Director
Robert Aldrich
took what he considered a hopelessly old-fashioned script by
Lukas Heller
and
Nunnally Johnson
and fashioned
The Dirty Dozen
into one of MGM's biggest moneymakers of the 1960s--and the sixth highest-grossing film in the studio's history.
Lee Marvin
plays Major Reisman, assigned to coordinate a suicide mission on a French chateau held by top Nazi officers. Since no "normal" GI can be expected to volunteer for this mission, Reisman is compelled to draw his personnel from a group of military prisoners serving life sentences. This "dirty dozen" includes a sex pervert (
Telly Savalas
), a psycho (
John Cassavetes
), a retarded killer (
Donald Sutherland
), and the equally malevolent
Charles Bronson
,
Trini Lopez
Jim Brown
, and
Clint Walker
. On the dim promise of receiving pardons if they survive, the criminals undergo a brutal training program, then are marched behind enemy lines dressed as Nazi soldiers, the better to overtake the chateau and kill everyone in it--including the innocent wives and mistresses of the German officers.