The Angry Hills ** (1959, Robert Mitchum, Stanley Baker, Gia Scala, Elisabeth Müller) – Classic Movie Review 7594

The 1959 The Angry Hills stars the always-watchable Robert ‘Old Snake Eyes’ Mitchum in a Leon Uris World War Two-set wartime thriller under ace film-maker Robert Aldrich’s cannily stalwart direction. But, with these people, you expect something more special than you get here.

Script problems leave a trail of strained dialogue and the actors have to compensate for this by trying to fleshing out their thin characters with their personalities as well as their performances, though fortunately these are strong.

But Mitchum is undeniably very good as a world-weary US war correspondent helped by Greek freedom fighters in 1941 to escape from the pursuing Nazis with vital data about the Greek resistance of a secret list of collaborators for British intelligence.

A I Bezzerides’s screenplay is based on Leon Uris’s best-selling novel. What is advertised is ‘The amazing adventures of a lone American in a land of violence’, but what is on screen is rather less than amazing.

Also in the cast are Gia Scala, Elisabeth Mueller [Elisabeth Müller], Stanley Baker, Donald Wolfit, Kieron Moore, Theodore Bikel, Sebastian Cabot, Peter Illing, Leslie Phillips, Marius Goring, Jackie Lane, George Pastell, Patrick Jordan and Alec Mango.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7594

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