L'enfer des héros

Heroes in Hell (1974)

* (out of 4)

Rather boring Italian attempt at THE GREAT ESCAPE and various other war pictures. This one here centers on a couple men who are captured by the Germans and thrown into a prison camp. The two eventually make a great escape and they go undercover to try and kill an evil Nazi leader (Klaus Kinski).

This film was directed by the one and only Joe D'Amato. I've seen well over one hundred films by the famed Italian director and there are a lot of really, really bad movies. Sadly, this WWII drama falls into that category as there's really not too much going on here and the film drags extremely bad for something that clocks in at just 84-minutes.

The only real entertainment comes from some of its low-budget issues. For starters, there's a lot of "action" that is clearly just stock footage shot during the real war. There doesn't seem to have been much of an attempt to match the footage up so trying to pass this off as something that was really happening in the film just doesn't work. Once we get to the real action, well, it's really not that much better and there's certainly nothing good about it.

The majority of the cast members are easily forgettable and that includes Ettore Manni in the lead. Kinski gets the top=billing and his face is all over the posters but he doesn't appear until the final ten-minutes of the movie. I wish I could say he gave the film a jump start but he doesn't. It's clear he was just picking up a paycheck as he doesn't add any memorable.