Review of The Bedford Incident (1965) by Bill S — 27 May 2014

While Stanley Kubrick went down the satirical path with his Cold war thriller Dr Strangelove.

His old producing partner James B Harris gave us his own take on the genre and added element's of Moby Dick to give us a film which in its own way is just as powerful.

Richard Widmark is the tough and no nonsense Captain Eric Finlander a naval ship commander who keeps his men on high alert and so highly wound they never get sick or leave there post.

Into this cauldron od tension comes Martin Balsams understanding ships Doctor and Ben Munceford an award winning journalist played by Sidney Poitier.

Finlander treats both arrivals with equal disdain seeing then as to weak or too Liberal to deal with the task in hand the pursuit of a Russian submarine off the coast of Greenland.

Watching Finlanders ruthless quest Munceford begins to question Finlanders sanity and seeks answer from veteran U boat captain Shrepke played by Eric Portman.

The acting here is first class as Widmark and Poitier butt head in a suitably excellent fashion while Balsam gets increasingly angrier and Portman wishes for a more straightforward time of one on one combat.

With all this tension on the ship Harris gives us a terrifying denouement as a misheard word from Finlander causes a fatal mistake.

This really is a top rate thriller and is deserves to stand along side the other great cold war thrillers of the time.