Stripes (1981) on Netflix
A bad day costs John Winger his girlfriend Anita, his job and his car. He talks his friend Russell Ziskey into enlisting, and Sergeant Hulka runs their basic training platoon.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb6.8/1086,860 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
John Winger drives a cab in Louisville and ends a single day with no job, no apartment, no car and no girlfriend. He persuades his best friend, Russell Ziskey, that the Army is the answer for both of them. Basic training places them in a platoon of misfits under Sergeant Hulka, who has no patience for John's attitude. John and Russell begin seeing Stella Hansen and Louise Cooper, two military police officers who pull them out of trouble more than once. When Hulka finds out the pair slipped away without leave, he punishes the whole platoon, and Russell has to stop John from walking out for good.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Stripes (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- P. J. Soles reported that Dennis Quaid had read for the role of Russell and that Ramis was reluctant to appear in the film, but that Murray told Ramis he did not wish to work with anyone else and would leave the film unless he played the other principal.
- During filming of one of the obstacle course scenes, Reitman told the actors to grab Oates and drag him into the mud without telling the veteran actor about it, to see what would happen and get a genuine reaction. Oates' front tooth got chipped in the process and he yelled at Reitman for what he did.
- Reitman, Goldberg and Ramis were involved in a detailed negotiation with the Department of Defense to make the film conducive to military recruitment, in exchange for subsidies in the form of free labor and location and equipment access; requests for script rewrites were granted.
- The idea came to Ivan Reitman while he was en route to the premiere of Meatballs, and his pitch for the film was "Cheech and Chong join the army".
- The EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle "was built from a 1973-1978-era GMC Motorhome" and was designed to resemble "a family Winnebago - with a nice color scheme and user-friendly interior - but came with bulletproof shields and flamethrowers."
- According to Reitman, Kim Basinger agreed to play Stella but her agent demanded way too much money; three hundred actresses were also considered for the role.
