Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years…

Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet troops invade…

Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000.
El Salvador and Honduras fall…

Greens Party gains control of West German Parliament.
Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil…

Mexico plunged into revolution…

NATO dissolves.
United States stands alone.

Red Dawn was the first movie to be released with a Motion Picture Association of America PG-13 rating

The Rough Riders

"Far better it is to dare mighty things ..
than take rank with those poor, timid spirits
who know neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt, 1899

Patrick Swayze as Jedd Eckert and Charlie Sheen as Matt Eckert, brothers who stick together and fight till the end

Lea Thompson as Erica Mason and Jennifer Grey as Toni Mason sisters who survive the invasion and travel via the underground to their grandfathers farm where they are finally handed off to the Wolverines to care for. The sisters eventually start to fight too and turn hard core by the end of the movie although one does die

C. Thomas Howell as Robert Morris the coolest dude in the movie, and Doug Toby as Aardvark (Arturo) who will live on as the guy holding the AK high over his head as he yells 'WOLVERINES" after a successful attack on some commies

Brad Savage as Danny who is a wuss (you'll see) and Darren Dalton as Daryl Bates who is a wuss and a traitor

These Mc Ds scenes are into he trailer.. The original trailer that comes on the laserdisc shows a scene with a tank rolling up to a McDonalds restaurant where enemy soldiers are eating. This scene does not appear in the final cut, and may have been removed due to a mass murder at a McDonalds in San Ysidro, CA, just weeks prior to the film's opening. - Wikipedia

The illustration of Genghis Khan in the high school classroom at the beginning of the film is a caricature of director John Milius. - Wikipedia

Red Dawn starts out at the high school in the town of Calumet, Colorado.

A group of young people who become partisans, utilizing guerrilla warfare to resist the resulting occupation... well wouldn't you if they shot your car ??

The group of kids runs away after seeing their school and cars get shot at. They head to Robert Morris' Dad's store and stock up on the essentials; soda, bow & arrow, radio, cans of soup and more soda.. they also get a few guns

There's a scene where they shovel ammo off a shelf into a box for the kids to take along on their escape.. but I noticed as I was preparing these images, they are really shoveling boxes of 'primed cases' (the shiny brass part of a bullet, but not the complete bullet so these wouldn't really help them unless they planned to reload in the hills... anyway a classic like this one shouldn't be picked apart, so lets move on.

So well stocked and still scared the kids head out of town, but encounter a roadblock... we all remember the next scene, and we all know what to do if we need to fill the radiator on our truck..

"It is World War Three down there, people are being killed."
~Jedd Eckard

Eventually the group gets up to the mountains and finds a place to hide out. They decide to wait it out, and start to hunt.. Robert Morris gets his first taste of blood (literally) That deer looks a little stiff, no?

Not the first time many of us saw this sticker, but it's been a common saying since the movie..  too bad for this guy it turned out to be true "They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers"

A great scene where the Commie general and some guy talk about form 4473, the ATF form we all fill out to buy guns in the US This may be the first and only time the form has been mentioned in a film.. and how true is it that an invading army could use these to locate gun owners??

Eventually the kids get bored of being scared in the hills so they come down to visit and find their town has been taken over and most of the fathers are in a prison camp made out of the drive in theatre. Now they are mad

="Boys! Avenge me! Aveeeeenge me!"

On the way back to the hills they stop by a friends house and get a few girls to join the group. The super hot Lea Thompson as Erica Mason and Jennifer Grey as Toni Mason. THey spend a while being pissed and scared then get into the hang of things and become as tough as the guys and they kick butt

11:59

The Chair is against the wall
The Chair is against the wall

John has a long mustache
John has a long mustache

Lea Thompson manages to look good while fighting commies as Erica Mason

So some commies drive up into the hills to explore on their day off and find a look out point and stop for pictures. This ends in a fight and the wolverines are born.

Arapaho National Forest

Founded by President Theodore Roosevelt under the Forest Service Act of 1905, the forest comprises 40,000 acres of virgin timber and of the largest strands of blue spruce in the American west.

Park camping facilities closed in winter.

American history, I know this well.

Arapaho National Battlefield

Here was a great peasant uprising in 1908 of wild Indians. They were crushed by president Theodore Roosevelt leading imperialist armies and cowboys. The battle lasted all winter. More than 35,000 were killed. It was the greatest battle of the American west.

The Wolverines use clever methods to ambush the commies all around the area using their own weapons against them

These covered dug outs worked well. The one commie kinda faints as he is shot, dropping like a girl

Robert Morris develops a blood lust and to illustrate it they show him carving the number of kills on the stock of his AK47.. I count 35. He uses a cool butterfly knife to cave the marks too

Toni Mason leaves an interesting package for the commies at the propaganda store

Soviet-American Friendship Center

People of America Arise and Join the Revolution

what is a wolverine?
A small animal ... like a badger, but terribly ferocious

It is also the name of the local school sports collective

You must kill every one of them eventually

As they take out the commie patrols they start to mark their kills with the school mascot, the Wolverine

All good movies have a montage, this is the one for Red Dawn, we see the group take out lots of commies in various ways

The Wolverines shoot all the coolest Soviet weaponry like this RPG and these RPKs?

Another shot of an RPG and a DShK? OK the wolverines don't shoot this large one, but it was a cool pic..

Remember when I wrote "Brad Savage as Danny who is a wuss" well here is the proof. Look at this guy shooting the RPG and AK

Danny being a wuss shooting an AK and Toni shooting the larger RPK like she has a pair..

Doug Toby as Aardvark (Arturo) in the classic 'AK in the air' image that to many of us means Wolverines. Erica shooting a DShK ?

There are many explosions..

Erica finds a pilot and he explains what is going on in China while the US is invaded

Did someone ask for Soviet winter camo? Red Dawn has it all

There is drama too.. like what do you do with a traitor??

The pilot and Aardvark (Arturo) are killed but take out a tank with them

Eventually they needed to end the movie, so the Wolverines let their guard down and get pretty well shot up

Two fake Russian Hind Helicopters (but fairly good movie copies) come in and start to take out the Wolverines, Robert Morris jumps on his horse and shoots while riding to cover

Eventually his blood thirst overwhelms him and he takes on a flying tank (Hind) one on one (and looses)

Erica also gets shot and dies, but in one of her last scenes there is a very interesting pistol grip on the RPK(?) near her head..

After she is dead a commie finds her but lets take a closer look at the AK he is holding.. Bakelite 7.62x39 Magazine triangle side folder.. woo hoo yet another AK variant in Red Dawn

So in a last ditch effort to free some of their friends in town the remaining Wolverines head back to town to blow things up, get shot a bunch more, then die, They stop to hand out AK from this truck along the way

One of the bad guys is this guy. He has a GG-95 PD (Jati-Matic submachine gun) from Finland .. another cool gun, but not an AK

The Cuban bad guy is this guy, this is the end of the action, and about the end of the movie..

Jedd carving the names on the rock with a RPK on his back.

Partisan Rock

In the early days of World War 3,
guerillas, mostly children
placed the names of their lost
upon this rock.

They fought here alone
and gave up their lives,
so that this nation
should not perish from the earth.