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Kilgore: Charlie don't surf!

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Soldiers are already crashing the stage as Bill Graham gets the helicopter crew to rev up the engines but the two Green Beret security guards that are watching the girls have quite a delayed reaction and act as if nothings happening at all. See more...

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Laurence Fishburne (who played Tyrone "Clean" Miller) lied about his age to get cast. He was 14 when production started, but told director Francis Ford Coppola that he was 17. See more...

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Apocalypse Now (1979) - 12 corrections

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, War

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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There's a shot of a jet crashed in the mud on the shore of the Nung River in a classic scene as the PBR sails underneath it. This makes for a great shot and may be the way WWII airplanes crashed, but it's not the way B52's crash. At the rates of speed and high altitudes they fly a jet aiming down at the ground like that would be in a million pieces and not sticking up in the mud. Even if the tail section were blown off it wouldn't crash this way and that's why there are absolutely no pictures of a Viet Nam combat era B52's tail section that has crashed in this way. [The crash site wreckage you see is entirely typical of a low-level event such as an attempted emergency landing. The tail of an airliner or heavy bomber is often the only piece of piece of wreckage left after such an incident.]
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Captain Willard says, "the VC knew his name by now and they were scared of him" as he marks his destination with an arrow on his map of the Vietnamese Cambodian border. The spot that he marks on this map is wrong because the boat follows the Nung River all the way to his destination at Kurtz' camp and there's no river anywhere near the spot he marks on this map. [When he marks the map, he is marking the trail of Kurtz, not his final destination.]
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The Frenchmen with the accordion says, "Dien Bien Phu is a trap" but the closed captioning is wrong and reads "that serious". [That is a subtitling error, and not a mistake within the movie.]
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As Captain Willard talks to the sergeant about getting some fuel he says, "I carry priority papers from Com-Sec intelligence II-Corp". "II-Corp" is left out in the closed captioning. [Subtitles often omit words if there are too many to fit on the screen; this is a subtitling choice, and is not a mistake.]
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On the morning after the USO show, a helicopter is shown hovering above and behind the bleachers. The helicopter is an OH-58 Kiowa. This helicopter was not used in Vietnam during that time. [The OH-58A was first deployed to Vietnam in early Autumn 1969. The Kiowa operated with air cavalry, attack helicopter, and field artillery units. The OH-58A could also be configured as a troop transport, MedEvac, or for external lift missions using an external hook. Kiowas were commonly paired with the AH-1G Huey Cobra. The Kiowa would fly low to draw enemy fire, "trolling for fire, mark the target, and call in the Cobra to attack. (source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/oh-58a.htm).]
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In northern South Vietnam (now central Vietnam), there are no navigable rivers that lead into Cambodia. [I don't recall, in all the times I've seen this movie, that they stated that they were on a river in central Vietnam. The Mekong Delta, to the south, most certainly goes into Cambodia.]
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Willard is tearing the confidential mission paper into large pieces and throws them into the river. The pieces are large enough to reveal a lot of information or to be easily pieced together if picked up. The proper way to dispose of secret information would be to burn the pieces of paper. [True. But it's made clear several times that Willard isnt exactly the "model" officer. He probably knows full well they could be read, but could care less.]
Edit Corrected by RJR99SS
Willard is fully decked out with American gear and weaponry. This should not have been allowed; American personnel operating covertly in Laos and Cambodia were carefully re-equipped with enemy, untraceable, or foreign weapons (e.g. the Swedish K submachine gun) and clothing. If they were captured or killed, the USA could then deny any knowledge of these technically illegal missions - much harder to do if they're sporting an army-issue M16 and regulation clothing. [There are several possible explanations: The M-16 could belong to the PBR. But M-16s were very much in use also on covert operations. A Swedish submachine gun, as well as the sometimes used silenced Sten-gun, is as traceable to US forces as any American weapon. Willard's uniform is actually Cambodian, although widely used by US Special Forces.]
Edit Corrected by Airborne Ranger
When the PBR arrives at the supply station during a torrential downpour, there are several dry gaps where no rain is falling - a dead giveaway of a rain machine. [It was real rain. This part of the film was nearly never made as the entire set was being washed away on a daily basis, as well as the cast and crew suffering all sorts of dirty water related illnesses. Tropical rain storms do sometimes appear as bombardments or torrents of water like this.]
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During the scene where the PBR crew shoots up the Sampan, Clean's M-60 machine gun is loaded with blanks. The tips of the linked cartridges being fed into the gun are red, in other words not live rounds. It was mentioned that red tipped rounds are red 7.62 tracer rounds, but no ammo feed would consist entirely of tracers - they're only ever every 3 or 4 rounds. [The rounds in the scene are definitely blanks, but personally I spent many a night with my door gunner reconfiguring our M-60 door gun ammo belts to full tracer rounds.]
Edit Time
When the air cav attacks the village, one of the huts is flying a North Vietnamese flag, yet they are in South Vietnam, and the Viet Cong wouldn't be dumb enough to fly the 'enemy' flag where everyone can see it. [The village is a known Viet Cong fortress. Kilgore has already said that American boats are fired at every time they pass. Flying a North Vietnamese flag isn't telling the Americans anything they don't already know.]
Edit Time
In his final speech to Willard, Colonel Kurtz talks of the Vietcong's "genius" for chopping off the arms of children inoculated against polio. But polio is an oral vaccine, not given in the arm but as a liquid (often on a sugar lump). [The Polio vaccine can also be given by injection. Around the time of the Vietnam war it was more often than not given by injection than by mouth.]
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