EDITOR’S NOTE: Over the next several days, I’ll be covering movies either directed by Menahem Golan or produced by Golan and Globus before they bought Cannon.

Directed by Menahem Golan, who wrote the script with Joseph and Yosef Gross (The Magician) with Yorum Globus producing, Ha-Pritza Hagdola is the story of Israel at war with Egypt — although never said — and the POWs of the El Muzzir prison, which is lorded over by the brutal Major Heikal (Joseph Shiloach).

Five Israeli commandos are being kept there and despite the UN attempting to see if they are being treated in accordance to the Geneva Convention, After trying to break the men with firing squad fakeouts where he ties them up, blindfolds them and repeatedly plays gun noises over a loudspeaker, one of them, Eli (Yehoram Gaon) gets away and back to Israel. He’s angry that no one is doing anything to save his fellow men. He steals an ambulance and goes to speak with his former leader Beno (Rick Jason). He agrees to get together some of his other retired commandos and rescue the men.

While all this is going on, Life Magazine reporter Abe Koleman (Peter Brown) is buttering up to Heikal and planning an article that will show the improve side of Egypt and how they treat prisoners. It turns out that some of the guards are on the side of Israel and have given Koleman photos of abuses which he uses to get the interview and into the prison itself. Of course, he’s on the side of the commandos and before you can say The Delta Force, grenades and bullets and bodies are flying all over the place.

Also known as Hostages in the Gulf, The Big Escape and From Hell to Victory, this is an intriguing early Menahem film that predates his later Cannon action mastery.

You can watch this on YouTube.