Eagles Over London

Here's an oddity - an Italian made war film that is actually quite good. Okay the dubbing is bad, and the locations are a bit "mediterranean" particularly Dover and Dunkirk, but all in all a well made war film. Its the story of a group of German commandos who intermix with returning British troops from Dunkirk, and wearing British uniforms attempt to destroy the radar installations around the coast and therefore aid the imminant German invasion. A British Captain played by Frederick Stafford attempts to track down the Germans aided by Van Johnson as a British Air Marshal - an odd bit of casting, but I'm sure the aging Van welcomed the money.

This comes up for sale on video every now and then, and I recommend it to war film buffs.

Using the chaos of the Dunkirk evacuation as a cover, several German agents take on the identities of English soldiers in order to gain access to England and take out the radar installations. One Captain aware of the ruse has to track the men down and stop them before the Germans can bomb England into surrendering.

Good, if a bit long, spy story set in London. there are several action set pieces that are quite good, though they suffer a great deal in pan and scan because of the use of multiple images. (Oh how this film cries out for a good letterbox edition.) This is the sort of film that grabs you from the first couple of moments and then drags you along at its conclusion. I really liked this and probably should have rated it higher than 6 but I think the viewing experience was really hindered by a lack of widescreen.

Worth searching out, especially if you can find a wide screen copy.

If you know anything about WWII history this will have you either laughing at the ridiculousness of it all or raging at the inaccuracies (Warning - this film contains a PIAT-zooka). But beneath it all is a reasonable plot, with some classic characters, the hard as nails sarge, the clueless youngster., etc which make it still kinda fun.

This is an odd case of casting, as the very American actor, Van Johnson, plays a British officer! However, despite this, the film looks very good for an Italian-made WWII film--sort of like a 'spaghetti' war film. For example, the Dunkirk scene was quite nice and had a pretty expansive look--with a relatively large cast and lots of ships. And SOME of the airplanes were done well (such as the fake He-111 cockpits--VERY nice). Unfortunately, the rest of the planes in the film are an odd lot--probably because the original models weren't available to the Italian film company. The German fighters were often American T-6s or even British Spitfires and the Spitfires were sometimes some odd plane (I assume Italian) that looks a bit like it but whose cockpit and undercarriage look more like that of the German Bf-109. To make it even more confusing, the exact same plane was often used interchangeably by BOTH sides in the film. And, at one point a British fighter plane becomes a Lysander observation plane. Clearly the film's attention to these sort of details was pretty poor...at best. And, late in the film the planes are CLEARLY cheap models. It's best to just close your eyes or so get a snack during these scenes because even if you don't care about these details, it still will confuse you.

The plot itself is rather clever. At Dunkirk, a group of Germans who speak English well are chosen to assume the identities of dead British soldiers. Then, when the British army is rescued, these agents can then infiltrate the country and eventually attack the Brit's most important secret weapon--their radar.

The bulk of the film is executed reasonably well (not always great--but not bad) and it's obvious they spend some money on the film. However, there were a few problems. The punching sounds in the fight scenes sounded EXACTLY like the punching sounds from a kung fu film! There also was a scene involving the killing of a German female agent and it was silly and WAY overdone--and completely unnecessary. All together, the film was very uneven but the good still far outweighed the bad. I would really love to see this film re-done--with a tighter script and more consistent special effects.

This is the most innacurate depiction of the RAF and the Battle of Britain that anyone could envisage. Look no further than the aircraft in use on the movie. They have Messerschmitt 109s dressed up as spitfires and Spitfires dressed up as Messerschmitts. How stupid could you get.

The idea of Van Johnson as an air Commodore hysterically controlling an air battle above wartime London from the cockpit of a Fighter of indeterminate breed is also to ludicrous to contemplate.

Possibly one of the worst war films ever made