Sat 11 Jul 2009
Movie Review: THE McKENZIE BREAK (1970).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Suspense & espionage films[13] Comments
THE McKENZIE BREAK. United Artists, 1970. Brian Keith (Captain Jack Connor), Helmut Griem (Kapitan Willi Schleuter), Ian Hendry (Major Perry), Jack Watson (General Kerr), Patrick O’Connell (Sergeant Major Cox). Based on the novel Bowmanville Break by Sidney Shelley. Director: Lamont Johnson.
Here’s the funny thing. The novel this movie is based on takes place in Canada, where there really was a semi-successful escape of Nazis from a prisoner of war camp in 1943.
The McKenzie Break takes place in Scotland, another venue altogether, and as far as I’ve been able to determine, is totally fictional. It’s a film that boils down to a battle of wits between two men, Captain Jack O’Connor, an Irish journalist pressed into intelligence by the British, and Kapitan Willi Schleuter, a U-Boat Commander who’s become the spokesman for the German prisoners under circumstances that can only be called suspicious.
Unorthodox means, in other words, are what O’Connor is expected to use, first to quash the continual defiance and uproar caused by the prisoners, which Major Perry is quite unable to handle, and to learn what it is that’s behind it.
A tunnel, that is, and escape. O’Connor is a wily old bird, but the Germans are even wilier, and far more ruthless. Willi Schleuter, handsome and blond, also has an ever-present and wicked gleam in his eye.
If you’re ever inclined to root for the underdog, you might even find yourself hoping that he’ll actually pull it off — escape, that is. It’s the only thing on his mind, and no person or other obstacle dare not stand in his way.
Perhaps I was too used to seeing Brian Keith in situation comedy on TV. I did not expect to see a big, gruff, burly man with a strong rolling Irish accent with a way with the ladies. (There is a short bedroom scene with one of perhaps the only two women who appear in this movie, and both are discreetly and quite adequately covered at all times.)
Major Perry’s problem is that he outranks O’Connor, but O’Connor is the one with the authority (and the pull) to do as he wishes — not that all of his plans work out as successfully as he so confidently expects they will.
If I were to reveal that an escape does take place, I hope I am not revealing too much, one that leaves a lot of chaos — shall we say? — behind.
But it’s here that the story line begins to sag a little. Make that a lot. There seems to be only one airplane that’s capable of tracking down the escapees, and who do you think is riding along? Three guesses and the first two don’t count.
There is otherwise a lot of enjoyment that can be gotten from watching this movie, one that I didn’t even know existed until it showed up on cable TV the other day. Watch it if you can.
July 11th, 2009 at 9:24 am
I rented this movie a few months back and it is very good. I’ve always thought Brian Keith was a terrifically underrated actor. It would make a good double bill with THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY which told the story of the one German POW who escaped and managed to make it back to Germany. He jumped from a train in Canada and made it to the U. S. before we entered World War II. From here he went through Mexico down to South America before returning to Germany where he was killed in action a few months later.
July 11th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Ray
Thanks for putting me on the right trail. You’re talking about Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, who did precisely what you say.
But earlier on in his career as a POW, here’s part of an account of one of his earlier “escapades,” according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_von_Werra
“In Camp No. 13, also known as the Hayes camp, von Werra joined a group calling themselves Swanwick Tiefbau A. G. (Swanwick Excavations, Inc.), [in Derbyshire, England] who were digging an escape tunnel. After a month it was completed, on 17 December 1940. The camp forgers equipped them with money and fake identity papers. On 20 December, von Werra and four others slipped out of the tunnel under the cover of anti-aircraft fire and the singing of the camp choir. The others were recaptured only a few days later, leaving von Werra to go it alone. He had taken along his flying suit and decided to masquerade as Captain Van Lott, a Dutch Royal Air Force pilot. He claimed to a friendly locomotive driver that he was a downed bomber pilot trying to reach his unit, and asked to be taken to the nearest RAF base.”
There’s enough resemblance here to the events in THE McKENZIE BREAK to say von Werra may have been at least part of the inspiration for it.
