BATTLE AT BLOODY BEACH (1961)

During WWII, American Craig Benson (Audie Murphy) and his wife Ruth were honeymooning in Manila when the Japanese attacked and they became separated. Desperate to find her, Craig volunteers to work with the U.S. Navy on a submarine as they set out to liberate prisoners and freedom fighters from the Philippine islands. On the coast of one island, Craig sees a signal from shore, a torch waved by Marty (Gary Crosby), a radio operator who has remained free and living on the wreck of a ship. Marty joins him in his cozy set-up with two native women, lots of supplies, banana leaf cigarettes, and meals of monkey stew and fried grasshoppers. Craig has brought arms for any bands of guerilla fighters he can find. The first group they make contact with, led by the ineffective McKeever, wind up being mostly bandits, but a group of fighters led by the Filipino soldier Julio (Alejandro Rey) and a Black American boxer named Tiger (Ivan Dixon) kill McKeever, and Craig promises to give Julio the arms. He also agrees to take a small band of American civilians to Australia, but then discovers that one of them is his wife, Ruth, and that she is also Julio's lover. She is torn between the two, telling Craig that she'd feel like a deserter if she left Julio. Eventually, the group winds up trapped on the wreck by a band of Japanese soldiers. Can they shoot their way to freedom and work out the love triangle?

Despite the rather generic title, this is an interesting small-scale war film which focuses on a small band of people, mostly civilians and guerillas, trapped in a limited space rather than using a more traditional war movie template featuring a military platoon traversing a lot of ground. This allows some expanded character development—we get to know the soldier buddy, Marty, better than we might otherwise, though Ruth remains mostly just a plot point. However, as other viewers have pointed out, the romance triangle plays out against expectations: jealousy does not turn into violence, and Ruth's feelings aren't just about love but also about self-determination and loyalty. Murphy is his usual low-key reliable self and Rey, perhaps best known as Carlos on The Flying Nun, is fine as Julio, though Dorothy Michaels isn't able to make much of her role as the wife. The surprise for me in the cast was Gary Crosby, son of Bing (pictured with Murphy). He's quite good in a role that is part buddy and part comic relief. Though he's less important in the latter half, he helps spark the narrative in the first half. He's also not bad looking in a blond bear kind of way, though every so often, a camera angle will emphasize how much he looks like his dad which works against his mild sex appeal. In the finale, the fates of some of the characters are genuinely surprising, even if the resolution of the main romance story is not. Recommended. [DVD]