Search Results for: Hornet's Nest

Hornet’s Nest

Posted on November 24, 2017 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

If you’re a regular reader of this site, you’ll know that I have a lot of work coming out in the next few months. That means a lot of shilling from yours truly about my wares, on this site and my various social media feeds. It is unavoidable.

But amidst all the sales talk and my other commitments, I don’t want to forget why I originally started this site, reviewing books and films that take my fancy. Seriously, I miss bullshitting about this stuff with you all. Then it occurred me, the answer is shorter, sharper reviews, less formal, more stream of consciousness, fun to write and (hopefully), read. Obvious, I know, don’t know why it took me so long to realise it.

So, first up in the new regime of reviewing, Phil Karlson’s terrific 1970 revisionist World War II noir film, Hornet’s Nest. I first watched Hornet’s Nest with my folks, when it showed on a Sunday night on TV way back in the late 1970s. I can’t remember what I made of it then, but I sure as hell liked it when I re-watched it recently.

A detachment of US paratroops is dropped behind German lines in Italy to blow up a major dam and, thus, disrupt German troop movements ahead of a major allied offensive.… Read more

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Posted in Film Noir, Rock Hudson, War film

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Playing dirty: war as a criminal enterprise

Posted on January 17, 2019 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Towards the end of last year I posted on my love for the 1968 espionage/war thriller, Where Eagles Dare. My first post for 2019 continues what is becoming an unofficial series of sorts on this site, ‘in praise of films I watched with my parents on the television on Sunday night when I was young’. This time, I want to briefly pay tribute to the incredibly hard-boiled late sixties revisionist war film by Hungarian emigre, Andre De Toth, Play Dirty.

I am not sure exactly what was going on with war films in the late 1960s – I assume it was the influence of the radical tenor of the times –  but there was a whole crop of them that really took the gloves off in terms in their cynical, gritty depiction of the utter corruption and folly of war. Think Jack Cardiff’s The Dark of the Sun (1968), and Phil Karlson’s  Hornet’s Nest (1970), as well as the aforementioned Where Eagles Dare, just to name a few I have featured on this this site previously.

Set on the North African front during World War II, I reckon Play Dirty is up there with the most hard-boiled and cynical of them. Plus January 1 was the 50th anniversary of its release, a milestone that went totally unmentioned anywhere, so the time is right to give it a bit of love.… Read more

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Posted in Andre De Toth, Michael Caine, War film

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