Here's the setup. Some bad guys with life sentence criminal convictions have a combined skill set that is perfect for a daring mission behind enemy lines in a nazi controlled compound.

Now you might be yelling at the podcast

that we've already watched the Dirty Doesn't.

You gave it three and a half Papeyemache maps or something. But your concern is misplaced.

Today's episode is about a different film that actually came out in 1964.

Three years before the Dirty Dozens.

It is, as one reviewer called it, the saunoff antecedent of the Dirty

Doesn't. They're different in execution. The films diverge drastically on character development, coherence of plan, and the presence of Lee

Marvin. Today's film also lands our anti-heroes in a Nazi jail about halfway through serving

up a nice irony that the dirty dozen never

encountered. But clearly there was something in the water in the mid-60s that was

causing audiences to want to see Allied bad guys get one over on even battered German bad guys. A war film at its best can

deliver us a distillate of human nature. These are stories about what people do

when confronted with the most dire of circumstances.

But this film's characters are hardened criminals, inherently unsympathetic and well aware

of their expendability.

Even the major that puts the team together is expendable. It's a team of

specialists like Force 10 from Navarone, but even more fatalistic. The challenges they face are

as perilous as any war film, but the stakes are changed because we're taught to treat them with suspicion.

The director, Roger Corman, is a living legend among film nerds.

He gave early work opportunities to many luminaries of the industry.

Coppolis, Gorsese, Cameron, Howard, Demi, Bogdanovich, just to name a few.

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