36 Hours | BlurayStreet

admin

A gripping WWII thriller in which Nazis capture an American spy and try to trick him into thinking that the war has ended. Major Jefferson Pike has been sent on an intelligence assignment to Portugal. But once there, he is trapped and drugged by Germans, who take him to a remote hospital in the Black Forest. There, psychiatrist Walter Gerber attempts to fool Pike into thinking that he’s been s

36 HOURS – DVD Movie WWII films of the ’60s were often half caper-movie, with ornate and muscular missions behind enemy lines dreamed up by the likes of Alistair MacLean. The caper in 36 Hours (1965)–which was dreamed up by Roald Dahl–reverses the dynamics. A U.S. diplomatic courier (James Garner) with knowledge of the plans for D-Day is kidnapped, drugged, and taken to a sanatorium surrounded by forest. He wakes up in the presence of solicitous doctors and staff who seem to be fellow Americans and ever so happy to have him back after all those years in a coma. War’s long over, of course; we won–and isn’t it a good thing the Allies scrapped that first, wacky invasion plan they almost used? The plan maybe he still remembers?… 36 Hours is an intriguing thriller up to a point–and the moment when Garner catches on to the trick is a grabber–but George Seaton’s direction is pedestrian and the production has a soundstage-y look. Rod Taylor takes acting honors as the sympathetic German psychiatrist in charge of the plot, under the suspicious eyes of SS man Werner Peters. –Richard T. Jameson