Robinson Stone Movies
Eight brave sled dogs search for the master who is looking for a way to rescue them in this adventure drama. An American geologist (Bruce Greenwood) flies to Antarctica to participate in a project at the United States Research Base, where he teams up with arctic guide Jerry Shepard (Paul Walker) and his best friend, Cooper (Jason Biggs). The scientist soon discovers that Shepard also has eight other valuable friends -- a pack of sled dogs he's worked with for years, who have rescued him from a number of tight spots. As the three men explore a frozen mountain region, an unexpected accident coupled with a massive storm front forces them to fly to safety, leaving the dogs behind. Shepard is determined to rescue his canine friends, but he has to wait until the weather will allow him to travel back to the mountain, while the dogs struggle against the elements to survive as they attempt to make their way back home. Eight Below was inspired by a true story involving Japanese researchers exploring the Antarctic in 1957; the story was made into the film Nankyoku Monogatari. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Walker, Bruce Greenwood, (more)
The scene is a German POW camp, sometime during the mid-1940s. Stalag 17, exclusively populated by American sergeants, is overseen by sadistic commandant Oberst Von Schernbach (Otto Preminger) and the deceptively avuncular sergeant Schultz (Sig Ruman). The inmates spend their waking hours circumventing the boredom of prison life; at night, they attempt to arrange escapes. When two of the escapees, Johnson and Manfredi, are shot down like dogs by the Nazi guards, Stalag 17's resident wiseguy Sefton (William Holden) callously collects the bets he'd placed concerning the fugitives' success. No doubt about it: there's a security leak in the barracks, and everybody suspects the enterprising Sefton -- who manages to obtain all the creature comforts he wants -- of being a Nazi infiltrator. Things get particularly dicey when Lt. Dunbar (Don Taylor), temporarily billetted in Stalag 17 before being transferred to an officer's camp, tells his new bunkmates that he was responsible for the destruction of a German ammunition train. Sure enough, this information is leaked to the Commandant, and Dunbar is subjected to a brutal interrogation. Certain by now that Sefton is the "mole", the other inmates beat him to a pulp. But Sefton soon learns who the real spy is, and reveals that information on the night of Dunbar's planned escape. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Stalag 17 is as much comedy as wartime melodrama, with most of the laughs provided by Robert Strauss as the Betty Grable-obsessed "Animal" and Harvey Lembeck as Stosh's best buddy Harry. Other standouts in the all-male cast include Richard Erdman as prisoner spokesman Hoffy, Neville Brand as the scruffy Duke, Peter Graves as blonde-haired, blue-eyed "all American boy" Price, Gil Stratton as Sefton's sidekick Cookie (who also narrates the film) and Robinson Stone as the catatonic, shell-shocked Joey. Writer/producer/director Billy Wilder and coscenarist Edmund Blum remained faithful to the plot and mood the Donald Bevan/Edmund Trzcinski stage play Stalag 17, while changing virtually every line of dialogue-all to the better, as it turned out (Trzcinski, who like Bevan based the play on his own experiences as a POW, appears in the film as the ingenuous prisoner who "really believes" his wife's story about the baby abandoned on her doorstep). William Holden won an Academy Award for his hard-bitten portrayal of Sefton, which despite a hokey "I'm really a swell guy after all" gesture near the end of the film still retains its bite today. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Holden, Don Taylor, (more)
