During the Japanese invasion of Burma in 1942, a seven-strong British sonic deception unit on a short jungle exercise hides from the rain in a hut at an abandoned tin mine.

While Sergeant Mitchem and Corporal Johnstone are reconnoitering, Lance-Corporal Macleish ("Mac"), provoked, beats up Bamforth.

Tension rises as they fail to make radio contact with their base and pick up a Japanese broadcast, indicating that they are nearby.

Johnstone, enraged, tries to destroy the pictures but Bamforth, his frustrations boiling over, beats him up, risking a court martial.

The group, temporararily blocked by a flash flood, take a break in the mine canyons and Bamforth is sent to keep watch.

As the men again grow hostile, Bamford responds that Tojo could have traded for it, forcing the youngest member (Whittaker) to admit that he does this.

Panicking about the Japanese broadcast and ashamed from his unveiling as a looter, Whittaker mistakes Tojo's movements and shoots him dead with a machine gun.

The radio crackles into life again and a Japanese accented English announces that the patrol is surrounded and demands their surrender.

Roy Ward Baker wanted to make the film at Rank but the company would not authorise the purchase of the rights.

The actor was disappointed with the script, Norman's plan to film in a studio and the decision to not cast Peter O'Toole.

"[4] The film was shot at Elstree Studios in 1960, where Richard Todd had starred in The Dam Busters a few years earlier.

[8] According to Kine Weekly, the 12 most popular films at the British box office in 1961 were, in order, Swiss Family Robinson, The Magnificent Seven, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 101 Dalmatians, Polyanna, The Rebel, The Sundowners, Whistle Down the Wind, Butterfield 8, Carry On Regardless, The Parent Trap and The Long and the Short and the Tall.