Here’s a recap of Sidney Shelley’s book BOWMANVILLE BREAK, which provided the rest of the story line. From http://www.uboat.net/books/item/15 :
“Loosely based on a rebellion and escape attempt orchestrated by Otto Kretschmer at the Bowmanville prison camp in Canada. Although it contains the standard disclaimer that any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely accidental, Kretschmer is immediately recognizable in the figure of Wilhelm Modersohn, aka Silent Willi, U-boat ace whose name is mentioned in company with those of Prien and Schepke. The novel recounts the elaborate escape strategies used by the prisoners and the tactics the prison camp officials employed to track the escapees to the U-boats that were to carry them back to Germany.”
July 11th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
This was a good one, and nice to see Keith in a leading role at this point in his career. He was outstanding as Teddy Roosevelt in Wind and The Lion with Sean Connery and Candice Bergen. He also did a pilot as Mike Hammer for Blake Edwards that is available thanks to Max Allan Collins. You might also want to catch him in Tightrope with Ginger Rogers and Edward G. Robinson, Nightfall as a psychotic sadist, and in the caper film Five Against the House. He’s also in a good early western from Sam Peckinpah having starred in Peckinpah’s legendary western series The Westerner (one of the best western series ever done).
There are at least two other films about German POW’s on the run in the US. One is more or less a remake of The Petrified Forest with Helmut Dantine’s escaped Nazi substituting for Bogie’s Duke Mantee, and the other a B programmer with George Reeves.
The Dantine is Escape in the Desert (1945), and the Reeves film is Eugene Forde’s Man At Large (1941) with Marjorie Reynolds, more or less in the 39 Steps vein.
Of course the classic is the Archers 49th Parallel about Nazi’s trying to escape across Canada to the then neutral US. Raoul Walsh’s Northern Pursuit has Mountie Errol Flynn battling Nazi Helmut Dantine who has been smuggled into Canada replete with a Nazi bomber to destroy the St. Lawrence Seaway, with a good pulpy script by Frank Gruber.
July 11th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Another film dealing with Nazis escaping prison is a B-Western and at first I thought it was THE COWBOY COMMANDOS(1943 Monogram), starring The Range Busters(Ray Corrigan, Dennis Moore, Max Terhune). But after rewatching it I realized it was about Nazi spies trying to sabotage the war effort. Has a great song “I’ll Shoot the Fuhrer, Sure as Shooting”.
Continuing my search, I realized it was a movie probably based on Steve’s Comment #2, called VALLEY OF THE HUNTED MEN(Republic 1942), starring The Three Mesquiteers(Bob Steele, Tom Tyler, Jimmie Dodd). Directed the great John English, three Nazis escape a Canadian prison. Two get killed but one continues on to pose as a relative of a scientist working on war secrets.
On another connecting subject, there are some excellent books I’d like to mention dealing with westerns. Brian Garfield’s WESTERN FILMS is a very critical book on A-Westerns. An autobiographical listing with comments by Garfield. He is very tough and when he praises a movie you know it’s worth checking out.
Phil Hardy’s book THE WESTERN is a chronological listing of A-Westerns and B-Westerns, with comments.
But one of the best books on B-Westerns is WESTERN MOVIES by Michael R. Pitts. Listing over 4200 B-Westerns he discusses cast, plot summary and gives a brief critical comment. After watching a B-Western I write the date viewed, grade, and sometimes a comment in Pitts book. Pitts, Garfield, and Hardy’s books make great annotated checklists.
As has been mentioned before, B-Westerns often have a mystery element, especially the series films. Now I’m interested in looking up more B-Westerns with a contemporary theme. Giddyup!
July 11th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Walker
I can imagine Garfield has some strict rules about westerns. He’s the guy who once said no one should have tried to make one after Gary Cooper died.
He wrote a few damn good ones too.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:58 am
It’s very obvious that Garfield does love westerns but sometimes after reading his very critical comments, you might think he hates them. But he just has high standards which is a relief from the western lovers who have no critical standards at all and just think everything is great. I run across this lack of critical standards all the time especially with the writers who comment on B-Westerns.
July 12th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY covers his earlier attempts to escape from POW camps in Britain including his posing as a Dutch pilot. Hardy Kruger (the model plane designer in the original FLIGHT OF THE PHEONIX) played the part. As for Brian Keith, I wouldn’t mind seeing those episodes he did in the short lived LEW ARCHER series.
July 12th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
I remember, and I hope I remember it correctly, that Peter Graves played Lew Archer in the pilot film for the ARCHER series, and how disappointed I was when Brian Keith took over the role for the short-lived series. It didn’t last long, no more than a half-dozen episodes, so maybe I wasn’t the only one.
