It's turkey time again! This time Jim Brown and Richard Jaeckel who have supporting roles in The Dirty Dozen headline this project along with a cast that mostly should not quit their day jobs. Brown is listed as a producer in this film which often means they have sunk their own money into the production, if so it was not money well spent. The movie opens with a title card telling the viewer that US forces dumped 16 million in silver into Manila bay to prevent its capture by the Japanese. Then we are treated to a couple minutes of footage lifted from Tora, Tora, Tora, some of it cut to look like the Philippines. We next meet our hero's tasked by the Japanese captors to retrieve the silver coins. We also meet some Filipino PoW's who are the local resistance and also want the silver. So by day they bring up small amounts for the Japanese, and by night they bring up silver for the Filipino resistance. Apparently getting out of this camp is easier than Hogan's Hero's, when they sleep is a mystery. Eventually the Japanese realize that some of this silver is floating around and decide to interrogate everyone involved. This brings on the final act. The divers decide to blow up the barge, because Japan has only one piece of crap barge, and the camp, and the camp is so easy to come and go that turning it into a bomb factory is a piece of cake. One group blows up the barge, while Brown and Jaeckel use a football shaped device to blow the camp, being killed in the process, thus ending the film. This has all the hallmarks of a bad film, the score is a mix of overblown orchestral and Motown tunes, indeed more of a black exploitation film. A lot of the supporting actors are truly bad, Brown can't really hold his own here either. Jaeckel is really trying his best but there is not much for him to work with. It was mostly shot at night, probably to disguise how cheaply it was made, but only makes it murky. View at your ow n risk!
Thanks for the review B Many of these are available on the youtubes, I tend to watch these B list WWII films at work while I'm taking care of other issues/coding/etc. Anyone else think we need a sub-forum for B's reviews, or WWII film reviews in general?
From what I can find its true, it was dumped and not all of it recovered. Some 2 million in gold made it to the US by sub in time.
The submarine Trout ran about 40 tons of 3" antiaircraft ammunition in to Corregidor and then found herself in need of ballast. She was given 583 gold bars and 18 tons of silver in sacks, for which the captain had to sign a receipt. - Clay Blair, Silent Victory
