Despite the clashing egos on the set of Mutiny on the Bounty, Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard signed on for another shipboard drama. For Brando it was a legal obligation to 20th Century-Fox: he had walked off The Egyptian in 1954 and still owed the studio a movie. It's a Second World War spy drama with Brando playing a German pacifist recruited by British agent Howard to destroy a German supply vessel, skippered by Yul Brynner. While Brynner is far from being a card-carrying Nazi, Brando impersonates an SS officer, setting up a complex relationship based on moral deception. Taking place almost entirely aboard the ship, this is a claustrophobic and often very tense movie that deserves to be better known.

A German living in India during World War II is blackmailed by the English to impersonate an SS officer on board a cargo ship leaving Japan for Germany carrying a large supply of rubber for tyres. His mission is to disable the scuttling charges so the captain cannot sink the ship if they are stopped by English warships.