A truly awful adaptation of the book, "The Ordeal of Major Grigsby." The amazing thing about this film is the huge amount of talent in the cast that simply cannot save the hopeless muddle of implausible story and bad film-making.
The story revolves around two mercenary soldiers, played by veteran Stanley Baker and relative newcomer Alex Cord. In the first scene, set in Africa, Cord changes sides and wipes out Baker's mercenary unit. Baker is later hired by the British Government (yeah, they did this a lot) to go over the border from Hong Kong to deal with a Chinese guerrilla outfit headed by, of course, Alex Cord. On his first excursion into "Injun Territory", Baker is ambushed and captured by Cord, and his entire unit is again massacred. From there things just get worse. Baker escapes so he can have a fling with Honor Blackman, who is married to Richard Attenborough, the local military commander. This part of the movie drags on seemingly forever, but eventually Baker gets back into the bush for the inevitable final showdown with Cord. Rarely is the end of a film so welcome. I haven't seen this movie anywhere for about 30 years. Wonder why.
The story revolves around two mercenary soldiers, played by veteran Stanley Baker and relative newcomer Alex Cord. In the first scene, set in Africa, Cord changes sides and wipes out Baker's mercenary unit. Baker is later hired by the British Government (yeah, they did this a lot) to go over the border from Hong Kong to deal with a Chinese guerrilla outfit headed by, of course, Alex Cord. On his first excursion into "Injun Territory", Baker is ambushed and captured by Cord, and his entire unit is again massacred. From there things just get worse. Baker escapes so he can have a fling with Honor Blackman, who is married to Richard Attenborough, the local military commander. This part of the movie drags on seemingly forever, but eventually Baker gets back into the bush for the inevitable final showdown with Cord. Rarely is the end of a film so welcome. I haven't seen this movie anywhere for about 30 years. Wonder why.