Misteraser Critics,are you kidding us

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Robert J. Maxwell It's a well-staged play about a dozen or so nurses trapped on the Bataan peninsula in 1942, short of medicine, short of love, short of everything except Japanese bombs and the rumble of their tanks as they draw nearer. The structure, while offering nothing much new, does a good job of building suspense until the final surrender.It's the distaff side of "Bataan", released the same year, 1943, except that "Cry Havoc" is a bit less hysterical in its hatred. The Japanese may bomb a hospital but at least none of the nurses refers to them as "bandy legged monkeys" as Robert Taylor does in "Bataan."It's not surprising that this group is as diverse and one-dimensional as the men of "Bataan." Let's see. There is the uncultured ex burlesque dancer from New York (Joan Blondell), the empty-headed comic Southerner, the stern but fair commander (Margaret Sullivan), the tireless and compassionate older cook (Connie Gilchrest), two loving British sisters joined at the hip, and others less individuated.Ella Raines is probably the most attractive. She's a little hoity toity at first, a magazine editor, but she stands with the others before she is it by bullets from a Japanese Zero. She has the voice and manner of a frightened child. I imagine some men would have rushed to her side, thrown their arms around her, and whispered reassurances into her ear while copping a feel.The nurse I found most interesting was Marsha Hunt, a lanky brunette whose dished face is redeemed by a nose obviously designed by someone familiar with Fibonacci numbers. She was black listed after the war for her communist propensities. I think she argued that women should have the vote or something.Robert Mitchum has a bit part as a wounded soldier. A nurse turns him over, he groans, "I'm all right," then he promptly rolls his head to the side and dies. Otherwise, there are no men to speak of, although there is some rather bitter competition between Sullavan and Suthern over a lieutenant in the next room, happily resolved at the end. There are no action scenes to speak of, and the sets are dominated by one underground shelter with tiered bunks and a central table, betraying the story's stage origins. The dialog doesn't sparkle but the suspense mounts admirably. Sullavan is taken with malignant malaria. We don't hear much (or see much) about severe illnesses among combat troops in the movies but it's an important factor. Disease killed more men in the Civil War than died in battle. And malaria is no joke. It's a parasitic infection transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes. Once transferred to the human body, the infection travels to the liver where it multiplies and then enters the red blood cells. Inside the red blood cells the parasites multiply rapidly until the cells burst, releasing even more parasites into the blood stream. The cells burst at about the same time and cause the attacks. The damage to the brain and other organs can lead to coma and death. The disease still kills more than half a million people a year. We'll return to the movie as soon as I finish this surgical scrub.Anyway, the last scene is predictable. The surviving nurses and the compassionate cook leave the bunker with their hands up. It's the last we see of them. The whole story isn't badly done.The title is from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar": Caesar's spirit will return and "Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war." Two movie titles right there.

mark.waltz Some of the brightest female stars of the 1940's get a chance to get dirt on their Max Factor faces in this "Women in War" drama which took them to Bataan, the location of a Robert Taylor war movie made the same year. Here, the women are nurses, brought out to aid head nurse Margaret Sullavan and her commanding officer (Fay Bainter), and conflict arises to the difference in their personalities. However, in wartime, everybody must pull their weight, put aside petty squabbles, and band together for the cause.In addition to Sullavan and Bainter are the billed above the title Ann Sothern and Joan Blondell whose on-screen personalities were so alike that they sometimes seemed like sisters working at separate studios. Sothern has more to do here as a somewhat rebellious personality. She is classier than her MGM series character Maisie, while Blondell plays a burlesque queen who amuses everybody by referring to her job being similar to a banana. It is obvious that Blondell was cast for her name value rather than for characterization. Since she had been at MGM for more than just a few years, Sothern gets more meat to bite into with her part, Blondell simply adding a bit of comic relief to the wisecracks which seemed to be tossed up in the air for either her or Sothern to catch.There are some very tense moments here where the women are pretty much all alone, no American or other Ally soldiers there to protect them from the villainous Japanese. This is where the film becomes very similar to Paramount's "So Proudly We Hail" which is certainly superior dramatically. Both rank equal in nail-biting emotion as to the fate of these lovelies who may be able to flip acid off of their tongue to deal with the others but won't be able to defend themselves against the enemy that surrounds them.The always colorful Connie Gilchrist adds color as the cook, giving motherly advice towards the girls who venture into her kitchen, while Bainter provides a mentor-ship towards the women, especially the somewhat hard Sullavan. Marsha Hunt, Dorothy Morris, Heather Angel and Ella Raines round out the major female stars supporting the others, and each of them have moments to shine where their dreams seem threatened by the ugliness of war. Like "So Proudly We Hail", this contains a rather downbeat ending which is certainly within the reality of war and opens all kinds of thoughts as to what might be in store for these women.

MartinHafer "Cry 'Havoc'" is one of quite a few films about women at the front lines in the Pacific theater during WWII. What makes this a bit different is that most of the women are NOT nurses, but untrained volunteers who are pressed into service during the final days in the Philippines during the early part of 1942. Ultimately, the audience knew that the women would not escape--as it was public knowledge of the fall of the islands.The film is fairly good but does suffer from a few characters who are more caricatures. The most egregious of them is played by Ann Sothern. She plays a tough dame--who always walks around with a chip on her shoulder and is hot for a lieutenant she hardly knows. Most of the rest aren't as broadly written as her--and a few are even quite interesting, such as the sick nurse played by Margaret Sullavan. To me, the film celebrates these women but also failed to seem very real--and often the stiff and overly-patriotic dialog was the reason why. Compared to other films of this conflict, such as "In Harm's Way" and "So Proudly We Hail", it's inferior--but still quite watchable and uplifting. A decent time-passer.

bkoganbing Cry Havoc was based on a play by Allan Kenward which the Shuberts produced on Broadway and ran for a grand total of 11 performances over the Christmas/New Year's days of 1942-43. But what flops on Broadway can sometimes be a great success on screen and vice versa. In this case the subject matter had already been thoroughly covered in the Paramount film So Proudly We Hail and Cry Havoc runs a distinct second to that film. Like the Paramount film, Cry Havoc deals with nurses in the Phillipines after Pearl Harbor and their experiences during the Japanese attack.Margaret Sullavan was fulfilling the terms of an MGM contract with this movie. Afterwards she would concentrate on the stage and would only do one more film years later, No Sad Songs For Me. She plays the no nonsense army nurse with several new charges rushed up to the Bataan front among them Joan Blondell and Ann Sothern. Fay Bainter played Sullavan's superior and she also was winding up her MGM contract as well.There are no substantial male roles in this film, they're seen briefly in fighting roles and of course as casualties. If you don't blink you'll see Robert Mitchum utter a couple of words and then die. Sullavan and Sothern have a rivalry going over an unseen army lieutenant.In fact on the set they had a rivalry going as well. According to a recent biography of Margaret Sullavan, she and Sothern did not get along so their scenes together had some real bite. Sullavan felt that Sothern was slipping into her popular Maisie character for which she was doing a B picture series for MGM. Cry Havoc should be seen because anything that has Margaret Sullavan should be seen as she left us way too few films for posterity. But this really is quite inferior to So Proudly We Hail.