Stripes is a 1981 American action comedy film directed by Ivan Reitman and starring Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, P. J. Soles, Sean Young, and John Candy.

It tells the story of an immature taxi cab driver and his teacher friend who enlist in the United States Army with comical results.

In the course of one day, Louisville, Kentucky cab driver John Winger loses his job, his apartment, his car, and his girlfriend Anita, who has grown tired of his immaturity.

Hulka orders Russell to scrub garbage cans for 24 hours and gives the rest of the platoon two weeks of KP duty.

As graduation approaches, Hulka is injured when Captain Stillman, the recruit company's commanding officer, orders a mortar crew to fire without first setting target coordinates.

Hulka jumps from their truck before the Soviet Army captures it and sends out a radio distress call that John and Russell hear.

[a] Hulka retires from the Army and opens a fast food restaurant; John, Russell, Ox, Stella, and Louise are featured on magazine covers; and Stillman is reassigned to a weather station in Nome, Alaska.

En route to the premiere of Meatballs, Ivan Reitman conceived an idea for a film: "Cheech and Chong join the army".

Len Blum and Dan Goldberg wrote the screenplay in Toronto and read it to Reitman, who was in Los Angeles, over the phone, who in turn would give the writers notes.

[5] His best-known acting work prior to Stripes was as a cast member for the late-night TV sketch comedy Second City Television, which he had quit a few years earlier.

[7] Casting director Karen Rea saw Conrad Dunn on the stage and asked him to read for the role of Francis "Psycho" Soyer in New York.

Reitman, Goldberg, and Ramis were involved in a detailed negotiation with the Department of Defense to make the film conducive to the recruiting needs of the military, in exchange for subsidies in the form of free labor and location and equipment access.

[10] Dunn remembered Candy inviting the men in the platoon to his house while filming was under way, for a homemade spaghetti dinner and to watch the famous Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Roberto Durán II No Más Fight (November 25, 1980).

He recalled that he and Candy were the only two cast members who knew the lyrics to the song "Doo Wah Diddy" and taught them to the rest of the company.

The website's critical consensus reads: "A raucous military comedy that features Bill Murray and his merry cohorts approaching the peak of their talents.

[16] In his Chicago Sun-Times review, Roger Ebert praised it as "an anarchic slob movie, a celebration of all that is irreverent, reckless, foolhardy, undisciplined, and occasionally scatological.

"[17] Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it "a lazy but amiable comedy" and praised Murray for achieving "a sardonically exaggerated calm that can be very entertaining".

[18] Gary Arnold, in his review for The Washington Post, wrote, "Stripes squanders at least an hour belaboring situations contradicted from the outset by Murray's personality.

[22] The extended cut expands on several scenes and includes an excised subplot in which Winger and Ziskey (who takes six hits of Elmo's LSD under the impression that it is Dramamine) go AWOL by stowing away on a special forces paratrooper mission.

[23][24] For the 40th anniversary of the film's release, Stripes re-opened in theaters on August 29 to September 2, 2021, with a special introduction from Bill Murray and Ivan Reitman.