Hornets' Nest

Hornets' Nest (1970)

An American commando who's the sole survivor of a parachute jump into WWII-era Italy leads a group of children in a campaign of sabotage against the Nazis.

Date of release
1970-09-08
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (28)
Runtime
1h 50m
Genres
War, Drama, Action
Director
Phil Karlson

Casting

Interesting facts

Hornets' Nest is a 1970 Italian-American war film directed by Phil Karlson and starring Rock Hudson, Sylva Koscina, and Sergio Fantoni. The plot focuses on a group of boys aged 7–14 who survive a massacre in their village in Northern Italy in 1944 and what happens to them.

Production

Hudson had previously had success with several military roles, such as Ice Station Zebra. After the failure of the large budgeted Darling Lili, he thought an action war film geared to the youth market directed by the experienced Phil Karlson had potential. The female lead was originally to have been played by Sophia Loren, but she dropped out at the last moment and was replaced by Koscina.

Though set in 1944, the hairstyles, American fatigues and attitudes are from the late 1960s, with Hudson first wearing the mustache he would have throughout the 1970s. Time magazine called the film "a weird little war movie full of bizarre energy and merciless violence, a kind of 'Dirty Dozen Reach Puberty'". Ennio Morricone's score included a whistling theme that was used in the film by the children themselves.

Michael Avallone wrote a novelization of the film as a tie-in. An exploitation guide for cinema owners suggested dressing up boys under 15 in army uniforms and putting actual hornets' nests (hopefully without their makers) in shop windows to promote the film.

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

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