Raid on Rommel

Raid on Rommel (1971)

He took o Rommel...the Sahara...and a unit of untrained me to blow the Desert Fox to Hell.

Captain Foster plans on raiding German-occupied Tobruk with hand- picked commandos, but a mixup leaves him with a medical unit led by a Quaker conscientious objector.

Date of release
1971-02-12
TMDB
5.8 / 10 (58)
Runtime
1h 39m
Genres
War, Action
Director
Henry Hathaway

Casting

Interesting facts

Raid on Rommel is a 1971 American war film directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Richard Burton, John Colicos, Clinton Greyn, Danielle De Metz and Wolfgang Preiss. The film centers on a British commando attempting to destroy German gun emplacements in Tobruk.

Production

The film was originally intended as an NBC made-for-television film. The producers wanted to reuse the expensive action and special-effects footage from Tobruk (1967), which had not been a success, and intended to cast Robert Stack in the lead role. During pre-production, plans shifted and it was decided to retool the film into a theatrical picture, albeit a relatively cheap one.

Henry Hathaway says he did the film because "it looked like it might be fun". He shot it in twenty days and says Richard Burton never drank during the shoot although Elizabeth Taylor, who joined him, did.

Filming took place over three weeks in San Felipe, Mexico. Belying the film's made-for-television origins, much of the crew were from Universal's television division. In order to match the reused footage from Tobruk, Richard Burton had to dye his hair blond (in order to match George Peppard in the earlier film).

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended