Rebecca: This is so bad it's almost good.
Enid: This is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again.
In the 1960's and early 1970's, if you were short on money and wanted to make a movie (and did not care what kind of movie), financing was always available in Italy for anyone willing to do something to refurbish Italy's WWII image (which somehow managed to be both shameful AND embarrassing). Italy had been high on militaristic fascism (although not very good at it) until things started to go bad for the Axis. Then they surrendered so fast that German troops did not have time to get out of the country even if they had wanted to. Since then Italy has pretended that they were actually on the winning side.
"Hornet's Nest" is a product of this mentally, a propaganda film that would have been ludicrous had it been made during the war (even by propaganda film standards) but was just painful by 1970. The infliction of something this moronic on audiences could be considered Hitler's final act of revenge.
Prior to seeing "Hornet's Nest" I had believed that Rock Hudson's career bottomed out in 1971 with "Pretty Maids in a Row" and then was somewhat revived when he switched to television acting the next year. But now I can see that "Pretty Maids" was actually the beginning of a climb up from an even lower point represented by "Hornet's Nest".
As someone has already mentioned, "Hornet's Nest" has become a gay cult classic. Presumably this was unintentional in 1970 but you really have to wonder. Here is WWII army paratrooper Rock, dressed in a uniform more cigar republic than U.S. Army (see Seinfeld's Cuban cigar makers episode), a bandito mustache, and hair over his ears 1970's style. He hangs out with and disciplines a bunch of Italian boys in various states of undress. There are lingering and unnecessarily extreme close-ups of a German officer's boots being shined by one of the Italian boys. And the German soldiers show an extraordinary amount of interest in the other Italian boys, especially when the boys take off their clothes.
If not the worst WWII movie it certainly is in the running for that designation. Some war movies tease you at the beginning into believing they might be decent but "Hornet" crashes and burns with its very first scene as the evil Germans are shown massacring an entire Italian village with special emphasis on the Priest. Things don't go downhill but stay pretty much at that propaganda film level (it is no surprise that the writer was later responsible for the lame WWII episodes of the Wonder Woman TV show).
The premise of the film (which seems to be more afterthought than character motivation) is blowing up an Italian dam. Since the Germans are withdrawing from Italy it would seem more logical for the Allies to want to protect the dam from German demolition but logic is in very short supply in this story.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
