A company of the British Army is ordered to hold off the entire German army in North Africa while Raymond Francis -- called "The General" int he movie, but presumably intended to be Montgomery -- can get the rest of the British Army off their.... well, moving.
With explosions aplenty, what's most interesting about this Hammer film is how it tries, mostly successfully, to maintain the illusion of it taking place in North Africa, while being shot in the moorlands around Aldershot, where the British Army did a lot of training. There's smoke to obscure what's going on in the background. The camera shoots the players mostly in close-ups, or inside of tents, or occasionally at a high enough angle that obstructions hide the background. The clear shots show a very English-looking countryside, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility that there are place that look like that in Tunisia.
I don't believe that the average movie-goer would have noticed those things. It's a pretty good, if generic, war flick.
With explosions aplenty, what's most interesting about this Hammer film is how it tries, mostly successfully, to maintain the illusion of it taking place in North Africa, while being shot in the moorlands around Aldershot, where the British Army did a lot of training. There's smoke to obscure what's going on in the background. The camera shoots the players mostly in close-ups, or inside of tents, or occasionally at a high enough angle that obstructions hide the background. The clear shots show a very English-looking countryside, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility that there are place that look like that in Tunisia.
I don't believe that the average movie-goer would have noticed those things. It's a pretty good, if generic, war flick.