Trivia

Filmed in Libya, as Egypt was ruled out due to the recent Suez Crisis. Filming began 10 September 1957.

The flies were so bad on-location, that most of the cast had to be sprayed with DDT, a chemical which is now banned.

The final bar scene, in which Sir John Mills' character finally gets his glass of lager, was used in the 1980's in beer advertisements on television, for Holsten Pils, interspersing comedian Griff Rhys Jones into the original footage, à la Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), and also around 40 years later in a Carlsberg commercial promoting their lager, colorizing it. The actual scene was reportedly filmed some weeks after the rest of the film, at Elstree. Real lager had to be used to "look right," and Mills had to drink numerous glasses full until the shots were finished (after 14 takes), and was "a little 'heady'" by the end.

The cast earned considerably more than they were paid for this movie when footage from it was used in the British commercial for Carlsberg Lager.

The love scene between Anson and Diana had to be re-shot after the British censor decided that Sylvia Syms had too many buttons undone on her blouse, revealing too much cleavage. Censor John Nicholls had already requested over 80 alterations to the script before shooting and, following protests by Director J. Lee Thompson, he was eventually replaced as BBFC Chief by John Trevelyan in May 1958. Other additional dialogue cuts included the removal of the phrase "made a balls of it" and the overdubbing of "bloody good old bitch."

The ambulance crossing the minefield was just a few notes in the screenplay. It was improvised by Director J. Lee Thompson into the tense sequence we see in the movie today.