Warbird Information Exchange

Last night on Sci-Fi Channel there was a rather stupid made-for-TV movie called "Reign of the Gargoyles". The premise was that the Nazis figured out some way to bring stone gargoyles to life, and they started wiping out both sides (Nazis and Allies). They were ripping aircraft from the skies, etc. (Cut me some slack... it was my wife's idea to watch the movie! ). The storyline centered around an 8th AF B-17G crew. They used a real B-17G for most of the ground shots and a few air shots, but most of the flying was CGI. For the most part, the CGI wasn't too bad, except for the cheesy-looking explosions when a Bf-109 would get tagged by a gunner. The Bf-109s, Ju-88s, and He-111 looked quite good in CGI. The CGI B-17s looked good except for the detail around the radio compartment top hatch, which was awful! There was also a brief CGI shot of some Mustangs. My question is, which Fort did they use for this film? It was shot in 2007. It has all of its turrets, and the longer non-Cheyenne tail turret. The paint was OD green with fairly realistic unit markings. Most of the interior shots were done on a sound stage and did not look realistic at all (VERY poor, in fact).

Cheers!

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Dean Hemphill, K5DH
Port Charlotte, Florida

I thought the animation was not too good. However, I did watch the entire movie because it had a good plot.

I've got it on my Tivo, but I won't have time to watch it until I get back from Midland.

Is there any way you can snag some vid-caps from it so that we would have some stills to work from in identifying the B-17 they used? Sorry if this is a silly question. I don't know much about TiVo. I still use a VCR!

Cheers!

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Dean Hemphill, K5DH
Port Charlotte, Florida

I just watched the thing on Tivo and, in my opinion, every single shot of the B-17 and other aircraft was computer rendered or composited. Some of the effects are more successful than others. They have trouble recreating realistic motion in flight, but the stationary ground shots work pretty convincingly.

"Gargoyles" was produced by a company called Unified Film Organization (UFO, get it?) that specializes in cranking out low-budget sci-fi/fantasy flicks for the TV and home entertainment market. Virtually all of their projects are shot for peanuts in and around Sofia, Bulgaria. The former Soviet-bloc locations work very well for war-torn France and they have good access to old German uniforms and equipment (guns, trucks, kubelwagens... but not planes). However, the US stuff is clearly much harder to for them to come by and, when coupled with the filmmakers scanty knowledge of the era, results in some true laffers for the historically minded.

I think my favorite bit of eye rolling occurred about the time they starting aiming the mortar at the Messerschmitt...

Points for getting the planes right, though.

Anyway, it was just a few unintentional laughs and a scantily-clad babe shy of earning classic B movie status.

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What is red, furry and on your six?

I agree that all the planes were computer generated. I stopped my DVR and looked real close at the B-17 parked in one of the scenes. To my eyes the nose was too long.

The sound effects were good and bad. The Bf-109s had the characteristic whistling sound as they flew by (good), but the B-17 engine sound was clearly a single-engine aircraft such as an AT-6 (bad).

When the B-17 gunners tagged the Bf-109s, they all blew up in mid air in huge fireballs (didn't usually happen), and the CGI for that was pitiful. And yes, the crap about shooting down the '109 using a mortar was really stupid.

There was one cockpit shot, looking out the windshield from behind the pilots' seats, that was definitely made in the flight deck of a real B-17, one which has modern General Aviation radios installed in the center of the panel above the throttle quadrant. No Garmins or anything that fancy; looked more like Kings or Narcos with what appeared to be red LED readouts. This was either a real shot, or one done with CGI based on a photo of one of today's remaining flyers.

Cheers!

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Dean Hemphill, K5DH
Port Charlotte, Florida

Wow, that was 2 hours I'll never get back. And I usually like that sort of thing. They should send the script to Frank Miller and see how he retools it. I was impressed that they were wearing the bunny suits though.