novel, whom he called the "US Army Raiders", Mayes' screenplay of Military Assistance Advisory Group military advisors comprised a collection of misfits. A female reporter character in the novel was removed from the screenplay. In 1977, the producers sought assistance from the U.S. Army, who responded that assistance would only be forthcoming if modifications to the script and characters were made. The Army response stated that its advisors to Vietnam in 1964 were "virtually all outstanding individuals, hand picked for their jobs, and quite experienced ... [I]n presenting an offhand collection of losers it is totally unrealistic of the Army in Vietnam in that period". Filming The film was made on location in Valencia, California. Release Go Tell the Spartans was released in the United States on June 14, 1978. In the Philippines, the film was released by Transamerica on November 14, 1978. It was re-released on September 7, 1987, and released on VHS cassette on May 13, 1992. It was released on DVD by HBO Home Video (through Warner Home Video) on August 30, 2005 and as a limited-edition Blu-ray by Scorpion Releasing in June 2016. Reception Though the film had a limited release in the United States, critics, especially those opposed to the Vietnam War, praised it: "In sure, swift strokes", wrote Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the Saturday Review, "it shows the irrelevance of the American presence in Vietnam, the corruption wrought by that irrelevance, and the fortuity, cruelty, and waste of an irrelevant war." Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote in June 1978- 'This is the best film I've seen to date about the Vietnam War excepting two documentaries. Roger Grooms, in the Cincinnati Enquirer, judged it to be "one of the noblest films, ever, about men in crisis". Over time, the previously overlooked film became an antiwar classic. At one of its revivals, it was described as: A cult fave – and deservedly so – Go Tell the Spartans was hard-headed and brutally realistic about our dead-end presence in Vietnam; released the same year as Coming Home (United Artists) and The Deer Hunter (EMI Films released by Universal Pictures), the film won critical admiration, but audiences preferred individualised sagas, sentiment, and romantic melodrama. Rather than tackle the effects of the war on physically and emotionally wounded vets, this brave film exposed the fundamental, tactical lunacy of the war as perceived by an American officer (Burt