You wonder when watching this film if the makers of None But The Brave(1965)had watched this film before starting out.The two films are very similar except in None But The Brave there is a very violent ending whereas in this film both groups go their own separate ways.Thorley Walters is the English officer and Dennis Price,a very unlikely German officer.Both English and German groups are stranded on the island and rather than fight decide to call a truce and coexist.However an Italian woman is washed ashore and becomes a source of conflict between the two groups before they go their separate ways.This is a cproduction between Hammer and the film technicians union,then called ACT.It is fairly amusing with a nude shot,from behind,of an extremely well know actor.
6 Reviews
Weakish comedy with several well-known - and a lesser-known backside!
Marlburian16 August 2018
The best thing about this mildly-amusing film is the presence of several well-known actors, not least the reliable Percy Hibbert as a determined NCO - a higher rank than usual for him!
The film got sillier as it progressed and several times I wondered if the script could have been stronger.
As other reviewers have noted, two of the cast go swimming in the nude (one was to become a popular TV actor) and Talking Pictures (the British TV channel that specialises in old films) thought fit to blur their bottoms. I find it difficult to imagine that these fully exposed would offend anyone, but then we live in an age where great care has to be taken least one does.
The film got sillier as it progressed and several times I wondered if the script could have been stronger.
As other reviewers have noted, two of the cast go swimming in the nude (one was to become a popular TV actor) and Talking Pictures (the British TV channel that specialises in old films) thought fit to blur their bottoms. I find it difficult to imagine that these fully exposed would offend anyone, but then we live in an age where great care has to be taken least one does.
Force X.
hitchcockthelegend24 July 2014
Don't Panic Chaps is directed by George Pollock and adapted to screenplay by Jack Davies from the Radio Play written by R.G. Holroyd and M.G. Corston. It stars Dennis Price, George Cole, Thorley Walters, Terence Alexander, Nadja Regin and Percy Herbert. Music is by Philip Green and cinematography by Arthur Graham.
Blimey! What a war, the Battle of the Sunbathers.
Amiable and pleasant British comedy that finds a small group of Brit soldiers commissioned to a remote Mediterranean island during WWII. However, when they encounter a small group of German soldiers holed up in a monastery they are offered a truce by the German commander and begin to live peaceably. That is until a gorgeous woman is washed ashore
Underwear from the Byzantine Period.
The bickering and banter keeps the pic ticking along, Regin pops in to lower the testosterone levels, while the message about opposing sides being able to live in harmony is a good 'un. It's never uproariously funny and Cole's buffoon act wears thin long before the finale, but there is enough good here to warrant it a good time waster rating. 6/10
Blimey! What a war, the Battle of the Sunbathers.
Amiable and pleasant British comedy that finds a small group of Brit soldiers commissioned to a remote Mediterranean island during WWII. However, when they encounter a small group of German soldiers holed up in a monastery they are offered a truce by the German commander and begin to live peaceably. That is until a gorgeous woman is washed ashore
Underwear from the Byzantine Period.
The bickering and banter keeps the pic ticking along, Regin pops in to lower the testosterone levels, while the message about opposing sides being able to live in harmony is a good 'un. It's never uproariously funny and Cole's buffoon act wears thin long before the finale, but there is enough good here to warrant it a good time waster rating. 6/10
Acceptable enough WW2 comedy
Leofwine_draca3 July 2018
Warning: Spoilers
DON'T PANIC CHAPS is a typical British WW2 comedy of the late 1950s. It was made by Hammer Films and is better than their I ONLY ARSKED!, although still not perfect. The plot seems a bit weak and flimsy, not to mention unbelievable, and boils down to British and German forces stranded on an island and forced to integrate with each other, with all of the stereotyped humour you could imagine. Once again Hammer have assembled an excellent little cast for their movie, with actors including the ubiquitous Percy Herbert and Harry Fowler playing the troops alongside a youthful Thorley Walters and Dennis Price as a Nazi. Most surprising of all is George Cole, whose nude scene I wasn't expecting. The jokes are rather dated and some of the silliness is irritating, but this is acceptable enough fare for its era.
Hell in the Adriatic
richardchatten15 September 2019
Having just made two extremely grim war movies ('The Camp on Blood Island', followed by 'Yesterday's Enemy') it probably came as quite a relief for Hammer Films to make this innocuous little pacifist comedy set in the Adriatic, which the exceptionally fine summer weather of 1959 probably helped them get the location work on Chobham Common in the can so quickly and bring the whole production in for a mere £75,000. (Plenty of the IMDb's own plot synopses spoil their own plots, and both Dennis Price and then Nadja Regin make their 'unexpected' appearances quite late in the film; particularly Ms Regin.)
Hammer Films has in the past been criticised for its racial insensivity in casting the likes of Christopher Lee as a Chinaman in 'The Terror of the Tongs', but here we get Dennis Price making no attempt at an appropriate accent (we're told that he went to Oxford), supposedly playing a German officer; later followed by a Serbian actress playing an Italian. (The film also contains a degree of explicit nudity we wouldn't see again in a Hammer Film until the 1970s; too bad it's George Cole rather than Nadja Regin!)
Hammer Films has in the past been criticised for its racial insensivity in casting the likes of Christopher Lee as a Chinaman in 'The Terror of the Tongs', but here we get Dennis Price making no attempt at an appropriate accent (we're told that he went to Oxford), supposedly playing a German officer; later followed by a Serbian actress playing an Italian. (The film also contains a degree of explicit nudity we wouldn't see again in a Hammer Film until the 1970s; too bad it's George Cole rather than Nadja Regin!)
It is what it is!!!
glendajohnson-1798429 October 2018
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