HEROES IN HELL (1974)
DIRECTOR: Joe D'Amato (well, everyone's gotta start someplace)
CAST: Klaus Kinski, Ettore Manni, Stan Simon, Lars Bloch, Carlos Ewing, George Manes and Luciano Rossi.
Italian war movies are usually considered trash when compared to classics like THE DIRTY DOZEN and THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. Rarely do I come across an Italian war movie that makes the others in the genre look like a gem, such as LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. Well, I found one that did just that! This Italian war movie is definitely among the worst of the genre.
Ettore Manni stars as a an Allied doctor who leads an escape from a German POW camp. The escaped POWs hook up with French partisans and aid them in capturing a German General.
The film has no recognizable actors except for Ettoe Manni (BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN) and Kinski (FIVE FOR HELL). Luciano Rossi pops up also as the camp Kommandant. Kinski has a weird role as an art-obsessed SS officer in the final act and doesn't have much to do in his part, while Manni has a meaty role as the cynical, hard-drinking surgeon. Reminded a little of William Holden in THE HORSE SOLDIERS but Manni's still willing to fight.
Now for my REAL criticisms... and there's a lot of them:
The movie starts out with an incredibly long credits sequence, which is just stock footage with the names of the actors and director scrolling by. Then we get about 40 minutes of hand-held camera action showing the prisoners move throughout the "camp". The "camp" consists of about 2 different rooms, a dozen prisoners and maybe four or five Germans. And during the first 40 minutes or so there is also some annoying music playing lightly in the background for no apparent reason.
Then there was the very long "nightmare" sequence, which is just a whole bunch of B&W stock gun camera and airplane footage. This was thrown in for no reason and had NOTHING to do with ANYTHING else in the ENTIRE movie. It just ticked me off. As I've been getting more and more obscure titles, I notice this trick used quite often - the most notorious example being HOUR X SUICIDE PATROL - to suck up film time.
Then there's another thing I don't get. Whenever the Germans are talking, it's evident that their lines were dubbed from Italian to German. Quite evident and embarrasing. And we don't even get subtitles to know what the Germans are discussing.
Klaus Kinski, billed as a "star", appears only in the last few minutes of the movie. He's constantly referred to as "General" although he wears an SS Colonel's uniform. What's up with that? If a movie is dubbed, it's gonna look bad anyway, so if he's wearing a Colonel's uniform dub in the word "Colonel" even if "General" matches the lip movements more accurately.
The American escapees have far too easy of a time getting into that German high command building. There were no security checks or anything. C'mon, we're talking NAZI S.S. HEADQUARTERS here -- not some Home Guard platoon!
The battle scenes were filmed on a tight budget, only allowing a few actors to grace the screen at one time or another and only a couple of explosions. But, they were entertaining and the big one at the end, though corny, was exciting.
Finally, the musical score, lousy and boring as it is, is stolen EXACTLY AS IT IS from THE RANGERS (!)
Granted this movie isn't as bad as BRIDGE TO HELL (heck -- that "movie" gave "cheap" a whole new meaning) but it's definitely near the bottom of the barrel.
SGT. SLAUGHTER'S RATING: 1.5 Bullets
