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To escape arrest, small-time bookie Steve Boland (Charles Bronson) joins the army. Soon he figures that he'd have been better off in jail: an unrepentant foul-up, Boland just can't seem to get in step with military protocol. All this changes when Steve falls in love with level-headed Ilsa (Violet Rensing). In a thoroughly out-of-left-field plot development, Steve becomes a hero when acting upon Ilsa's warning that there's a communist plot afoot to assassinate President Eisenhower! The trade magazine Variety observed that the banality of When Hell Broke Loose could be gauged by the fact that two of the characters are named "Brooklyn" and "Jonesey."