[6][7] Technical sergeant Jim Moore, a highly-decorated and strict drill instructor on Parris Island, is charged with Owens, a capable recruit who fails under pressure.

Actual Marines, including actual drill instructors, were used in the cast as recruits, and those with speaking parts were given proper recognition in the closing credits: Following the Ribbon Creek incident that took place at Parris Island on the night of April 8, 1956, the Marine Corps was deluged with requests from various producers to make films exploiting the incident.

Unlike many producers seeking to highlight Marine Corps brutality, Jack Webb based his film treatment on a teleplay by former Marine James Lee Barrett, The Murder of a Sand Flea, broadcast on the Kraft Television Theatre on October 10, 1956[8] with Lin McCarthy repeating his role.

[10] Barrett's screenplay expanded the story by introducing the subplots of Moore's romance with a local shop girl (played by Webb's future wife Jackie Loughery) and of Owens' mother's (Virginia Gregg) trip to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot to beg the Marines to keep her son.

Singer Monica Lewis appears in the film for a musical interlude, performing the provocative song "(If'n You Don't) Somebody Else Will," backed by the Ray Conniff orchestra and chorus.