Uccidete Rommel

Of course, it's a low-budget film, and one can't expect much more than a passing grade for the effort put into making it. The spaghetti western style is evident from the very first frames, both in the way it's shot and in the dialogue.

It's always amusing to see mistakes that are clearly a result of the limited budget, like finding oneself in the middle of an intense battle between Sherman tanks, even if they belong to opposing factions.

A film without glory or sorrow, with a certain moral message, albeit not overly profound.

For genre enthusiasts, it's just another film about the Africa campaign of World War II, but for others, it can still help them get a little glimpse into the lives of those soldiers scorched by the sun in the midst of the vastness of the North African desert.

I saw this film on "Movies for Men" last night. It is clear that it was filmed in Egypt not Tunisia (as another reviewer suggested)as the Great Pyramids at Giza appear in one shot! Also the "German" tanks in one sequence were Shermans specially fitted with the turret and gun from the French AMX tank. This was a unique and odd-looking variant of the Sherman used only by the Egyptian Army.

To my delight the "British" tanks in the same sequence were Shermans with short - barrelled 75mm M3 guns,correct for the period.This was one of the few war films I have ever seen which features Shermans and of the correct mark. By comparison the critically acclaimed "Patton" was totally inaccurate in its use of M-47,M-24 and M-41 tanks to depict British,German and U.S. Armour.

Even the largely accurate "A Bridge Too Far" features the wrong Mark of Shermans.

The curse of Alfonso Brescia strikes again! The Italian director was responsible for some of Italy's cheapest, trashiest movies during his lengthy career, and KILL ROMMEL! is an unsurprisingly cheap and cheerful addition to the cycle of Italian WW2 movies. This one's indistinguishable from many others, a men-on-a-mission movie which sees a group of American and British soldiers trekking through the desert to carry out a secret t.

The mission, as it turns out, is a complete waste of time, as is much of this movie. There are a few requisite action scenes - all of them ably handled by Brescia - but for the most part there's padding. In particular, bickering between two rival characters, which seems to go on endlessly without actually adding much to the plot line.

The authentic desert locations are one of the best things about this, along with the novelty factor of seeing Anton Diffring (typecast as a Nazi in many, many war flicks) playing a British officer for once! Sadly the rest of the dull cast can't hope to match Diffring's presence, leaving this an ultimately lame movie.

The more I see of the Euro war movie, the more I notice certain common traits that keep recurring. Kill Rommel is an example that features three. For one thing its action is set in the North African desert which seemed to be a favourite location for many an Italian made World War II movie; secondly its plot-line centres on a small group of troops on a special, border-line impossible, mission; and thirdly it features the very specific idea where a lookalike of a famous figure of the war is integral to the story, others in the sub-genre which also use this are Casablanca Express (1989) where its Churchill, while in When Heroes Die (1970) its Rommel, as it also is in this film.

This one was helmed by Alfonso Brescia who would go on to be a bit of a specialist in Star Wars (1977) rip-off flicks with the cheese-fests War of the Planets (1977) and War of the Robots (1978), while he would also add a bit of sex action into the sci-fi idiocy mix with The Beast in Space (1980). So this was the first time I had seen a Brescia movie that wasn't a bit of sci-fi hokum. It has to be said that despite the difference in genre, it's essentially of the same quality level as his other movies though. As I mentioned earlier, its plot-line is one that covers a lot of familiar ground featured in other movies of its time. But at the end of the day more of the same is kind of the general idea when it comes to a lot of this genre stuff and is what makes them kind of fun in truth. This one doesn't really fail on account of its derivative nature; it's more due to the tedium it generates too much of the time. It's not the most dynamic of films and it only really does just enough and no more to get over the line. It is still obviously worth checking out if you are a World War II buff though, as it still essentially does what it says on the tin, albeit in a somewhat underwhelming manner. On a final note, there was actually one thing that did stand out in this one and that was the casting decision to use the go-to guy for cinematic Nazis, Anton Diffring, as a British officer. That was certainly something different and must've made a nice change for Diffring who in reality was about as far removed from a Nazi sympathiser as it was possible to get.

Having recently watched a number of mildly enjoyable Italian WWII "B" films from the same era – BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN (1969), EAGLES OVER London (1969) and CHURCHILL'S LEOPARDS (1970) – I decided to check this one out as well, given also that it featured Anton Diffring in the lead (surprisingly, not cast as a Nazi but a British officer!). It turned out to be not as worthwhile – then again, the only other films I'd seen from this director where a couple of sci-fi turkeys from the 1970s, so I guess I shouldn't have expected much from it to begin with; even so, I'd still like to catch a reportedly good giallo of his – NAKED GIRL KILLED IN THE PARK (1972) – someday…

Anyway, from the title it's obvious that the plot deals – as did BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN – with Rommel's African Campaign; in fact, halfway through the picture, a suicidal attempt is made on his life by the Allies – but their target turns out to have been merely a decoy (interestingly enough, another low-brow war epic I watched not too long ago – CASABLANCA EXPRESS [1989] – featured a similar ruse, only the victim in its case was to have been Winston Churchill)!

While the film offers pretty much standard excitements throughout, with a few of the action sequences being quite competently handled, its central focus lies in the battle-of-wits between martinet Diffring and a 'rebellious' American soldier commissioned to his outfit (blandly played by Carl Parker) – which feels somewhat like 'MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY In The Sand'; still, the comments the film makes about the impossibility of maintaining a code of ethics in wartime are perceptive enough…but, then, the introduction of a sympathetic German soldier in the second half (captured by the Allies but who ends up having to take care of the wounded survivors of the group through a good part of their desert trek!) seems rather too good to be true.