Italian war movies are usually a lot of trash. And this Italian war movie is definitely among the worst of the subgenre. Ettore Manni stars as a an Allied soldier 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 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. Thrown in for no reason.
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.
The American escapees also had far too easy of a time getting into that German high command building. No security checks or anything.
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.
Granted this movie isn't as bad as BRIDGE TO HELL but it's definitely near the bottom of the barrel.
