Battle Stations (film)
Battle Stations is a 1956 American war film directed by Lewis Seiler and starring John Lund, William Bendix and Keefe Brasselle.[1] It was produced and distributed by Columbia Pictures. It took inspiration from the 1944 documentary film The Fighting Lady.[2]
| Battle Stations | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Lewis Seiler |
| Screenplay by | Crane Wilbur |
| Based on | a story by Ben Finney |
| Produced by | Bryan Foy |
| Starring | John Lund William Bendix Keefe Brasselle Richard Boone William Leslie |
| Cinematography | Burnett Guffey, A.S.C. |
| Edited by | Jerome Thoms, A.C.E. |
| Music by | Mischa Bakaleinikoff (conducted by) |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures Corporation |
Release date | February 1, 1956 |
Running time | 81 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Cast
- John Lund as Father Joseph McIntyre
- William Bendix as Buck Fitzpatrick
- Keefe Brasselle as Chris Jordan
- Richard Boone as The captain
- William Leslie as Ensign Pete Kelly
- John Craven as Cmdr. James Matthews
- James Lydon as Squawk Hewitt
- Claude Akins as Marty Brennan
- George O'Hanlon as Patrick Mosher
- Eddie Foy, III as Tom Short
Uncredited
- James O'Hara as Williams
- Robert Stevenson as John Moody
- Jon Locke as Wallakowski
- Carleton Young as Rear Admiral
Critical response
Writing in AllMovie, author and film critic Hal Erickson described the film as "a standard wartime melodrama with the usual assortment of cliches," noting that "the economies in Battle Stations extend to its opening-credit music, which has been lifted bodily from Max Steiner's score for The Caine Mutiny."[3] Film review site The Movie Scene described the film as having "that same sense of patriotism and propaganda about it which those movies made during WWII had," that "it feels like who ever wrote it had watched dozens of other movies about life at sea during the war, picked out all the bits which they liked right down [to] the music and then slotted them together," and that it "delivers plenty of cliche."[4]
References
- Fetrow p.34
- Paris p.163
- Erickson, Hal. "Battle Stations (1956)". AllMovie. Netaktion LLC. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
- "Battle Stations (1956)". The Movie Scene. The Movie Scene. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
Bibliography
- Fetrow, Alan G. Feature Films, 1950-1959: A United States Filmography. McFarland, 1999.
- Paris, Michael. From the Wright Brothers to Top Gun: Aviation, Nationalism, and Popular Cinema. Manchester University Press, 1995.