The Guns of Navarone

"You think you've been getting away with it all this time, standing by. Well, son... your bystanding days are over! You're in it now, up to your neck! They told me that you're a genius with explosives. Start proving it! [gesturing with his pistol] You got me in the mood to use this thing, and by God, if you don't think of something, I'll use it on you! I mean it."

"...To win a war, you have to be just as nasty as the enemy. What worries me is that we're likely to wake up one morning and find out we've become even nastier than they were."

"[as the team prepares to leave, Miller comes stomping in] Everybody stay exactly where you are! The party's over. Somebody stepped on the cake! [opens his case] Exhibit A: a clockwork fuse. Elementary and archaic, but they work. Only this one doesn't work, you know why? The clock's okay, but the contact arm's been broken off. This clock could tick away until Christmas, and it wouldn't set off a firecracker! [throws it in a corner] Exhibit B: Exhibit B is missing! All my slow-burning fuses are gone, disappeared, vanished! Exhibit C: my time pencils. [holds one up] Seventy-five grains of fulminate of mercury in every one of them, enough to blow off my hand. And very unstable, very delicate. [He smacks the one in his hand against the bundle of the rest, then violently crumples the whole mess together, and throws them in a corner] Which means there is a traitor in this room."

"She is my friend, Anna. She is one of us. It's bad that this happened to her. Before the Germans came, she was a school teacher in Mandrakos. Last year, she was caught. They tortured her to make her betray us. They whipped her until the white of her bones showed. Some nights we could hear her screaming. Then they took her to the fortress and they kept her there for six months. When they let her go, she could not speak. She has never spoken since, not even in her dreams. Even I have never been allowed to see the scars on her back. But she's a good fighter - as good as any of you. She is like a ghost. She goes anywhere. She got us these guns and she kills without mercy. You are very lucky brother."

"Prologue Narrator: [opening lines] Greece and the islands of the Aegean Sea have given birth to many myths and legends of war and adventure. And these once-proud stones, these ruined and shattered temples bear witness to the civilization that flourished and then died here and to the demigods and heroes who inspired those legends on this sea and these islands. But, though the stage is the same, ours is a legend of our own times, and its heroes are not demigods, but ordinary people. In 1943, so the story goes, 2000 British soldiers lay marooned on the tiny island of Kheros, exhausted and helpless. They had exactly one week to live for in Berlin the Axis high command had determined on a show of strength in the Aegean Sea to bully neutral Turkey into coming into the war on their side. The scene of that demonstration was to be Kheros, itself of no military value, but only a few miles off the coast of Turkey. The cream of the German war machine, rested and ready, was to spearhead the attack, and the men on Kheros were doomed unless they could be evacuated before the blitz. But the only passage to and from Kheros was guarded and blocked by two great, newly designed, radar-controlled guns on the nearby island of Navarone. Guns too powerful and accurate for any allied ship then in the Aegean to challenge. Allied intelligence learned of the projected blitz only one week before the appointed date. What took place in the next six days became the legend of Navarone."

"An impregnable fortress... An invincible army... and the unstoppable commando team."

"The Greatest High Adventure Ever Filmed!"

"Gregory Peck - Capt. Keith Mallory"

"David Niven - Cpl. Miller"

"Anthony Quinn - Col. Andrea Stavrou"

"Stanley Baker - Pvt. 'Butcher' Brown"

"Anthony Quayle - Maj. Roy Franklin"

"Irene Papas - Maria Pappadimos"

"Gia Scala - Anna"

"James Darren - Pvt. Spyro Pappadimos"

"James Robertson Justice - Commodore Jensen"

"Richard Harris - Squadron Leader Barnsby, Royal Australian Air Force"

"Bryan Forbes - Cohn"

"Allan Cuthbertson - Maj. Baker"

"Michael Trubshawe - Weaver"

"Percy Herbert - Sgt. Grogan"

"George Mikell - Hauptsturmführer Sessler"

"Walter Gotell - Oberleutnant Muesel"

"Tutte Lemkow - Nikolai"

"Albert Lieven - Commandant"