By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
July 24, 2020
Author’s note: The discussion of Overlord, the second movie covered in this post, may not be appropriate for young and/or sensitive readers. MEM
I did another double feature of sorts this week, watching a pair of World War II action movies. As with The Vast of Night and Cosmos, these features take very different approaches to the same topic.
I started on Tuesday night with Force 10 from Navarone, the 1978 feature directed by Guy Hamilton. Only after I began researching this post did I realize that this is a sequel to the 1961 film The Guns of Navarone starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn and Richard Harris. Both pictures are based on books by Alistair MacLean. The English author, who served in the Royal Navy during World War II, wrote more than two dozen novels that served as the basis for 17 feature films, including Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare, both released in 1968.
Force 10 from Navarone doesn’t involve Navarone, a fictitious Greek isle that served as a crucial artillery base for Nazi Germany. In fact, Force 10’s prologue quickly recaps the earlier picture’s exploits, which I mistakenly thought was previewing the picture to come. I suppose this is because the movie’s title is Force 10 from Navarone, which made me expect Navarone. But the two movies share at least three of the same characters and a general story of Allied commandos infiltrating enemy territory and destroying an important piece of infrastructure.
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