The Queen's Guards is a 1961 British military drama film directed by Michael Powell from a script by Simon Harcourt-Smith and Roger Milner.

"[4] The film tells the story of John Fellowes, an officer in the Grenadier Guards as he prepares for the Trooping the Colour ceremony on 11 June 1960.

Fellowes is disabled: his legs do not work, and he hauls himself around the house by hooking canes into loops on an overhead rail.

John is dating Ruth (Judith Stott), the daughter of George Dobbie, a haulage contractor.

Months later, John is in command of a unit of Guardsmen involved in a combat operation in an unnamed desert country.

All the time that he is haunted by thoughts about how his brother died, John manages to defend against a counter-attack, until Henry arrives with his men in their armoured scout vehicles.

Powell says the film was based on the idea of a friend of his, Simon Harcourt-Smith, who was inspired watching the Household Cavalry outside Buckingham Palace.

His basic idea was to encapsulate the story of a British military family with the ceremony of Trooping the Colour, where the climax would be the arrival of the Queen to take the salute.

[7] He sold the story to 20th Century Fox and the Queen gave her permission to film the Trooping of the Colour.

"[8] He later said the film was "a broken backed feature when it should have been a family saga and an epic of military glory... We shouldn't have tried to compete with AEW Mason.

Sequences set in Libya were meant to be shot on location, but the studio cut the budget at the last minute, so they had to be filmed in England.

In A Bridge Too Far (1977), Michael Caine leads a squadron of Irish Guards to spearhead the ground-based push towards Arnhem.

[16][17] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Michael Powells flag-waving museum piece would be distressing if it weren't so inept.

The Masseys – Daniel and Raymond – battle manfully with dialogue and characters as dated as a Crimean cavalry charge.