1941 - A Steven Spielberg Movie - Starring John Belushi and Dan Akroyd

1941 is a 1979 American war comedy film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. The film stars an ensemble cast including Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Lee, Tim Matheson, Toshiro Mifune, Robert Stack, Nancy Allen, and Mickey Rourke in his film debut. The story involves a panic in the Los Angeles area after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Six days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine, commanded by Akiro Mitamura and carrying Kriegsmarine officer Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt, surfaces off the Californian coast. Wanting to destroy something "honorable", Mitamura decides to target Hollywood. Later that morning, a 10th Armored Division M3 Lee tank crew, consisting of Sergeant Frank Tree, Corporal Chuck Sitarski, and Privates Foley, Reese, and Henshaw, are having breakfast at Malcolmb's Café, where dishwasher Wally Stephens and his friend, fry cook Dennis DeSoto, work. Wally plans to enter a dance contest at the Crystal Ballroom that evening with his girlfriend, Betty Douglas. The extremely short-tempered Sitarski deliberately trips him, instigating an angry scuffle. Once the soldiers depart, Wally and Dennis are fired.

As United States Army Air Forces Captain Wild Bill Kelso chaotically searches for Japanese forces in his Curtiss P-40, Major General Joseph W. Stilwell holds a press conference at Daugherty Field in Long Beach, where his aide, Captain Loomis Birkhead, meets his old flame Donna Stratton, Stilwell's new secretary. Aware that she is sexually aroused by airplanes, Birkhead coaxes her into the cockpit of a B-17 bomber. As he unsuccessfully attempts to seduce her he accidentally releases a bomb, which collides with the grandstand and explodes. Stilwell and the crowd escape unhurt.

At the oceanside home of Ward and Joan Douglas in Santa Monica, Betty and her friend Maxine Dexheimer, who have just become USO hostesses, tell Wally that only servicemen are now allowed in the Ballroom. As Wally hides in the garage from Ward, Sgt. Tree arrives with his team and informs the Douglases that an anti-aircraft gun will be installed in their front yard. Wally falls from his hiding spot while Sitarski flirts with Betty, and is ejected by the soldiers into a passing garbage truck.

Lumberjack Hollis "Holly" Wood is captured by a landing party from the Japanese submarine. When the crew discovers a small toy compass in Wood's box of caramel-popcorn, he swallows it. Eager to replace their malfunctioning ship's compass, the Japanese force Wood to drink prune juice to induce the passing of the compass. Wood manages to cause chaos on the submarine and successfully escape.