What was the name of this movie?

[tashirosgt]

When I was a kid, I recall an old movie whose characters were the actors that usually played British soldiers in WW II movies. It wasn't a WW II movie. It was about a garrison of British soldiers. I think they were in an unnamed African nation. Rebels start an uprising and confine the garrison to its compound. The British soldiers scheme how to get out and get to "the Bofors Gun". One group stands around a piano and sings "Glorious, Victorious" to give the impression that garrison is passive. Another group sneaks out. The plan is successful but an anti-climax since London accepts the rebels as the new government and orders the garrison to support them.

Anyone know the name of this movie? I wasn't that impressed with the movie, but I'm curious about the title.

[vonmazur]

Did you try IMdB?? I remember this flick, but I cannot recall the title...Now I have to go look!!

Dale

[Substantia Innominata]

This could only be John Guillermin's "Guns at Batasi".

[tashirosgt]

This could only be John Guillermin's "Guns at Batasi".

Right! The plot summary on Wikipedia exactly fits.

[captain swoop]

Good film.

[slang]

Why the quotes around Bofors? Just in case: wiki article.

[tashirosgt]

Why my quotes around it? When I was a kid, I had never heard of such a gun, so the exact phrase "Bofors gun" was a phrase I distinctly remembered.

Here's another what-was-the-name question. It's about a TV show. It was one of the few TV shows that I saw where Robert Young played a villain. He was an eccentric millionaire who wore a white suit and the heroes were investigating him, trying to prove that he had created a private army. The show suggested this had to do with his racial bigotry. They came to question him while he was working on a model T.

[Jeff Root]

It was an episode of a TV series, I believe. 'The Name of the Game'.
(Which always struck me as a stupid name.) I happen to recall some
of the same bits of the program you do, though I think you probably
mis-remembered the white suit. Gene Barry was the protagonist,
the publisher (owner?) of the big magazine publishing firm (evidently
styled after Time-Life, and especially its 'People' magazine) that the
series was about. Robert Young was either a US Senator or a retired
US Senator. When Barry visited Young at his ranch or whatever it was
(it looked desolate), Young was working on an old car, and Barry
commented that he was rich, but not rich enough to wear white
socks with black shoes, as Young was wearing at the moment.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[slang]

Why my quotes around it? When I was a kid, I had never heard of such a gun, so the exact phrase "Bofors gun" was a phrase I distinctly remembered.

Fair enough. It's a pretty well-known type of gun, and my dad operated a Bofors 40L70 in his military service, more than 40 years ago.

[captain swoop]

We had 2 of them on the Leanders and the Tribals.

[tashirosgt]

Fair enough. It's a pretty well-known type of gun

Yes - to Europe and the UK, but it wasn't well known to a kid in rural NC, USA


Here's another one: There is a movie (Italian, I think) about a planet or star that is predicted to collide with the Earth. A famous mathematician who does his thinking while in a hammock has made some predictions. The thing suddenly stops instead of hitting Earth and the mathematician concludes this means it is being guided by an intelligence. Some sort of space mission is sent to investigate the body. The easy question (I think) is to name the film. The hard question is explain the different versions of it. When I first saw this film on late night TV, it had a very peculiar and impressive sound track. In the suspenseful moments of the space mission there was very lively and somewhat cheerful trumpet music playing. Years later (also on TV), I saw what appeared to be the same film, but it had a more conventional sound track. The second time, it wasn't a good film. Was this film made in several versions? Or is my memory of it faulty?

[Nowhere Man]

The answer to your second question is that it was probably a foreign-made film that was re-edited (read: brutally sliced up) more than once for the American market. One example is Planeta Bur (Planet of Storms), a 1962 Russian film that became both Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.

Fred

[tashirosgt]

I found a movie that has a matching plot: "Battle Of The Worlds" with Claude Rains. Amazon has several different DVDs of this film listed. A reviewer of one complains that the music "sounds like something written by John Cage and performed by Nigel Tufnel". That might be the version I recall so fondly!