The Cavern (1964)

A nice cast in a rather average film, 6 May 2020

The Cavern is a wartime drama featuring an unlikely group of seven people who find themselves trapped in a cave in the Italian mountains.  Those trapped include: a British general, an American officer and an American private, an Italian soldier, a German sergeant, a Canadian pilot, and a woman from a local village.  Fortunately, the cave has been most recently used as an Italian supply dump.  But can these people put their differences behind them and find a way to survive?

The Cavern isn’t a great movie, but I found it a worthwhile watch.  Most of the entertainment I got out of it came from the characters, their relationships, and their interactions.  The cast is as eclectic as the characters they play, including genre fav John Saxon, Peter Marshall (it was more than a little weird seeing the long serving host of The Hollywood Squares in a WWII drama), the insanely beautiful Rosanna Schiaffino, Oscar nominee Brian Aherne, and Larry Hagman (yes, JR from Dallas is in The Cavern).  The acting is about as good as you could hope for from a low-budget film American/Italian/German/Yugoslav(?) co-production like this.  All do a reasonable job with what they’re given to work with.  For his last film, veteran director Edgar G. Ulmer created a claustrophobic, hopeless atmosphere.  And, there are a few real gut-wrenching moments.  The best has to be (and I won’t spoil it) when one of the characters finally finds a way out of the giant cave system only to be met with the most ironic tragedy I think I could imagine.  It’s a very good, but heartbreaking moment.  

But, as I said, it’s not a perfect film.  While I’ve credited Ulmer with creating atmosphere, there are far too many moments where the characters seem way more relaxed than they should given their circumstances.  They play cards, they sing songs, they make jokes, they carry on like they don’t have a care in the world.  Even though they have food and water, I would expect more panic.  It takes far too long for any of the characters to fully snap and have any sort of mental breakdown. 

5/10