FORCE 10 FROM NAVARONE —you couldn’t do a better job of making the 1961 epic The Guns Of Navarone look good than this 1978 spinoff, which also proves that it’s possible to forget a movie before you’ve finished watching it. *

Reviews have been relayed

This time it’s Yugoslavia instead of Greece and a dam instead of cannons.  Another team of mixed personalities (with little actual personality) are given The Impossible Task That Will Shorten The War (say under breath: “but–at what cost”?).  Producers spent $10,500,000 to enlist the cast and ship ’em to Montenegro and Bosnia. It charges you 117 minutes off your life if you decide to see whether the mission succeeds. Guess.

Reviewers dismissed, and it didn’t make enough to recoup expenses. Not surprising, given how slack it all is, the writing, direction and acting equally tired.  Guy Hamilton had long since lost the directorial mojo he’d once brought to Goldfinger: this is more like the dulled creak he dealt to Battle Of Britain.  Robert Shaw looks contemptuous, Harrison Ford was still in his wooden period, Edward Fox tries valiantly, Carl Weathers overplays, Franco Nero adds little, Barbara Bach offers a nude scene, Richard Kiel is brutish.  It has action and special effects but they don’t ignite into excitement. Robin Chapman and George MacDonald Fraser share responsibility for the script. A dud, 72nd place in the States with a gross of $7,100,000. With Alan Badel.

* Don’t believe me?  Shaw: “I’m seriously thinking that this might be my last film. I no longer have anything real to say. I’m appalled at some of the lines. I’m not at ease in film. I can’t remember the last film I enjoyed making….I find it a bit ridiculous at my age to be running around a mountain in Yugoslavia saying ‘Let’s go.'”  Ford: “I was lost because I didn’t know what the story was about. I didn’t have anything to act. There was no reason for my character being there. I had no part of the story that was important to tell. I had a hard time taking the stage with the bull that I was supposed to be doing.”  Fox: “The action had been laid down but the characters were still stick figures. We had to dress them up and make the lines fit them as we went along.”