I just happened to catch Taps on TCM this week. I hadn’t seen the movie in quite some time, but I vividly remember most of it. Apparently it was released at Christmas 1981 which would mean that I was 10 when I saw it in the theater. I probably saw it with just my mother, but it might have been a family outing. My sister would only have been 7 so not sure if she was also there or not.
It pre-dated me being enrolled in an all boys school but just by a year. There are a lot of parallels between a military academy and a Catholic school. The movie opens with a mass. I remember being impressed by Timothy Hutton and identifying with Charlie and the younger boys. I had just seen George C. Scott in another movie that nobody knows but is still a great ghost movie, The Changeling. Upon re-watching, I already knew it was an early Sean Penn and Tom Cruise movie, but it also stars a young Giancarlo Esposito as Pearce who is the cadet who gets injured in the generator mishap. Ronny Cox is also in it and he went on to some pretty memorable roles in the 80s. Young Charlie’s friend is the actor who plays Rusty Griswold’s (Anthony Michael Hall) cousin in Vacation (“Ya ever bop your baloney?”).
This time around, I noted that it rains an awful lot in the film. Apparently that was a real problem for them filming in Valley Forge. It required them to run elaborate filming schedules to get the right shots. It’s interesting to hear the themes about military and civilian considering how politicized that has become in the last 25 years. Anyway, if you haven’t checked this movie out, you should. It’s worth a viewing.