Unfilmed Hammer: The Mercenaries

According to The Encyclopedia of Hammer Films this adaptation of a Jon Manchip White action/adventure novel was on their slate for 1962. The Hammer archive holds a script dated September of that year. The novel was first published in hardback by John Long in 1958 and runs for 192 brisk pages.

Argentina 1955, in the aftermath of the overthrow of Juan Perón. Consuelo Saavedra, an actress, protégée of the late Evita Perón and mistress of the now-deposed politician Federigo Quaredighini, is taken from her ranch refuge by Clive Rickman, an Englishman, and Dietrich von Koenigsberg, a German, soldiers of fortune both. They ambush and murder the men who try to rescue her, but it is to her lover, Quaredighini, whom they deliver her. They collect Quaredighini’s devoted First Secretary, a young man by the name of Vasco Sullivan, and all five of them set off for Paraguay. As they escape into the jungle a party of soldiers engages them in a firefight during which Dietrich is badly wounded. Quaredighini, whose cowardice is now off the scale, tries unsuccessfully to bribe Rickman to abandon Dietrich. Then he tries to bribe Vasco to murder Rickman and, if necessary, leave Consuelo in the jungle. Vasco, who has a major passion for Consuelo, is devastated by Quaredighini’s greed and disloyalty. Quaredighini then sets off into the jungle alone but is tracked down by Rickman just at the point when he is being attacked by a panther. By the time they return Dietrich is dead. Nearing their pick-up point at the Paraguayan border, Vasco quarrels with Quaredighini whom he has discovered has stolen a fortune in bonds and secret papers that Vasco insists belong to the people. Quaredighini makes a break for it but is gunned down by a patrol. Rickman, without the final part of his payment but with a considerable haul nonetheless, plans to head for Havana but Vasco has resolved to return to Buenos Aires with the papers, regardless of what might happen to him, and Consuelo decides to stay with Vasco.

The novel plunges the reader straight into the action and never lets up. It may well have made for a cracker of a movie, depending on who directed it. Val Guest directing Stanley Baker as Rickman with Oliver Reed as Vasco and we might have had something. Or Michael Carreras could have done it and it would have been shite.