Telly Savalas training a group of rebels and misfits soldiers for a dangerous assault in a monastery of France . This is a rugged WWII actioner concerning about an experienced officer , Major Wright , he's assigned by Military staff (Ernest Borgnine) to train a dropout group of murderers , criminals and rapists who get a chance to redeem themselves . Savalas reprieves a bunch of ¨Death Row¨ inmates , forges them into a two-fisted fighting unit and leads them on a deadly assignment into Nazi France .The prisoners are oddballs , rag-tag and undisciplined gang (a large cast formed by Randall Tex Cobb , Gary Graham , Bo Svenson , Tom Mathews and the brothers James Van Patten and Vincent Van Patten ), under command a sergeant (Vince Edwards). The team is hardly trained by the Major Whright . In this film Savalas and his motley group , the Dirty Dozen, are suppose to rescue some scientific and destroy a nerve gas manufacturing installation before the Nazis can make enough to use against the Allies . When they arrive in France are helped by the resistance fighters (Emmanuel) . At the end they must participate in the suicidal mission behind the enemy lines , to wipe the French monastery by means of an assault over a strong position located on the North of France.
Savalas as Maj. Wright assumes the character of the leader of the Dirty Dozen from Lee Marvin in the classic directed by Robert Aldrich and based on the characters created by T.M. Nathanson , being scripted by Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller. This moving film packs frantic thrills, perilous adventures , relentless feats , and buck-loads of explosive action and violence. The noisy action is uniformly regularly-made, especially deserving of mention the rip-roaring final scenes on the impregnable monastery . Rough Telly Savallas is good as leader of the motley pack together thwart the Nazi schemes, as well as the largely secondary cast with special mention to Randall Tex Cobb . Atmospheric and martial musical score by John Cavacas and appropriate cinematography filmed in Zagreb, Croatia . This is is a wartime typical vehicle and into the ¨warlike commando genre¨ , which also belong : Where eagles dare(Brian G. Hutton) and Kelly's heroes(Hutton ), Tobruk (Arthur Hiller) and many others .
The exciting and original ¨Dirty dozen¨was followed by various sequels , a trio of inferior Telefilms (1985 , 87 , 88) as ¨Dirty Dozen II¨ by Andrew V McLagen with Lee Marvin and Richard Jaeckel , ¨Dirty Dozen III : Deadly mission by Lee H Katzin and ¨Dirty Dozen : Fatal mission¨ also by Lee H Katzin with Heather Thomas , Erik Strada , and Jeff Conaway ; both of them shot at the same time with similar actors and director , being filmed in Croacia.
