Crossover Movie Poster: Inglourious Basterds

Sgt. Donny Donowitz is one of the Basterds. A pack of Red Apple Cigarettes can be seen at a table in the La Louisiane tavern. Sgt. Donowitz is the father of film producer Lee Donowitz from the film True Romance. One of the main characters of True Romance, Alabama, is also mentioned in Reservoir Dogs. Red Apple Cigarettes also appear in Pulp Fiction, Four Rooms, From Dusk Till Dawn, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, Kill Bill: Vols. 1 and 2, and Planet Terror, as well as several stories by Win Scott Eckert. Rick Lai notes, “The movie alters WWII history. In June 1944, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, and Martin Bormann all die in a Parisian movie theater. Presumably real-life actor Emil Jannings perished there as well. References to ‘Americans...on the beach’ place these supposed deaths after D-Day (June 6, 1944). How does this square with history? All the answers can be found in the adventures of Doc Savage. In my Doc Savage chronology (The Revised Complete Chronology of Bronze, Altus Press, 2010), the events of Violent Night (aka The Hate Genius) transpired in June 1944. Hitler attempted to flee Germany only to be caught in Switzerland by Doc Savage. The novel asserted that Hitler had left a double in Germany to impersonate him. It was this double who was killed at the Paris cinema. The other Nazi leaders present were doubles as well. In my Doc Savage chronology, I argued that Jonas Sown (The Screaming Man and The Frightened Fish) was behind Hitler’s flight. All the doubles behaved like their originals in Paris because they were under the influence of Sown’s mind control device. Sown arranged for Hitler’s escape from Allied custody in Switzerland (the dictator arrived in Germany only to be nearly killed in the July bomb plot, Operation Valkyrie). As for Emil Jannings, he must have miraculously survived the attack on the Parisian movie house. He actually died in 1950.”