Le commando sacrifié

This tale of a "bunch of shagged-out expendables" was first of a trio of sweaty war movies made by Hammer. Rather than the flamboyant colour of their horror films Michael Carreras for his debut feature as director presumably deliberately opted for murky black & white.

"The Steel Bayonet" is a very simple but well made WWII action film. In many ways, it's tense and exciting like another British war film, "Zulu" as both are about British soldiers who are badly outnumbered but somehow manage to hold tight and complete their missions.

When the story begins, a badly decimated group of British soldiers in North Africa have finally been pulled off the front lines for rest. However, almost immediately, they are called back into action for a special mission--to secure an observation post and hold it until told to leave. Unfortunately, they are outnumbered badly and their odds of success seem very slim.

This is a simple and well made film. My only complaint is a couple times, grenades land only a few feet from the Brits and after exploding, the men are just fine! Kids, don't try this at home...you will NOT survive! Overall, well worth your time and competently made.

Leo Genn does an admirable job of holding this film together with the British version of Bataan. It is a film where a unit draws the short straw, and must face the wrath of the German forces which greatly outnumber them, so the Allies can make a concentrated offensive for Tunis. This battle allowed that advance. Tunis was a turning point in the African campaign, and marked the end of the dominance of the Desert Fox, Rommel, the desert genius general of the German Army.

The unlikely unit contains characters that, at first glance, appear as if they could not defend their apartments back in London, much less the flank of the Allied attack. However, looks can be deceiving. These men were as gritty as they came, and did a spectacular job under the circumstances. In a way, the film reminded me of Zulu, when a small group of Army engineers held off superior numbers of Zulu warriors. One of the better British war films.

This really is a very good film. It's got everything a WWII war movie should have. You can almost feel that you are actually in situ when events take place. One not to miss.

The film belongs to a moment in British war cinema when the industry was moving away from purely triumphalist narratives and leaning into more contained, character-driven pieces. This was the late-1950s climate of restrained budgets and postwar fatigue, a time when the country was still reckoning with its diminishing imperial role, especially in the wake of the Suez Crisis. In that sense, the movie's focus on a small British detachment holding a position in hostile territory fits perfectly into the mood of the era-less about sweeping victory, more about endurance, discipline, and the quiet assertion of resolve under pressure.

From a purely visual standpoint, the movie is an interesting hybrid. It mostly succeeds in maintaining the illusion of North Africa, despite having been shot on the moorlands around Aldershot, a site long associated with British Army training exercises. The filmmakers deploy smoke screens, obstructions in the foreground, and careful angling to conceal the unconvincing stretches of English countryside. High-angle shots often use terrain features to hide the background, while interiors-tents, dugouts-play to the film's strengths. Still, when the camera lingers too long on unobstructed exteriors, the illusion falters. It's not impossible to imagine parts of Tunisia looking like this, but the resemblance is just close enough to pass at a glance rather than convince with depth.

The strongest element lies in its theatricalized narrative framing. Much of the dialogue unfolds in tight close-ups or in contained spaces, and here the movie excels. The exchanges are taut, the rhythm of speech clipped and military, but with just enough human undertone to keep it from becoming mechanical. This intimacy works like a well-blocked stage play, where positioning, expression, and tone do the heavy lifting. The audience becomes absorbed in the mental and emotional state of the British side, almost to the exclusion of anything else. In those moments, the production feels assured, confident, and precise.

However, when the scope widens to include broader action-movements of larger groups, exchanges of fire, or sequences involving explosions-the limitations become apparent. The staging of enemy casualties is a notable weak point: German soldiers sometimes drop as if caught off guard during a casual stroll, their falls lacking both weight and urgency. This robs certain combat moments of their intended impact. It's a detail that could have been improved without a dramatic budget increase, simply through better coordination of extras and more attention to physical performance. But such sequences require a particular kind of cinematic discipline-one that blends technical choreography, special effects timing, and spatial coherence-and not every mid-tier production of the time could marshal these resources effectively.

Comparisons to Zulu (1964) are instructive, even if that film is not set in the Second World War. Both works hinge on the drama of a small, disciplined force holding off a numerically superior enemy. In Zulu, the tension comes not only from the performers' dialogue and interplay but also from meticulously staged group movements and combat beats that sustain believability under pressure. In the 1957 film, the dramatic interplay is handled with similar care, but the larger-scale tactical moments lack that same tightness, leaving a noticeable gap between the human drama and the spectacle.

The result is a movie that thrives when it behaves like chamber drama-where the geography is tight, the focus is human, and the budgetary constraints actually become part of the aesthetic-but loses some of its grip when it ventures into more expansive action territory. It remains an effective portrayal of British fortitude in microcosm, but one where the illusion of battle sometimes feels more like a sketch than a fully painted canvas.