Director: Roger Corman
Starring: Stewart Granger, Raf Vallone, Mickey Rooney, Henry Silva
Running Time: 95 minutes
Synopsis: In 1943, British Major Richard Mace (Stewart Ganger) assembles a group of imprisoned convicts for a secret mission to open a new front in the Balkans, as a distraction from the upcoming Allied invasion of Sicily. The recruits include the cerebral Rocca (Raf Vallone), cold-blooded killer Durrell (Henry Silva), explosives expert Scanlon (Mickey Rooney), and forger Fell (Edd Byrnes). They secretly land near Dubrovnik, connect with local Partisans, and attempt to free a key target from Nazi captivity.
What Works Well: This war-mission-on-a-budget borrows ideas from The Guns Of Navarone and The Great Escape, and seeds the inspiration for The Dirty Dozen. Director Roger Corman ensures a base level of competence despite limited resources, and the cast contains enough quality (if not necessarily stellar talent) to maintain interest.
What Does Not Work As Well: The plot gets needlessly complicated, including a prolonged stint within a prison that features endless momentum-defeating skulking. The narrative choices range from bizarre (Rocca's finger clicking) to misguided (handing the stone-faced Henry Silva a half-hearted attempt at romance, complete with a cruel mishap involving a baby). Corman confuses noisy, over-long, poorly-staged, and clumsily-edited battle scenes for excitement, a mess made worse by the inexplicable appearance (and sometimes subsequent disappearance) of hundreds of soldiers, first from one side (the Germans), then the other (the Partisans), and then yet another (the Italians).
Key Quote:
Major Mace: Abandoned?! This mission will be abandoned only when all six of us are dead!
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