From the moment Quentin Tarantino, the nerd-king of retro cinema trash, announced that his next project would be a remake of 1978's "The Inglorious Bastards" an obscure, Italian-produced World War II flick B-movie buffs have referred to it as a lost exploitation classic.

It may not quite be that, but it is a rollicking, reasonably entertaining rip-off of "The Dirty Dozen," one of those rah-rah guys-on-a-mission battlefield movies that milks every last bit of mayhem out of its miniscule budget.

Square-jawed gentle giant Bo Svenson (best known, perhaps, from the television series "Walking Tall") and all-around cool customer Fred Williamson (a former NFL star and 1970s Blaxploitation staple) lead a group of condemned soldiers who escape on the way to the stockade and then make a run for freedom on the other side of the Swiss border.

They're a band of thieves, psychos, and misfits, but don't call them cowards. On their way across the countryside of occupied France, they manage to get into all kinds of trouble: they mow down Nazis, spy on skinny-dipping frauleins, and trade the kind of creaky tough-guy one-liners that even Stallone and Schwarzenegger would object to-all before getting to a rock'em-sock'em climax where they have to pull a heist on a German military train that's carrying some heavy duty hardware.

Directed by '70s action-movie maestro Enzo Castellari, the pyrotechnic set pieces here are first-rate, but the dialogue is some tough sledding. Which isn't particularly surprising since English isn't the Italian Castellari's first language.

Still, "Inglorious" is a lot of red-blooded fun. And for a certain breed of movie lover-the kind who'd rather watch "Where Eagles Dare" or "The Great Escape" than any number of highbrow art films – the release of this movie for the first time ever on DVD in the U.S. (in a three-disc special edition, no less), is cause for serious celebration.

It'll be interesting to see what a guy like Tarantino will do with it if and when he ever gets around to remaking it. Until then, you could do a lot worse than renting the original. Just make sure you go in with lowered expectations.

Now for a look at what else is new on DVD: in "Shine a Light," Martin Scorsese captures the Rolling Stones in concert; in "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay," a pair of stoners are casualties of the war on terror; and in "War Games 2: The Dead Code," a no-name cast stars in a sequel to the 1983 nerd classic.