I honestly can't remember the last time I laughed this much watching any war movie. Even CASABLANCA EXPRESS wasn't even half as entertaining as this film in sheer badness level. Umberto Lenzi seems to be working well with his Yugoslavian crew and actors in that the action scenes are all fairly exciting in a deliciously hammy way. There's plenty of funny miniature effects which are filmed in a very similar close-up way that Antonio Margheriti (and Michael Curtiz) filmed their miniatures. However, the plot is completely laughable, repetitive, and ultimately dull. Young American actor Andy J. Forrest (who looks kinda like a serious Jim Carrey) goes through his lines with a Jimmy Stewart-sounding dubbed voice while leading a couple terrible actors across the Yugoslavian countryside killing endless Germans. In one scene, Forrest and co. run into a bunch of resistance members, and in the next scene help them fight Germans, only to escape and... run into more partisans and help them out too! This goes on for over 90 minutes and grows tediously overlong near the end, descending into outright slapstick comedy as Forrest steals plane after plane and crashes every single one.
There's a lot of really annoying things going on here. First off, the Germans dont really speak English OR German, they merely say "Schnell" over and over again, which basically means "Fast". Is that really the only German word they knew? Also, several scenes are thrown in for no reason, like a shot of a bunch of German attack dogs (which never go on to actually attack anything). Add to the list the completely idiotic action scene at the end, involving 3 people fending off about a million German soldiers completely effortlessly. In some parts of the said battle, the three main characters will be busy planting explosives while machine gun fire is heard and endless Germans die and fall off the bridge. As entertaining as this was, it was totally goofy and unbelievable, actually predating TROMA'S WAR. Fabio Frizzi's score is acceptable synthesizer garbage (much like Luigi Ceccarelli's scores), but sounds totally out-of-place in World War Two movie!
Umberto Lenzi's made close to half-a-dozen war movies, and his late 80's efforts are by far his least impressive. Watch DESERT COMMANDOS or THE GREATEST BATTLE instead. Sure their plots suck too but they arent half as
corny as this one.
There's a lot of really annoying things going on here. First off, the Germans dont really speak English OR German, they merely say "Schnell" over and over again, which basically means "Fast". Is that really the only German word they knew? Also, several scenes are thrown in for no reason, like a shot of a bunch of German attack dogs (which never go on to actually attack anything). Add to the list the completely idiotic action scene at the end, involving 3 people fending off about a million German soldiers completely effortlessly. In some parts of the said battle, the three main characters will be busy planting explosives while machine gun fire is heard and endless Germans die and fall off the bridge. As entertaining as this was, it was totally goofy and unbelievable, actually predating TROMA'S WAR. Fabio Frizzi's score is acceptable synthesizer garbage (much like Luigi Ceccarelli's scores), but sounds totally out-of-place in World War Two movie!
Umberto Lenzi's made close to half-a-dozen war movies, and his late 80's efforts are by far his least impressive. Watch DESERT COMMANDOS or THE GREATEST BATTLE instead. Sure their plots suck too but they arent half as
corny as this one.
