Yanks (1979)

[Cartman]

This was on one of the film channels last night and I watched it again, after a gap of quite a long time since I last saw it. Its a bit of an odd one, it combines a sort of wartime romance (chick flick) with a bit of gritty Northern slice of life, as if "A kind of Loving" had been crossed with "An officer and a Gentleman"

I love the location filming which was around Stalybridge, Glossop, Oldham and Stockport with the final scene at the railway station being at Keighley on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway.

A lot of the locations didn't look all that different in the late 70s to what they had done during World War 2, which is part of the appeal to me. Also the girl Richard Gere was seeing was played by an American, Lisa Eichorn, I thought she was very good at playing someone from Lancashire.

 

[D.C. Burtonshaw]

I've seen this film too a couple of times, quite good considering, and that a lot of American actors came all the way to Northern Britain to make this film. Note that Derek Thompson (Jeff in "The Long Good Friday") was in it too as the main female characters original boyfriend - himself a British army "Tommy" and love rival to Richard Gere's character.