Gunbus (1986)

Luke (Jeff Osterhage) and Barney (Scott McGinnis) are bank robbers in the southwest United States who use way too much dynamite to bust open safes.  After having left a series of flattened banks in their wake, their luck runs out.  Sneaking into an impressive-looking bank, they encounter multiple gunmen awaiting them.  As World War I is currently being fought in Europe, the pair are forced to join the military and sent to the front.

In France, the pair are marching along in uniform with rifles slung on their shoulders when a German bomber approaches.  The thing is ludicrously immense, a building in the sky with 4 bomb bays and a two-story cockpit with a giant wheel for steering, like on a ship.  Yes, this is Steampunk WWI.  While everyone else takes cover, Luke and Barney set aside their rifles and scrounge through their rucksacks for revolvers.  The pair then proceed to shoot down the bomber by killing the pilot.  Gee that was easy.  Taking advantage of the confusion, the pair jump into an abandoned truck and drive away.  Yes, our heroes are now deserters.

They stop outside an officers' club but they aren't officers.  However, a pair of drunkards wander out of the club and the deserting duo have an idea!  Soon, the two aviation officers enter the club and buy drinks all around.  Apparently, they got to take their ill-gotten bank robbery money with them to Europe.  After entirely too much drinking, Luke bets one of the real aviation officers that he can fly a plane.  Early the next morning, Luke and Barney find themselves in a Vickers FB5 (AKA Gunbus) which Luke pilots into the air.  Of course, he has no idea where he is going and cannot find his way back to the airfield where he took off.  Instead, he crashes into another airfield.  The commander there considers shooting them until they tell him about the bomber they shot down.  It so happens that he is hunting the Moby Dick of the German military, a gargantuan Zepplin that dominates the sky.  Luke and Barney are only too happy to go hunting for it.

Like the ludicrous bomber, the Zepplin is steampunk-inspired and way too big.  It has a submarine aspect to it where it hides in the clouds and peeks at the landscape through a downward facing periscope.  Silly.  Like a battleship, it has multiple anti-aircraft cannons and many machinegun emplacements.  Unlike the real airships of WWI, this one doesn't use altitude to its advantage.  The planes of WWI could not fly high enough to shoot down the giant gasbags, which was why they were used as bombers.

The British and French lack the steampunk aircraft until the final confrontation.  Fritz (Ronald Lacey) is the mechanic at the British airfield and he has built a variety of ludicrous flying machines.  With their normal planes destroyed by the Zepplin bombing the airfield, the flyers must resort to the crazy creations of Fritz that are hidden in the nearby woods.  Who knew a model T could fly?

Extremely campy oddball Western.  It was titled Sky Pirates for the US market.  This is one of those bad movies that prove to be fun anyway.  Just okay.

Alliances Led to World War

Prior to the First World War, many of the European countries collected into alliances.  France, the UK, and Russia formed the Triple Entente in 1894 while Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed the Triple Alliance.  This balancing act of alliance was in order to discourage war.  However, when a Bosnian Serb separatist killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Sarajevo, a domino effect of the alliances saw Germany invade France.  Had the alliances not been triggered, the war might have been between Russia - which viewed itself as a natural ally of the Slavic Serbs - and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Today, we have NATO.  NATO was established in the wake of World War II and was specifically meant to be a bulwark against Soviet expansion into Europe.  The war which had begun with the intent of freeing Poland from the Germany Nazis and the Soviet Communists, ended with the Soviet Communists in control of Poland, half of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Balkan countries.  Western Europe was understandably concerned that the Soviets might keep going.  However, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and all the captured Eastern European countries resumed independence.  West and East Germany reunited.  NATO should have had a party and closed shop.  Instead, it decided to expand.

The once defensive alliance was now marching toward the borders of - not the Soviet Union - Russia.  The anti-Soviet alliance has become the anti-Russia alliance.  The anti-communist alliance is now opposing a country that is no longer communist.  The opportunity for a new balance to be struck has been squandered.  The new Russian state saw that its old enemies from the USSR days remain its enemies.  Worse, they are expanding toward the Russian border.  Oh, but trust us, we will stop once we've added every state except Russia into the anti-Russian alliance.  We continued to treat Russia as the enemy and, predictably, Russia offered resistance to NATO encroachment.  Unsurprisingly, western media has painted Russia as the aggressor in all of this.

Putin is a dictator, a throwback to the czars, but he is not the Soviet Politburo bent on spreading communism around the world.  Europe no longer needs us to protect it from Russia.  Russia has a $5 trillion economy while the EU has a $25 trillion economy.  Russia has 150 million people vs. the EU at 450 million.  Why are we defending Europe when they have the resources to defend themselves?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has outlived its purpose.  It has been over 30 years since the end of the Soviet Union.  Time to close up shop.  As it is, further NATO expansion is going to lead to a war between the West and Russia.  Let's not have that war.