McHale's Navy - Theatrical Films

Theatrical Films

There were two feature film spin-offs based on the series: McHale's Navy (1964) and McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force (1965). The full cast appeared in both films, with the exception of Borgnine and Ballantine in the latter film; Borgnine was unavailable due to schedule conflicts resulting from the filming of The Flight of the Phoenix; it is not known why Ballantine was absent. To beef up the crew, Gavin MacLeod, who had left the series, agreed to return for this one appearance. In a Cinema Retro interview, Borgnine said the producer Edward Montagne wanted to make the film cheaply without him and would not show him the script.

Both films were essentially extended-length episodes of the series, without the laugh tracks. While both did well at the box office, the latter one was not as successful and was derided by some critics as being far too excessive in its use of slapstick comedy, though others praised it for its satirizing of military incompetence (after a typical screw-up, the Japanese POW Fuji sighs, "Beats me how they beating us."). William Lederer, who co-authored the second film with John Fenton Murray, used some scenes lifted directly from his comic novel, All the Ships at Sea. Unlike the television series, both movies were filmed in Technicolor.

In 1997 a remake was released, starring Tom Arnold as McHale's US Naval Academy graduate son, which showed the PT-73 and its crew operating in a more modern, post-World War II setting in the Caribbean. Borgnine has a cameo appearance as the senior McHale, now the commanding rear admiral of what appears to be the United States Naval Special Warfare Command and going by the code name "Cobra."