Still, I’m like you. I’d really like to see that series again, but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere at all.
Keith was also in a detective series called HARDCASTLE AND McCORMICK, and while I see that you can get the full run, three years worth on DVD, I don’t remember ever watching it.
But if it was on for three seasons, it must have had something going for it.
— Steve
July 12th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
I’ve hunted for the Brian Keith episodes of ARCHER but no luck so far. Maybe if it had lasted longer than a few weeks in 1975 we would be able to find it.
While rereading the Lew Archer novels recently I watched THE UNDERGROUND MAN(1974) starring Peter Graves and was surprised to find I enjoyed it. Not a bad adaptation of the novel. Certainly alot better than the TV version of THE FERGUSON AFFAIR titled CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR, which changed the non Lew Archer male protagonist into a female(Farrah Fawcett).
July 15th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
I agree about Graves in The Underground Man, it’s not a bad film, and he isn’t bad as Archer, though in all fairness, considering it is one of Macdonald’s best, it isn’t the actor or format (made for television movie) I would have chosen. As you say, certainly better than The Ferguson Affair, and for that matter the theatrical feature Blue City (another non Archer).
The handful of Archer episodes done by Keith weren’t bad really, though I really didn’t warm to him in the role. The series never really seemed to know what to do with Archer. And that isn’t surprising really. Unless the actor playing the part has the charisma of a Paul Newman there isn’t a lot to Archer for an actor to use in creating the character on screen — by Macdonald’s choice.
Macdonald originally wanted William Holden, who was the model for some of the early Mitchell Hooks paperback covers at Bantam. Later Hooks abandoned that for a more generic face that never really looked like Archer to me, anymore than the model for the Bantam photographic covers did.
Macdonald was impressed enough with Paul Newman to view Archer as a bit more like him, but in all honesty Archer is so faceless in some ways, a cipher by the author’s choice and design, that I never really had an ideal vision of him other than a sort of fairly fit fairly nice looking man in his late thirties to early forties. By choosing to make Archer primarily a voice instead of a character he lost the chance to give him a face.
That is always a danger with first person narrators, and yet I know Marlowe, or Thomas Dewey’s Mac, or even Mike Hammer when I see them. Not so much Lew Archer.
That isn’t a criticism of Macdonald though, because he stated clearly that was his intent. He never meant Archer to be a character in the same sense of Marlowe. He did what he chose to do as a writer and artist, but I do think that choice is one reason Archer and Macdonald have slipped a little in critical and public appreciation.
But like Walker whenever I reread him I am always pleased and find something worthy and new.
I know a lot of people think of Keith in relation to his television work and those more iconic roles, but I always think of him in films like Tightrope, Nightfall, Five Against the House, The Deadly Companions, Arrowhead, and the final shots of the film The Hallelujah Trail of him and Donald Pleasance waiting for the wagons of whiskey to rise from the quicksand. That may be because I managed to miss or avoid most of his television series — some I even missed with something like a passion.
And someone has to mention his father was the fine character actor Robert Keith.
July 15th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Oh, and the film The One That Got Away is based on the book about Von Werra by Kendal Burt and James Leasor (The Sea Wolves, and the Dr. Jason Love spy novels among others). Random House, 1956. Von Werra died in Holland in September 1941. An inquiry found his death due to engine failure and pilot carelessness.
A twelve page booklet he wrote about British interrogation techniques caused the Brits a good deal of trouble for their newly security conscious prisoners.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Sorry, but just realized I dissed Keith’s television work but failed to praise the short lived western series The Westerner created by Sam Peckinpah. Often as not the episodes were humorous usually involving Keith’s wandering cowboy (a working cowboy and not a gunfighter), his big brown dog, and friend and con man John Dehner.
It was simply one of the high points of the television western. One episode about a wealthy gun wielding ranch owner trying to recover a nude painting done of her by a French artist (who of course turned out to be Dehner) is a classic, with Keith’s Dave caught in the middle as Dehner tries to sell the painting to hang in a bar.
March 26th, 2021 at 11:27 pm
++Peter Graves as Lew Archer in ‘The Underground Man’.
++Hardy Kruger as the model-airplane designed in ‘Flight of the Phoenix’
++Ian Hendry in anything
Relish all these mentions …