The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission

Other than a short lived television series The Dirty Dozen was gathered again for a last film in this made for TV mission. Ernest Borgnine returns as General Warden and since Lee Marvin had passed on Telly Savalas takes the role as the unorthodox major who's in charge of this unit of the condemned.

Who are given a mission to cheat the hangman or hard labor. In this case the mission is to stop a train heading to Istanbul with passengers that are a lot of prominent Nazis who are to go underground in neutral Turkey and create a Fourth Reich over the long haul.

The wrinkle in this film is that there is a traitor in the group, kind of like James Cagney's OSS team in 13 Rue Madeleine. Savalas has to figure out who and eliminate them. He also has to keep changing his plans to keep the Germans off balance.

This group also has a couple of females along, Yugoslav partisan Natalija Nogulich and Army Intelligence Officer Heather Thomas. Surprisingly little attention is paid to the women by the paroled criminals on this outing.

All the subsequent 80s sequels of the original Dirty Dozen sure lacked the style the first one had. This is a routine action adventure film no more.