Location of airbase...disturbing ending.

Rating: 2/10 (12 June 2006)

In the scene where Lee Marvin makes Donald Sutherland pretend to be a General and inspect the troops, the location used was the main gate of what was then RAF Hendon in North London. The guardhouse from which Robert Ryan comes out and orders the band to eventually play was only demolished in 1992, but the main gate and base were demolished quite soon after RAF Hendon closed down in 1969. The spot where Lee Marvin and Donald Sutherland stood is more or less where the present day traffic roundabout is. When Lee Marvin is in the jeep being driven to the base, they are driving down Aerodrome Road (still there, and originally built by German POWs during the First World War). If you look carefully at that scene, you can see a building at the right-hand side which is part of the Metropolitan Police training camp. Incidentally, the Douglas C-47s in the background were just wooden mock ups. Where they stood is now a road leading to a large housing estate. Like some of the reviewers on IMDb, I also have serious reservations about the ending. It is extremely disturbing when you realise that the women are having petrol poured down on them. Admittedly, they are with Nazi officers, and a similar fate would have befallen them if the building had, for example, been bombed by an RAF Mosquito squadron (which was far more likely), but even so it the idea still seems nasty and, in the circumstances, rather unnecessary. For that reason I only give the movie two stars.