"When I was a kid, parents of friends of mine used to threaten to send their sons to military school unless they behaved properly...The military academy as presented in The Strange One is a kind of third-rate institution, a Citadel or VMI-like bastion of retrograde thought and racist behavior. (Ben Gazzara's cadet officer Jocko de Paris) is an evil madman, a manipulator of the weak, a megalomaniac of whom most of the cadets are afraid*...This dark vision of military academy life is chock full of homosexual overtones...In fact, this was an extremely brave little movie, and Gazzara's performance is a tour de force. Pat Hingle, too, distinguished himself mightily. I remember thinking when I first saw it (as a kid) that there were a lot of Jocko de Parises out in the world...and thanks in part to this movie, I knew how to recognize them right away, and managed to avoid as many as I could. Unfortunately, I'm still having to avoid them." --Barry Gifford *(The Czech-born director Jack Garfein was deported to Auschwitz as a teenager. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1945. --ed.)