I had first watched this on local TV as a kid: I'm a sucker for caper films (in fact, I've about six more, albeit very minor, such titles lined-up for viewing) and, therefore, I grabbed the opportunity to re-acquaint myself with it after all these years (even if it came via an Italian-dubbed version).
Anyway, it may be because I hadn't caught a film in this vein for quite some time but I really enjoyed this! A very typical outing from the 1970s international production and cast, location shooting, throwaway soundtrack and, thankfully, one whose mind is simply set on providing easy-going entertainment: often, the central premise in this type of film gets lost amid fastidious technique and other showy trimmings conversely, here we get an ingeniously-plotted (if, admittedly, improbable) heist that one's able to follow thus generating the requisite amount of suspense and surprise (via a plethora of entertaining twists).
The narrative is set in motion by ex-Nazi Concentration Camp Commandant James Mason(!) paying a visit to one of his former prisoners, ex-American Major Telly Savalas, presenting him with a scheme to retrieve a cache' of gold that once belonged to the Fuehrer himself (hence the film's subsequent retitling as HITLER'S GOLD); the catch is that the only one still alive who knows its whereabouts is a Nazi war criminal undergoing life imprisonment in a West German fortress! Thankfully, though, Savalas happens to be chummy with one of the American sergeants on duty there (Aldo Ray) and he brings along for the ride explosives expert Robert Culp. Along the way, they recruit a whole slew of other associates (from one of the soldiers in charge of the original transportation to a female nurse who eventually hitches up with Culp to a homosexual doctor played by Adrian Hoven to a Russian officer based in East Germany where, it transpires, the gold is located) which makes one wonder just how much they'd actually be making individually of the proposed loot of $6 million!
The elaborate plan involves the ex-Nazi official being drugged and replaced by Hoven for a day while our heroes, having turned a vacated building into a simulacra of the Nazi headquarters circa 1944 (complete with the ex-driver now impersonating Hitler!), try to nudge his memory bank about the coveted gold cache'. As I said, the turn-of-events see them crossing over to East Germany dressed as American officers and, with the help of the afore-mentioned Russian, they evacuate the building which now stands on the site where the gold is hidden so that they work at their leisure to recover it. Unsurprisingly, with so much money at stake and so many fingers in the proverbial pot, the number is reduced when the German soldier loses his nerve and the Russian becomes too greedy for his own good. At long last, the Nazi is placed back in his cell and the gang can take a deep sigh of relief; again, typical of the time in which the film was made, they manage to get away with it
Gripping, packed with incident but essentially light-hearted (with the actors clearly enjoying themselves) and good to look at (the cinematography is by the renowned and Sam Peckinpah regular John Coquillon), the film emerges as the perfect anti-dote to one's dreary work routine and the equally inconvenient summer heat.
