Operation Dumbo Drop (1995) on Netflix
PG19951h 47mActionAdventureComedy
Capt. Sam Cahill promises the Montagnard villagers of Dak Nhe a new elephant after theirs is killed. With his replacement, Capt. T.C. Doyle, he must get one through the jungle.
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- IMDb5.3/1010,323 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes31%
Trailer
Plot summary
Stationed in Vietnam in 1968, Green Beret Capt. Sam Cahill has spent his tour building trust with the Montagnard villagers of Dak Nhe, whose land overlooks the Ho Chi Minh Trail. With his tour ending, he trains his successor, Capt. T.C. Doyle. When a village child takes a candy bar from Doyle's pack, NVA soldiers find the wrapper and read it as proof of cooperation; on orders, NVA Capt. Quang kills the villagers' elephant. The villagers blame Doyle, and Cahill promises a replacement before a spiritual festival. Major Pederson orders the two captains to deliver an elephant, with Sp4 Harvey Ashford and Sp5 Lawrence Farley assigned to help and supply officer David Poole pressed into service. A trader sells them an elephant named Bo Tat, which answers the commands of a child handler, Linh.
Cast
- Dinh Thien Leas Linh
- Hoang Lyas Col. Nguyen
- Vo Trung Anhas Lt. Quang, NVA
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Operation Dumbo Drop (1995)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film drew on a real U.S. Army effort to air-drop elephants to South Vietnamese villages. Danny Glover said one such operation ran on April 4, 1968, and got little coverage because Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis the same day; the story came from retired Major Jim Morris.
- Denis Leary said the shoot was so long that he, Ray Liotta and Danny Glover kept photos of what they would buy with their pay to keep going: Leary a property in Connecticut, Liotta a house outside Los Angeles, Glover a property in San Francisco.
- For scenes of the elephant aboard a marine boat, I-beams were fitted under the deck to bear her weight and ballast added to keep the boat afloat. The aircraft scenes were shot in cuts using fake and mechanical elephants, with the real elephant used only for close-ups.
- While filming in Thailand, the production shipped the elephant's food and water, bathing water included, from the U.S. and bathed her daily in purified water, and young Thai men were hired to hold umbrellas over her whenever the cameras were not rolling.
- Tai, a 26-year-old Asian elephant, played Bo Tat because her calm, friendly disposition kept her placid during scenes with simulated gunfire, and her lying-down and standing-up moments came from an animal trainer rather than sedation.
- The song "When I See an Elephant Fly", from Disney's animated Dumbo with music by Oliver Wallace, is the only Disney animated song to be used in a soundtrack album on Hollywood Records.
