User reviews

From one week to the next, I have learned to count on late-night Italian TV to come up with forgotten but worthwhile native movies from the past: this imitation of Jack Cardiff's Congo-based actioner DARK OF THE SUN (1968; one of Martin Scorsese's guilty pleasures) is yet another such example. The director here is a debutante and, after a cursory glance, not much else in his filmography elicits much interest – except for EVIL EYE (1974; with Richard Conte) which has recently been deigned with a R1 DVD release – even though, come to think of it, I have missed out on SCORTICATELI VIVI aka SKIN 'EM ALIVE (1978) a couple of times already and OVERRUN! (1970) seems to be an unofficial follow-up to the film under review itself! Still, a more interesting name in the credits would be co-writer Piero Regnoli, an indefatigable craftsman whose self-directed ghostly crime opus TI ASPETTERO ALL' INFERNO (1960) I had seen for last year's Halloween marathon. Anyway, the only two cast members which stand out (more from their familiarity than for any particular acting merit) are star Ivan Rassimov and former mythological muscleman Kirk Morris (in his penultimate film); for the record, I have also just scored the latter's TERROR OF THE STEPPES (1964) in another nightly excursion in Italian TV land. Rassimov is a misanthropic French guide reluctantly hired by the titular misfit band of soldiers to lead them through the desert in search of some vaguely important documents. Needless to say, the band is divided by race (two of the group are negroes and one of them is a trigger-happy German!), sex (the medical officer, surprisingly enough, turns out to be a woman and so is an imprisoned reporter they meet up with along the way) and loyalty (the leader of the pack is a former member of a previously decimated group seeking to retrieve the incriminating documents). Most of them are going to be dead before the film's end, of course, but no one suffers more than the lady doctor: having her shirt torn open by her 'companions' on the truck (thus revealing all her womanhood to the gasping group); being raped(!) by the clearly troubled Rassimov in the midst of combat; almost drowning while crossing an infested, swamp-like stream; and being shot dead in a train compartment (after having just cuddled up romantically with Rassimov!) at the end. The various action sequences are above par for the course and the obligatory rousing (and electric guitar-led) score is not to be amiss under the circumstances: all in all, a pleasantly enjoyable 90 minutes is to be had by undiscriminating viewers.

I've watched Skin Em Alive first and the amount of footage that turns up in that film from this one is unbelievable. It seems that director Siciliano did just film Guiseppe Castellano rolling about in his back garden, then inserted that into the African footage from this film. Somehow he ended up with a much tamer film, because Congo Hell has a much more nastier tone to it that Skin Em Alive.

In the Congo, some cowardly Captain has just gone and had all his men captured, tortured and killed, with the exception of a French woman. The Captain has made it back to base, but has lost important documentation that he must regain (he actually used it as a bribe to escape his captors). Now he must return with another squad of mercenaries.

When I think about it, this is just the usual 'Dirty half-dozen' Italian war movie plot, only set in Africa. The mercenaries vary from the racist German guy who loves to blow up wounded enemies with grenades to the guilty Captain to the female doctor ("Wait - you're a....woman?). Combine the 'behind enemy lines' story with a strangely proto-Cannibal movie setting and that pretty much sums it up.

You've got the jungle setting full of swamps, booby traps, deadly animals and unfriendly natives. There's the racist white folk coming to a stick end, a bit of (sigh) animal cruelty, and Mister Cannibal movie himself, Ivan Rassimov! Ivan also starred in Deep River Savages, Last Cannibal World and Eaten Alive, so he was well familiar with rolling about in a jungle, screaming.

I'm a sucker for films where people travel through hostile landscapes fighting with each other so I kind of enjoyed this one. If you're tempted to watch Skin Em Alive, watch this instead. It's also full of racist characters, but at least there's a couple of African mercenaries in here too to balance things out a bit.

After sitting through the 100 minutes of this film the only enduring feature about it is the occasional shot of the beautiful African country side. There just simply wasn't anything else good about it.

The movie centers around a group of hard as nails mercenaries whose assignment is to penetrate deep into the jungles of the Congo to retrieve Government documents captured by a rebel army. The mercenaries, or red berets as they are called, are made up of a motley bunch of hombres, there's the tough Irish man, the angry and un-social French man, the useless Captain who's trying to save his tattered reputation and a murderous German who is a pro-Nazi, and yes he hates every man, woman and child that happened to be born black.

When watching this movie the cheap production values become apparent, (but hay I wasn't expecting a Hollywood blockbuster!) I believe the producers blew the majority of the budget on the enormous logistical nightmare of moving the crew, actors and equipment all over the African jungles and deserts. Other bad points are the pacing, which is quite slow and dull, I found I was actually looking forward to going to the can to get away for a few minutes! The acting is nothing to write home about either, nor are the few battle sequences which aren't exciting or realistic. I also found that the plot didn't always make sense, it appears the video version I watched was chopped and cut from the original. In the end I didn't care as I didn't really give a toss about the characters or the movie in general.

In short the only redeeming feature to this film is the interesting location work (which the producers claim to be the first people to shoot a movie there), but this alone couldn't save this turkey. I only recommend this film to the die hard war movie buffs, but even then don't expect too much.

First, don't even dare compare this film with Jack Cardiff's masterpiece THE MERCENARIES, also setting in Congo during the Simba revolt. Do not dare. But this little Italian film is worth seeing, though being lousy, worth seeing because there is no real lead hero character, and that's not so usual, you can't focus on one character in particular. And the lost patrol scheme is always interesting to watch. Some details are taken care off, for instance the Simba village attack, during which the mercenaries don't forget to change the ammo magasines. You don't see this in every action film, even the best ones. So, that's a pretty good point to me. Well, I expected far far worse before watching this movie, speaking of racism; but this was the period: late sixties. No boredom at all, and you find here the pure Italian films trade mark, I speak of machismo manners, for instance slapping women for anything, in the most natural way. You have this in nearly, if not every, Italian crime film or western from the sixties and seventies. The village attack by a platoon before getting back thru the jungle has already been made a thousand of times before, the most famous one being PREDATOR. But there were plenty of others, Vietnam topics, mainly Philippine productions. And I also did not expect such character study, for this kind of production I mean. Do not be too hard with this film, OK?