Let slip the dogs of war

One of the movies that I recorded during Joan Blondell's turn as TCM's Star of the Month was Cry "Havoc". It's another of those movies that's been released to DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive.

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, bringing the US into World War II on a de jure basis. The US still held the Philippines as a colony at that time, so unsurprisingly the Japanese turned to trying to conquer the Philippines. The Bataan peninsula was the main avenue of escape by land from Manila, and a battle raged there for a good three months. Multiple movies were rushed into production and released in 1943, with Cry "Havoc" being one of them.

This movie focuses on the nurses who tended to the American soldiers fighting the battle. Capt. Marsh (Fay Bainter) runs a field hospital with Lt. "Smitty" Smith (Margaret Sullavan) serving under her. They're severely understaffed, so Marsh sends another nurse, Flo Norris (Marsha Hunt) out to see if any of the fleeing women would be willing to volunteer for nursing duty. Flo runs into a group of women pushing a truck, and amazingly, all of them are willing to volunteer.

Among the women are former burlesque dancer Grace (Joan Blondell); rebellious Pat (Ann Sothern); southerner Nydia (Diana Lewis); and a pair of sisters, Sue (Dorothy Morris) and Andra (Heather Angel). One of the first problems the civilians have is when Sue steps outside the bunker dormitory and goes missing when the Japanese stage an air raid; Andra unsurprisingly thinks that she's died. The bigger problem is the day-to-day life with a severe lack of food and medicine, especially quinine for malaria.

Malaria, it turns out, has already struck Smitty, who we only find out later is terminally ill with it. Marsh wants her to evacuate to Australia via Corregidor, but there's a second problem in the form of the unseen Lt. Holt. Smitty has a relationship with him, and when the civilians arrive, Pat sees Lt. Holt and immediately falls in love with him, not knowing the exact nature of his relationship with Smitty.

The biggest problem is the impending, unrelenting Japanese advance. The US Army says that the Army nurses have to help the soldiers hold off the Japanese for as long as possible, but that the civilians are free to leave. However, they decide to stay on and help as best they can, even though it's probably going to doom them to a terrible fate.

Of course, we know how the Battle of Bataan ended, and even at the time Cry "Havoc" was released the battle had already been long since lost. Still, the courage of the civilian nurses as depicted in the movie was decided morale-boosting for the female audiences back home, women who in many cases had their own male relatives fighting in Europe or the Pacific.

The acting is surprisingly good, considering that I normally think of Sothern and Blondell as more comedic actresses. (Watch also for a very brief appearance from a young Robert Mitchum.) The movie is based on a stage play, and with the bunker dormitory being one of the main sets, the stage origins are at times obvious. A bit more worrying is that the print TCM ran looked almost like one that would have been produced for TV syndication back in the pre-HD days. I'm not certain what the print on the DVD is like.

In any case, Cry "Havoc" is certainly worth a watch.