This was the first full screenplay credit - albeit shared with Richard Maibaim - for Nobby Clearke aka Bryan Forbes following an 'additional dialogue' mention on Alan Ladd's The Black Knight and essentially it's a Boy's Own Paper yarn based on events in World War Two. Once again the usual suspects are wheeled out to support Jose Ferrer and Trevor Howard, i.e. Vic Maddern, Bernard Lodge et al. It adheres like the limpets it features to the tried and trusted formula; ask for volunteers, weed out the demicks, show the rest in training, then the 'mission'. Basically what you see is what you get though as 'action' films go this is more than a tad insipid. Yana, a popular vocalist in the fifties, who began a career just as real singing was giving way to shouting off-key, has one song and one scene which serves to take your mind off the one-trick pony screenplay.
Review of The Cockleshell Heroes
