MACARONI COMBAT #3: Desert Battle (1969)

               “Desert Battle” is an Italian WWII movie that does not feature a has-been American actor.  It stars the desert.  .  It is apparently taking place after the British have turned the tide at El Alamein.  The British plan to lay an extensive minefield to block the Afrika Korps. It is a setting for a fairly original plot.  At first, it leads you to believe that it is going to be about a mine laying detail.  Oh, great!  But wait, the screenwriter suddenly had a better idea and decided to plunk some of the mine-layers into the desert in no man’s land.  This being an Italian movie, the Brits immediately attempt to find a way to surrender.  They encounter a German light tank that is disabled and the two Germans propose a deal. They have fuel and supplies and the Brits have the jeep.  They agree to travel together and basically surrender to whichever side they encounter first.  If you think these adversaries will put aside their differences for common survival, you would be wrong.  It’s like cats and dogs traveling in the same pet taxi.  Actually, the acting would be better if it was cats and dogs.  What sets the movie apart from your typical micro-budget Italian war movie, is each of the characters gets to have a flashback for character development.  If truth be told, they are less for character development and more to get some hot Italian babes into the film.  Eventually, the small group gets broken up as the two officers go on ahead to try to reach help and the rest stay behind to be dysfunctional. This all culminates in a fairly large tank battle with real anachronistic tanks, not models.  I guess you could say the movie finishes strong.  If you manage to get that far.  Hell, just fast forward to it.  But then, you’ll miss the babes.  Ah, dilemmas.

               “Desert Battle” is not as bad as this synopsis implies.  It is one of the better spaghetti warfare movies, but that is not saying much.  The acting is serviceable and you don’t have to pity a famous American actor for being in it. The acting is not vomit-inducing and the dialogue is acceptably bland.  Although it won’t be viewed in any film school, the cinematography is not a factor.  The desert scenery helps.  The premise is interesting and the deaths are not predictable, other than that few, if any, will survive. The redemption and bonding cliches are toned down. Unfortunately, if you are looking for lots of action and ammo expenditure, you came to the wrong desert.  There are long stretches of desert and long stretches of boring exposition (really more of arguing).  There is little humor, intentional or otherwise.  The best laugh comes when during a flashback, a character looks out his window and we see footage of German soldiers marching in a parade.  The final tank battle is rousing in a low budget way.  They used real tanks (although not historically accurate, of course).  It is a bit hard to tell which side is which, but there are plenty of booms. The desert battle does not feature the hip-shooting, machine gun slaughtering of most Macaroni Combat films. f you love tanks, it’s a nice payoff for the mediocre plot that preceded it.

GRADE  =  D+

MACARONI COMBAT: Hell Commandos (1969)

 

               “Hell Commandos” is an Italian/Spanish movie set in WWII Europe.  It stars the famous cowboy movie star Guy Madison.  The movie opens with footage of end of the war celebrations.  What the hell?  Spoiler alert, please!  Apparently, the celebrations are proof that the movie mission successfully won the war.  As I was able to deduce, a coerced scientist is developing something nefarious and must be stopped.  The mission is given to a squad of misfit Marines who are the Dirty Dozen if they had been in the Italian army.  We are introduced to them as they frolic with some local girls.  Italian war films always find a way to get hot chicks in.  These guys have as much fun fighting themselves as f’ing the frauleins.  This makes them perfect for a cinematic suicide mission to save civilization.  They are paradropped behind the lines and sneak up on sleeping SS men.  They slay them in a variety of ways, including using a wrench!  Well, that was different.  They encounter a special agent named Maj. Carter (Madison) who “enlists” them to go after the professor making the superweapon.  They don SS uniforms (which of course fit perfectly) and fortunately they all speak German except their minority member – a Native American named Cheyenne.  On the way, they meet up with the professor’s daughter so Carter can have a lust interest and we can see a girl kill Nazis.  Oh, and there is an evil Nazi.

               “Hell Commandos” is as bad as you would expect.  Much of it makes no sense.  Starting with: what are Marines doing in Europe?  Sloppy research, dudes.  The plot is matched by the terrible acting and dialogue.   The intentional humor is stupid slapstick.  The unintentional is not enough to make the movie camp.  The first guffaw comes around the twelve- minute mark when we get a binocular-eye view of footage from a much better movie.  Some of the deaths are hilarious and stick around for the ending which is side-splitting.  Consider it a reward for sitting through the whole thing. After all, if you don't laugh, what is the purpose for Macaroni Combat movies?

