DKosty123 What a pleasure it is to see such an amazing cast of women put together in one film. Today we are lucky to get more than 2 women in a film unless we get a comic book movie. This cast has almost as diverse a cast of good women actresses as any movie I have seen.This is a stage play made into a movie about army nurses dealing with the Japanese invasion of Bataan. Thank goodness it does not go to the conquest as I can not imagine a group of women and what would have happened to them if an invader got to plunder them.This film deals with the desperate and the more desperate situation as the invader gets closer and closer.There are a few men, most notably a dying sequence by an uncredited Robert Mitchum but for the most part the ladies coping with the war and with each other are the subject here. There is very little love interest and more concern about the demands being put on the nurses in the situation. Sometimes even their faces get grim and dirt.The reason this ensemble is only together for this one film is the war effort. Margaret Sullivan only had 21 acting roles in her career and one of these ladies only had 4 roles in her career. Others like Blondell had lots more screen time. The screen play base makes this one solid. The war propaganda effort made it possible to put this cast together. A real one of a kind film from the MGM studios.

MartinHafer "Cry 'Havoc'" is one of quite a few films about women at the front lines in the Pacific theater during WWII. What makes this a bit different is that most of the women are NOT nurses, but untrained volunteers who are pressed into service during the final days in the Philippines during the early part of 1942. Ultimately, the audience knew that the women would not escape--as it was public knowledge of the fall of the islands.The film is fairly good but does suffer from a few characters who are more caricatures. The most egregious of them is played by Ann Sothern. She plays a tough dame--who always walks around with a chip on her shoulder and is hot for a lieutenant she hardly knows. Most of the rest aren't as broadly written as her--and a few are even quite interesting, such as the sick nurse played by Margaret Sullavan. To me, the film celebrates these women but also failed to seem very real--and often the stiff and overly-patriotic dialog was the reason why. Compared to other films of this conflict, such as "In Harm's Way" and "So Proudly We Hail", it's inferior--but still quite watchable and uplifting. A decent time-passer.

bkoganbing Cry Havoc was based on a play by Allan Kenward which the Shuberts produced on Broadway and ran for a grand total of 11 performances over the Christmas/New Year's days of 1942-43. But what flops on Broadway can sometimes be a great success on screen and vice versa. In this case the subject matter had already been thoroughly covered in the Paramount film So Proudly We Hail and Cry Havoc runs a distinct second to that film. Like the Paramount film, Cry Havoc deals with nurses in the Phillipines after Pearl Harbor and their experiences during the Japanese attack.Margaret Sullavan was fulfilling the terms of an MGM contract with this movie. Afterwards she would concentrate on the stage and would only do one more film years later, No Sad Songs For Me. She plays the no nonsense army nurse with several new charges rushed up to the Bataan front among them Joan Blondell and Ann Sothern. Fay Bainter played Sullavan's superior and she also was winding up her MGM contract as well.There are no substantial male roles in this film, they're seen briefly in fighting roles and of course as casualties. If you don't blink you'll see Robert Mitchum utter a couple of words and then die. Sullavan and Sothern have a rivalry going over an unseen army lieutenant.In fact on the set they had a rivalry going as well. According to a recent biography of Margaret Sullavan, she and Sothern did not get along so their scenes together had some real bite. Sullavan felt that Sothern was slipping into her popular Maisie character for which she was doing a B picture series for MGM. Cry Havoc should be seen because anything that has Margaret Sullavan should be seen as she left us way too few films for posterity. But this really is quite inferior to So Proudly We Hail.

dogdba I have seen this movie about a dozen times on TV since I was a wee lad, way before DVR. So, while watching it again on TCM the other night in the scene where the gals are taking a recreational swim - just before they are attacked by an enemy plane (why the enemy wasted ammo on a bunch of bathing beauties is beyond me), Ella Raines appears to have a wardrobe malfunction with her bathing suit top. I re-played the scene several times on DVR and there is definitely some naked right boobage. Connie(Raines) gets shot and killed at the end of the scene. Janet Jackson got off easy. How this scene made it past the censors of the era is amazing.