From The Longest Day To Red Dawn – John Has A Long Mustache

Two films, 22 years apart, share one idea.

A strange sentence on the radio can start a war.

The Longest Day, 1962

The film dramatizes the coded messages before the Normandy landings.

Resistance members and German officers listen as a BBC announcer reads nonsense.

“Molasses tomorrow will bring forth cognac” is followed by “John has a long mustache.”

Red Dawn borrows the idea and flips the setting.

The occupied zone is American, and the broadcast is Radio Free America.

The host reads two phrases, “the chair is against the wall” and “john has a long mustache.”

The second phrase is a direct nod to the earlier film and to the real history behind it.

The 2012 remake keeps the encoded messages from the original.

The tradition continues.