The Blockhouse

Film Description

In 1944, a group of POWs are working to build trenches along the French coast in preparation from the impending D-Day attacks. But when an unexpected aerial attack arrives, they are forced to seek shelter deep inside a Blockhouse – a giant underground storage facility packed with frontline supplies and hidden Nazi treasures.

When the heavy bombardment causes the entrance walls to collapse, the seven men are trapped within and forced deeper into the vast underground chamber. The prisoners are at first buoyed by their discovery of almost limitless wine, candles and rations. But when it becomes clear there is no hope of escape, their physical comfort begins to gives way to a risk of mental disintegration that will provide these hardened soldiers with their toughest test of the war so far.

A harrowing true story, adapted from the novel by Jean-Paul Clebert, Blockhouse is widely accepted as having provided Peter Sellers with his finest dramatic role. Supported by a wonderful cast of character actors including Jeremy Kemp, Peter Vaughan and Charles Aznavour, Blockhouse is a claustrophobic, but brilliantly realized dramatization of the cruelty of war and the perseverance required to outlast it.

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