Seven against death

A movie that showed up in the FXM rotation recently is The Cavern. It's going to be on again tomorrow (March 11) at 10:45 AM.

The scene is Italy, in September 1944. This puts it toward the end of World War II, late enough for the Allies to have free movement in a good portion of Italy, but with the Nazis still fighting fiercely. Anna (Rosanna Schiaffino) is an Italian woman who's been caught up in the fighting in a rural part of the country. She goes to see her friend of sorts Mario (Nino Castelnuovo), a sentry at an ammunition dump in a cave.

A jeep pulls up; it contains retired British General Braithwaite (Brian Aherne), who is now some sort of media liaison together with his public relations man Capt. Wilson (Larry Hagman). Two further allies show up to this meeting: an American who's been busted down to private, Cramer (John Saxon); and a Canadian flyboy who apparently escaped a POW camp, Lt. Carter (Peter L. Marshall; yes, this is the future master of the Hollywood Squares who for some reason is using a middle initial).

Another car comes in the opposite direction and our Allies think they can get help, but it turns out the car has Germans in it, and a brief firefight ensues. This is interrupted by an aerial attack from what is probably the Americans except that they can't tell who the good guys are down below, so everybody has to beat a hasty retreat. That ammo dump in the cave seems like a good safe place.

Except that the aerial bombardment bombs the entrance to the cave, filling it with cubic yards worth of rubble. In theory they could try to dig out, but who knows how long that would take. Thankfully there's some food left and, amazingly, the electric didn't get cut off. So the seven set about looking for a way to escape, and they're going to have to work together even though they're on opposite sides of the war.

There are any number of probles, with one of the big ones being the presence of Anna among five young soldiers (Gen. Braithwaite presumably being too old to worry about that sort of thing). The food isn't much to write home about, and it's going to run out eventually anyway. The air isn't, which means there must be some other way out, but they're going to have to find it without getting lost. Mishaps are still to come....

The Cavern was an international co-production filmed mostly in Italy where it had the title Sette contra la morte which translates to "Seven Against Death", which is just as good a title as The Cavern. It was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, his final feature film, on a low budget, and it's frankly nowhere near as bad as you might think considering Ulmer, the size of the budget, and the international cast half of which aren't native English speakers.

Still, the movie certainly does have problems, mostly in the form of massive plot holes. One that I mentioned was the fact that the electric in the cave somehow didn't go out during the Allied bombardment. I also don't know how much food was put in there, but it lasts six months, even though after three months Braithwaite makes a comment that there's only a couple weeks' worth left so cut rations. There was also a problem with some of the titles mentioning how much time passed. "152 Days Later" should be taken is the time from the initial bombardment, not the previous title, or else we would have gotten past the end of World War II (the Germans surrenedered in Italy at the end of April 1945 so the action in the movie does end before that).

There's also a relative lack of character development, or at least backstories for them. Perhaps I wasn't paying close enough attention, but I wasn't certain what Braithwaite was doing there, and how Cramer got separated from the rest of his platoon.

One final problem is that this print is panned and scanned, and not a very good print at that. And as far as I can tell, it's not available on DVD, so you're going to have to watch the FXM showings. Still, it is worth at least one watch.