Hannibal Brooks

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Hannibal Brooks
Directed by	Michael Winner
Produced by	Michael Winner
Written by	Michael Winner Tom Wright Ian La Frenais Dick Clement
Starring	Oliver Reed Michael J Pollard Wolfgang Preiss Helmuth Lohner
Music by	Francis Lai
Distributed by	United Artists Films
Release date(s)	1969
Running time	102 min.
Language	English

Hannibal Brooks is a 1969 film about a man, accompanied by an Asian elephant, trying to get to Switzerland from Germany in World War II.

[edit] Plot

A POW in World War II is put to work in a Munich zoo, looking after an Asian elephant.

The zoo is bombed by the Americans and the director of the zoo decides it is not safe for his Asian elephant Lucy to remain there. So he sends Brooks (Oliver Reed) along with Kurt (a hostile German soldier), a friendly German soldier named Willy and a female cook to accompany the elephant to Innsbruck Zoo via train.

They are forced to walk when the SS commandeer the train. When in Austria, Kurt threatens to shoot Lucy in a drunken aggressive display. Brooks tries to stop the soldier and a fight ensues between the two, which ends in Brooks accidentally killing Kurt. Brooks, Lucy, Willy and the cook are forced to run towards the Swiss border to safety. They are helped along the way by an American escapee named Packy (Michael J. Pollard) who has formed a group of partisans to fight the Germans in Austria. After many run-ins with the Nazis, they eventually make it to Switzerland. Hannibal Brookes is widely considered to be one of the best performances by an elephant on the big screen.