The Dirty Dozen, by E. M. Nathanson, is one of those rip-snorting adventures from WWII based on no factual material whatsoever. The book was a real page-turner as you got to know a group of dreadful people and then waited for them to be killed off. They made it into a movie that was just as good, mostly because of the top class cast. Oddly, twelve top actors were put in the roles but many of them (Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Robert Webber, George Kennedy) played the officers who squabble over the morality and wisdom of a suicide mission to be performed by a dozen convicted murderers. Their job is to invade a mansion where German generals go for R&R and kill as many of them as possible.
    Lee Marvin plays the tough major assigned to train this bunch of social outcasts and lead the mission; Richard Jaeckel is his sergeant who gives them their name and as a reward gets to go along on the mission (making a 14th man). The dozen are a diverse lot, with plenty of meat for John Cassavetes, Donald Sutherland, Tely Savalas (as the outstanding psychopath amongst psychopaths), Charles Bronson (as the only one of the convicts to survive), Jim Brown and Clint Walker as the nice ones, Trini Lopez (of all people) whose bad acting demanded he be killed off early, and some minor actors to fill out the numbers.
    A curious error in the movie is that they forgot to kill the Clint Walker character, or else omitted to take him along afterwards. Maybe Cheyenne was just too nice a bloke to die.
    They all die bravely or foolishly and lots of Nazis (and their wives and girlfriends) get slaughtered, and everyone seems to have a fine old time. Ah, for the days when mass murder was fun.