Besides Jess Francos shot-on-video crap that he made at the end of his career his worst films have to be his action movies. This one even has some big name stars like Robert Forster and George Kennedy in it but still manages to be a mess. We do get a ridiculous scene of Mr. Kennedy in a gun fight with a helicopter but most of this movie is tough to get through. It also doesn't help that Franco, the king of sleazy cinema, imbues this movie with absolutely nothing sexy going on. Lina Romay has probably never been so wasted in a role. AKA COUNTDOWN TO ESMERALDA BAY
So for long stretches of this movie it is really quiet which seems very bizarre for a war flick and also makes it extremely difficult to stay awake while viewing. On the contrary when the soundtrack does kick in it seems like something way more suitable for a light-hearted comedy romp than a WW2 film where Nazis are getting mowed down by machine guns. Besides the music though there's not a whole lot that sets this one apart from any cheap Eurotrash war movie of the 60s beyond Klaus Kinski who's always fun to watch. here he's a German colonel who gets to bang Margaret Lee who's the only female character that shows up. For Kinski completists only!
Lee Van Cleef is the main attraction here and he really acts the hell out of this role of a tough-ass sergeant who, along with a group of fellow commandos, goes undercover in Italy on a secret mission. This is an Italian/German co-production which, when we consider that those two countries were not exactly the heroes in this tale, is a bit strange. Then again I suppose it makes about as much sense as Italians romanticizing the American old-west which, of course, was a major idea in tons of films in this same decade(many also starring Mr. Van Cleef!). Overall this one is an o.k. Euro-warsploitation flick that moves along at a pretty snappy pace and has plenty of action to keep things interesting enough. There is one thing that perturbs me about this movie and that's one scene where Mr. Lee explains to his commanding officer how difficult it is to kill a man and then in almost the very next scene we see people getting stuck with knives and instantly falling over dead in a very Hollywood-style of dying. Besides that though this one is worth a look if war films are your bag.
Of interest to horror devotees, Dario Argento was one of the 5 writers on this thing(which seems like an awful lot of writers for a fairly simple story) and while there's certainly a lot of killing going on nothing is very horror-like.
Klaus Kinski is the main draw in this Italian World War II action flick as a dirty rapey soldier who gets sent to his death by a firing squad until an unexpected attack by some German soldiers gives him a chance to redeem himself. An alternate title for this one is THE DIRTY TWO and that gives you the basic idea as Klaus along with a fellow black prisoner(Ray Saunders) end up reluctantly teamed-up with a scaredy-pants lieutenant played by George Hilton. Hilton normally played the more heroic star of spaghetti-westerns at this time so this is a bit of a departure for him. An o.k. war film that gets a bit predictable but does a good job in fleshing-out it's three main characters for dramatic purposes.
AKA WAR FEVER, BADGE OF COURAGE and THE LIBERATORS
Joe D'Amato takes us into war movie territory with this extravaganza featuring Luc Merenda as a mercenary who joins up with a rag-tag army to collect the bounty on the head of one of his fellow soldiers. Donald O'Brien from ZOMBIE has a big role also as the major and I don't think I've ever seen him kick as much ass as he does in this. Many bottle of J&B whiskey also put in an appearance like in any good Eurotrash flick. The first half hour, which takes place in a training camp, is a little slow but after that the action kicks in and it gets into a sorta-DIRTY DOZEN situation except with 6 guys. Worth a watch if you dig bad low-budget war movies with tough guys doing tough guy stuff. Unfortunately, even though there's a scene where a guy is decapitated, there's no blood in this at all. So if that's what you're looking for skip it. I do give this extra points for a strange twist ending that I really wouldn't have imagined showing up in an Italian film from the 70's.
The title of this was also used for this book on Eurowar flicks that I haven't read yet but it looks pretty bad-ass!:
I picked up that stupid INGLORIOUS BASTARDS 2: HELL'S HEROES DVD set a while back and finally got around to watching it. Well attempting to watch it is more truthful. This was the only one out of all four films that I found even watchable. Perhaps it's due to its being directed by Umberto Lenzi that I found it O. K. It's by no means a great film but I guess in comparison to the other 3 it stands out a bit. The main problem I guess I have with all of these is that they're all pretty boring and for action movies that's not a good thing. I mean I'm not a huge fan of typical action movies anyway and these are even worse than typical for the most part. But this one did hold my attention and I actually thought the acting was fairly decent. I have no idea who any of these people are with names like Paki Valente and Zdenko Jelcic but they did an acceptable job for the stupidity of it all. The battle scenes really make no sense and are totally unbelievable but I think that just added to my amusement. So don't buy this thing unless you like very crappy euro-action.
The old Cannon VHS had Michael "American Ninja" Dudikoff talk up the movie:
