Paranoia meets pandemonium.
As They Roared Into Battle, Only One Thing Was Missing...The Enemy!
A Comedy Spectacular!

1941 is a 1979 American period comedy film directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and featuring an ensemble cast including Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Lee, Toshiro Mifune, and Robert Stack. The story involves a panic in the Los Angeles area after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Although not as financially or critically successful as many of Spielberg's other films, it received belated popularity after an expanded version aired on ABC and its subsequent home video reissues, raising it to cult status.[2]
Co-writer Gale stated the plot is loosely based on what has come to be known as the Great Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942 as well as the bombardment of the Ellwood oil refinery, near Santa Barbara, by a Japanese submarine. Many other events in the film were based on real incidents, including the Zoot Suit Riots and an incident in which the U.S. Army placed an anti-aircraft gun in a homeowner's yard on the Maine coast.

Release Date: December 14, 1979

Domestic Total Gross: $31,755,742

Domestic Total Adj. Gross: $109,437,100



The film was previewed at approximately two and a half hours, but Columbia Pictures and Universal Studios, which both had a major financial investment, felt it was too long to be a blockbuster. The initial theatrical release was edited down to just under two hours, against Spielberg's wishes.[16] After the success of his 1980 "Special Edition" of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg was given permission to create his own "extended cut" of 1941 to represent his original director's cut. This was done for network television (it was only shown on ABC once, but it was seen years later on The Disney Channel). It was first released on VHS and Betamax in 1980 from MCA Videocasette Inc. and from MCA Home Video in 1986 and 1990. A similar extended version (with additional footage and a few subtle changes) was released on LaserDisc in 1995. It included a 101-minute documentary featuring interviews with Spielberg, executive producer John Milius, writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, editor Michael Kahn, composer John Williams and others involved. This set also included an isolated music score, three theatrical trailers, deleted scenes, photo galleries, and reviews of the movie. This cut was later released on VHS in 1998,and later on DVD in 1999.[17] The DVD includes all features from the 1995 Laserdisc Set. It was released again on DVD in 2000 in a John Belushi box set along with the collector's editions of Animal House and The Blues Brothers.
On October 14, 2014, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released 1941 on Blu-ray as part of their Steven Spielberg's Director's Collection box set. The disc features the theatrical and extended versions of the film, a documentary of the making of the film, production photographs (carried over from the LaserDisc collector's edition), and theatrical trailers, although the isolated score that was included on the Laserdisc and DVD releases is not present on the Blu-ray. The standalone Blu-ray version was released on May 5, 2015.