 

GRADE  =  F-

MACARONI COMBAT: Last Platoon (1988)

 

Macaroni combat is a war movie subgenre similar to spaghetti westerns. It is also called Euro War, Macaroni War, Spaghetti War, or Spaghetti Combat. They were made in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of the movies were low budget, B-movies made in Italy. Some were made in the Philippines. The actors are sometimes referred to as “Italian yankees”. They are characterized by extra violence and minimalist cinematography. Lots of stuff gets blown up.  Often they used archival footage, but they also made use of actual vehicles, although mostly they were not appropriate for the time period. Most are set in WWII and most of those involve commandos since the subgenre was inspired by movies like “The Dirty Dozen”. They had similar “who will survive?” plots. In most of the movies, a group of soldiers goes behind enemy lines. Usually, the men were a motley crew and there was dysfunction. Later, Vietnam became a popular setting. Most of the movies have a has-been American actor cashing in on their name like Lee Van Cleef and Guy Madison. Klaus Kinski is another actor known for his macaroni combat roles. With this post I am beginning a series on macaroni combat movies. You will see I am not impressed with the quality of the films.

               “Last Platoon” is an Italian war movie set in the Vietnam War.  It starts with a special effects shot through binoculars that reveals the fakest looking model truck you will ever see.  A squad led by Capt. Costas (Richard Hatch) attacks a Viet Cong camp to rescue a captive.  A sniper takes out a man in a guard tower and he takes a dive, naturally.  Not one, but two, bad guys are killed by thrown knives.  A squad member leaps through the roof of a thatched hut (at least that is different).  The awakened enemy are slaughtered with no bloodshed.  An enemy fakes surrender and blows up a naïve American.  “Bastards!” This will not be a revisionist Vietnam War movie.

               Costa returns to his Vietnamese girlfriend Mai-Ling, but the next morning she is gone, leaving a cryptic note.  Could he have been sleeping with the enemy?  When he returns to base, he is given another mission tailored to his rogue warrior talents.  Costa is our dime store Willard.  He has a mentor in Col. Abrams (Donald Pleasence) who looks the other way at his insubordination.  He wants Costa to take out a bridge that will shut down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and thus win the war.  He is given a “squad with balls”, the core of which is three “thieves and killers” straight from the stockade.  (This movie could not afford a dozen.)  They chopper in to a village in a scene that will only remind you of “Apocalypse Now” because I am telling you.  Let the squad culling begin.  The first goes to punji stakes.  The steadily dwindling unit is destined for more knife throwing, grenade pin pulling with teeth, and ridiculous explosions.  And Costa is headed for a reunion with Mai, of course.

               “Last Platoon” is not as terrible as you might think.  The dialogue is not laughable, although it would have been more entertaining if it was.  It does have the impressive acting talents of Hatch and Pleasence and they do not embarrass themselves.  The rest of the cast consists of the men who picked up their bags at the airport.  Surprisingly, it actually looks like a jungle setting.  That puts it ahead of many Vietnam War movies.  In fact, it is not the worst of the subgenre.  It is totally unrealistic, but what do you expect.  What you do expect is plenty of gratuitous and graphic violence.  It does not really deliver the guilty pleasures.  There are plenty of explosions and those four knife-thrown killings, but it falls short of campy combat porn.  I think they actually were trying to make a point about the futileness of war and how soldiers are like pawns.  Heavy stuff for a movie like this.

 

GRADE  =  D

Nation’s Pride (Stolz der Nation) (1944)

 

In honor of Daniel Bruhl's birthday, here is my review of the short propaganda film that develops his character in Tarantino's film.

               “Nation’s Pride” is the movie within the movie “Inglourious Basterds”.  It is meant to be a German propaganda film in the style of those put out by Joseph Goebbels.  It is only six minutes, 11 seconds, but implies that it is part of a longer feature.  It was directed not by Tarantino, but by actor/director Eli Roth.  Roth plays “The Bear Jew” in the feature.  Tarantino got Bo Svenson to play a role in the short in an homage to “The Inglorious Bastards”.  Speaking of homages, only to a much better movie, Roth includes an American soldier screaming after being shot in the eye and a baby carriage.  Both are references to the famous Odessa steps scene in “Battleship Potemkin”.

               The short starts with Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) in the tower in some Italian town.  He is assaulted by a bunch of sniper fodder.  The film is sniper porn, 1940’s Nazi style.  Zoller never misses, of course.  But neither do every other sniper hero in movies.  And the Americans are incompetent.  They run out in the open begging to be shot.  It’s a propaganda film, after all.  However, although it is meant to be a takeoff on German propaganda films, it is not as over the top as you would expect for a propaganda film set within a Tarantino movie.  It has it’s sly humor, like when an American uses a walkie-talkie to communicate:  “Hello, Hitler.  I want to surrender.”  American bullets stitch a swastika in the wall of the tower.  But the funniest part is the theatrical deaths that make the touchdown-signaling deaths of many war movies seem realistic.

               If you are a fan of “Inglourious Basterds”, you need to see this film.  It’s amazing he went to the trouble to make it.  Only Tarantino would have done so.