The railway station sequence where Steiner and his men make their first appearance was filmed in Rovaniemi, Finland. The parachuting scenes were carried out by members of the REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) Parachute Display Team. The exit shots were filmed from a DC-3 at Dunkeswell Airfield in Devon. The landings onto the beach were filmed on Holkham Beach in Norfolk. The original theatrical running time for the film was 135 minutes in Europe, while 12 minutes were cut by the distributors before its US release. The most significant plot element lost between the US and UK cut is an extended conversation between Joanna Grey, Steiner, and Devlin where Grey reveals she is an Afrikaner and is helping the Germans because her parents died in a British prison camp. US and UK VHS cassettes had the 123 minute US cut. All DVDs and Blu-rays currently available worldwide now feature the original UK theatrical cut, which in DVD region 2 and 4 countries runs 130 minutes at 25fps (PAL speed). There are two exceptions:   The extended version contains a number of scenes that were deleted even before the European cinema release:  The film was a success, with Lew Grade saying "it made quite a lot of money". ITC made two more films with the same production team, "Escape to Athena" and "Green Ice". It spent a week as the number one film in the UK (9 April 1977) and was the fifteenth most successful film of 1977. In his review for "The New York Times", Vincent Canby called the film "a good old-fashioned adventure movie that is so stuffed with robust incidents and characters that you can relax and enjoy it without worrying whether it actually happened or even whether it's plausible." Canby singled out the writing and directing for praise: