Von Richthofen and Brown

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Von Richthofen and Brown
Directed by	Roger Corman
Produced by	Gene Corman
Written by	John William Corrington Joyce Hooper Corrington
Starring	John Phillip Law Don Stroud Barry Primus
Music by	Hugo Friedhofer
Cinematography	Michael Reed
Editing by	Alan Collins
Release date(s)	July 28, 1971 September 10
Running time	97 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
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Von Richthofen and Brown, also known as The Red Baron is a 1971 film directed by Roger Corman. It starred John Phillip Law and Don Stroud as the titular characters.

1 Plot Summary
2 Production
3 Factual Errors
4 Cast
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Plot Summary

Manfred von Richthofen (John Phillip Law) arrives from the Cavalry, at a squadron in the German airforce under the command of Oswald Boelcke. He quickly becomes an ace. Meanwhile, a Canadian pilot named Roy Brown arrives at a British squadron, where the top scoring pilot is Victoria Cross winner, Major Lanoe Hawker. Brown ruffles the feathers of his squadron mates by refusing to drink a toast to von Richthofen. Von Richthofen and fellow squadron pilot, Hermann Goering clash when squadron commander Boelcke is killed after a mid air collision. von Richthofen is given command of the squadron. Outraged when he is ordered to have his aircraft camouflaged, von Richthofen has the squadron's aircraft painted in bright conspicuous colours, claiming that gentlemen should not hide from their enemies. Later, von Richthofen is wounded during an aerial battle; meanwhile Lanoe Hawker is killed. Brown and his squadron decide to attack von Richthofen's airfield, destroying their aircraft on the ground. However, von Richthofen, with the help of a batch of new fighters from Anthony Fokker, the 'Richthofen Flying Circus' launches a counter attack on the British airfield. Brown later kills von Richthofen during an aerial combat, and Hermann Goering takes over command of the 'Flying Circus'.

[edit] Production

Filmed in Ireland, the film used a large number of aircraft for the aerial sequences. These include replica aircraft from the 1966 film, The Blue Max, as well as replica S.E.5s converted from Currie Wot aircraft. Unmodified De Havilland Tiger Moths and Stampe SV.4s were also used. Corman also used many planes and sets left over from Blake Edwards's Darling Lili. Rather than wait for good weather, Corman had his fliers fly every day, then organised the sequences into ones with cloud, clear skies, and partly cloudy.^[1]

[edit] Factual Errors

The film contains many factual errors:

Von Richthofen is shown flying a Fokker D.VII before flying the Fokker Dr.I, when in fact the Dr.1 came out earlier than the D.VII
Herman Goering was not in the 'Flying Circus', until he took over command of the squadron several months after von Richthofen's death.
Lanoe Hawker and Roy Brown were never in the same squadron. Hawker served with the Royal Flying Corps, while Roy Brown was in the Royal Naval Air Service. Furthermore Hawker died in November 1916 and Brown did not begin flying combat missions until March 1917.
Roy Brown and his squadron were flying Sopwith Camels, and not S.E.5s on the day of Manfred von Richthofen's death
Brown may not have actually killed von Richtofen.