DOES HOLLYWOOD EVEN CHECK THINGS?

I watched "Reign of the Gargoyles" over the weekend, the latest "straight to late movie" offering from SciFi channel. Some crude attempts at a plot. The senior officer had a son killed and the hot-headed kid reminded him of his son. How nice. The tech sergeant in the top turret who is the in-flight mechanic ignores an order to come down and work the fire extinguishers to put out the fire in one engine (which, by the way, the pilot controls with a switch) because he was too busy racking up glory points

What annoyed me was the endless technical goofs and silliness in the movie. I mean, does Hollywood:

a. not know anything but thinks they do?

b. not know anything but don't care?

Any number of amateur or professional historians would check this for them cheap just for getting to hang around a movie set. Sheesh.

I saw a British major wearing American rank insignia (the British insignia is a crown on the epaulet, not an oak leaf on the collar).

They shot down a German plane with a mortar. (Oh really? This would be the most impossible dumb luck shot in the history of impossible dumb luck shots. You'd actually have better odds firing blinding and praying for an accident than you would trying to hit the plane.)

The traditional "run down the road with machinegun bullets from the fighter plane's wing-mounted guns kicking up dirt on both sides." (Sorry, German planes have at least some their guns mounted in the nose!)

A British commando is firing a machinegun but the belt doesn't move and there are no ejecting shells.

He-111 bombers have one machinegun in the nose, not two.

Let's not talk about the guns that never run out of bullets, why an American shotgun is in the middle of Belgium, or just how many bombs fit inside a B17. (The aerial special effects were great, including the Ju88s.)

I don't even want to talk about the three armed Germans standing still in shocked amazement as the american captain drops one weapon, jumps over a wall, runs in plain site at a range of 30 feet to a truck, pulls another gun that he has never seen before, properly loads and cocks it, then shoots the dumbstruck Germans.

By the way, the Spear of Destiny is in a museum (not a grave). It was carried by Charlemagne in 800 AD and supposedly has one of the nails driven through the hands of Christ wired into the hollow spot in the middle of the blade.