🔻In July 1983, the film “The Battle of Loyalties” was shown for the first time—and almost last time—.

🔻In July 1983, the film “The Battle of Loyalties” was shown for the first time—and almost last time—. Its producer, in 2020, in an interview with the BBC, had talked about the forced conscription, interrogation, and Oliver Reed’s drunkenness, the film’s star.

The biggest threat to the epic Hollywood film Saddam Hussein wasn’t the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980; that was only a few weeks after filming had started in the deserts near Baghdad.

This threat wasn’t the repeated call-up of actors and crew for the war, nor their disappearance from the film set without their colleagues being informed. Even the challenge of transferring First World War weapons from the Turkish border for use in the film wasn’t considered the biggest obstacle; there, customs officers stopped the trucks, believing they were carrying a real arms cache to aid the Iraqi army.

What pushed the film “The Battle of Loyalties” to the brink of being halted more than anything else was a story born out of drunkenness in a hotel restaurant, where Oliver Reed, the film’s star, urinated into an empty bottle of wine.

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📸BBC/ GettyImages/ Iraqi Film Corporation