(several different covers can be found)
Ice Cold in Alex
This
is a ripping 1958 WW2 movie of the kind that gets shown on Sunday
afternoon tv, starring an alcoholic John Mills,as Captain Anson, often
near cracking up under the pressure and nurse Sylvia Sims who had to have
several scenes re-shot on censor�s orders for having too much unbuttoned
in the searing North African desert heat. It�s an ill assorted bunch of
army and ambulance personnel retreating from Tobruk to Alexandria, trying
to keep ahead of Rommel�s divisions. You�re not quite sure of Anthony
Quayle�s Captain van der Poel, the supposedly South African officer whom
they pick up along the way, so knowledgeable but how trustworthy? He�s
only been taken along because he comes with three bottles of gin.
Tension?
It�s nail-biting with the ambulance crossing a minefield, van der Poel
sinking in quicksand, the suspicion around him and his mysterious package,
the temperamental engine, a dune so steep that the only way they can get
up it is to hand-crank that engine.
It�s
the thought of a cold beer that keeps Mills going and in the bar scene in
Alexandria, he was drinking
beer because ginger ale and other substitutes didn't look real enough on
film. By the 14th take, he actually was quite drunk. Watch out for Land
Rovers, not built until 1948! But yes it was Carlsberg in the original.
The dvd can be had for about �5.99.
�RKW