one. Here is some info on it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089721/

However, IIRC, their Rambo buys it in the end.

__________________
Fiorello: What am I supposed to say?
Otis B. Driftwood: Tell them you're not here.
Fiorello: I don't think they'll believe me.
Otis B. Driftwood: Start talking. They'll believe you.
A Night at the Opera (1935)

In the book, [the American] Rambo dies in the end....

__________________
"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." — Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

441!!!! :)

Solaris and Taming Of The Fire (russian space program)

Do a serch at www.dogpile.com and astronautix.com

ops: I forgot about that, and that was why Kirk Douglas left the film, he was to play Col. Trautman, because he thought the story should have been more faithful to the book by having Rambo die.

__________________
Fiorello: What am I supposed to say?
Otis B. Driftwood: Tell them you're not here.
Fiorello: I don't think they'll believe me.
Otis B. Driftwood: Start talking. They'll believe you.
A Night at the Opera (1935)

But then you couldn't have Rambo 2 . . .

__________________
Free speech is no problem
It's listening that costs

A few that I've seen:
Incident at Map Grid 38-80, the Soviet "Hunt for Red October," which is about a disaster aboard a US submarine nearly causing a nuclear war. This one is from the tail end of the Brezhnev era, and it is bad. It prortrays the Americans in the same kind of light Hollywood films like Red Dawn portray Soviets. But this is pretty much the kind of movie archman is imagining.
The Cranes Are Flying, a 1957 film about the Soviet experience in WWII. This is actually vastly better than almost any American movie about the war, because it is about lives destroyed rather than mindless triumphalism.
The Fall of Berlin, a 1949 film that bestows all credit for the Allied victory in WWII upon Stalin. The final scene is incredible- as soon as Soviet soldiers plant their flag atop the Reichstag, the war ends. Stalin arrives in his airplane and everyone runs out to greet him- Frenchmen, Britons, Americans, concentration camp prisoners, and (of course) Soviets all run up yelling "STALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNN!" It really must be seen to be believed.

The thing is, there just aren't that many Soviet action films. Some of the few that did exist, like The White Sun of the Desert became classics that are still widely viewed in Russia today. Supposedly The White Sun of the Desert is a favorite of the Russian cosmonauts. It's a Soviet spaghetti western set during the Russian Civil War.

__________________
"I like the Walrus best," said Alice.........

oh, darn?

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I think I've seen exerpts from that film in a TV documentary about Stalin. It was made in a time when Stalin was all-powerful, very paranoid, and big on rewriting history to put himself in the most favourable light. Soviet film directors were definately inspired to make him this great saviour - if Stalin didn't like the film I'm sure they wouldn't live very long.

__________________
Now while I might be amused by Cthulhians, I don't necessarily distrust them to carry out the functions of government. -- JayUtah

What's it like being a skeptic in the Middle East? Check out my blog.

There was some super-soldier film character, I think "The Scorpion", whose films at least made it to Western Europe.

The closest I've actually seen was almost post-Cold War, circa 1990. While waiting for clouds to clear at the 6-meter telescope (a common pastime, apparently), I was idly watching the satellite feed of Moscow TV. I realized that there were depths of boredom I had never considered when I found myself watching an accordion contest... Anyway, there was a movie whose name I didn't catch which paralleled some of the 1970s US films about Vietnam. Afghan-war vet, psychologically traumatized by what he's seen and done, tries to come to grips with his return to a none-too-helpful society. The defining scene for me had the protagonist and lady friend on a bus behind a truck of farmers' wares. Truck skids off road and overturns, spraying produce everywhere. Bus screeches to a halt and empties. Passengers scurry about grabbing up vegetables, leaving only the hero and the woman with him to worry about whether the truck driver was still alive and in need of attention.

I eventually realized that the parallels between US/Vietnam and USSR/Afghanistan were in fact deeper than I had thought.

I saw that too. He was flying in a TB-3 and landed in a DC-3 .
That had the North Korean propaganda with the children and teacher and the lesson that "With hate, you can conquer everything".

I saw a documentary on TV a couple weeks back. It said Stalin only took one plane flight ever, as he was apparently terrified of flying.

Rats. Sleuthing by a former student turns up evidence that this description was a hoax: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache...trol&hl=en

Note that you need to see the Google-cached copy to get the page.

I was pretty taken in - the whole thing does partake of some of the most dismal aspects of Socialist Realism, and fits with some of the 50s and 60s Soviet science fiction that did get dubbed and make its way west. (Or that dreadful Venus movie - Planeta Burg or Planet of Storms - whose footage got bought and incorporated into a couple of even more dreadful movies. I seem to recall Zsa Zsa Gabor as queen of the Cytherean Amazons).