646f9e108c The Nazis imprison an Italian general who was planning to switch sides and turn over his army to the Allied side. Allied headquarters sends a small, somewhat misfit group of soldiers to spring the general from prison and carry out his plans. In 1943, a group of hardened criminals is pardoned on the condition it accepts a mission to free a captive Italian general from the clutches of the Nazis. This exciting and so-so war movie produced by Gene Corman packs thrills, suspense , plot twists , lots of action sequences and climatic ending , but doesn't quite hang together. Passable warfare film follows a group of convicts soldiers played by all star cast who undergoes assignment against the promise of free pardons. It deals with Major Mace (Stewart Granger) , a tough commandant , he assigns a motley team(Mickey Rooney ,Raf Vallone , Edd Byrnes, Henry Silva, William Campbell) for a dangerous mission whose aim is to free an Italian General (Enzo Fiermonte) . As Stewart Granger training an outfit of rebels and misfits soldiers for a risked assault in Yugoslavia where they contact partisans. The commando must participate in a suicidal mission, the first to wipe a Yugoslavian little town and after an assault over a strong position located on Dubrovnik , Croacia, where is imprisoned the Italian General. Each member of the squad keeps time by rhythmically snapping his fingers so the kidnap can be coordinated . They wreak havoc and kill Nazis to earn the respect of military higher-ups in an exciting final .<br/><br/>This low-budgeted and appropriate runtime warfare film concerns about an incredible lesson of courage set in WWII . This flag-waving film packs frantic thrills, perilous adventures, relentless feats , and buck-loads of explosive action and violence . The noisy action is uniformly well-made, especially deserving of mention the rip-roaring final scenes on the mountains and battle at Dubrovnik city . Fine location cinematography by Arthur Arling and powerful musical score by Hugo Friedhofer . Serious and rough Stewart Granger is good as leader of the motley pack together thwart the the Nazi schemes, as well as the largely secondary cast with particular mention to Henry Silva and Raf Vallone who finish developing a sincere friendship . The film belongs to Commandos sub-genre operating beyond enemy lines whose maximum examples result to be the classics as ¨Dirty dozen¨(Robert Aldrich) , ¨Guns of Navarone¨ (J.L. Thompson) , ¨When eagles dare ¨ (Brian G Hutton), ¨ and ¨Kelly's heroes¨ (Hutton) and other movies that were made during the 60s and 70s regarding wartime adventures about special forces in risked missions . <br/><br/>The motion picture is professionally directed by Roger Corman . After his period realizing poverty-budget horror movies as ¨Swamp woman, The beast with a million of eyes, Attack of the crab monsters , Undead¨, then came the cycle of tales of terror based on Poe as ¨ House of Usher, Pit and pendulum, The raven , Tales of terror, The masque of the red death ¨ , and meanwhile Corman made this passable war film that achieved limited success. *** This review may contain spoilers *** <br/><br/>Nothing makes sense in The Secret Invasion (1964). Director Roger Corman is out to lunch with the script, but the scenes are shot rather well. He's managed to scrounge up some decent actors and highly ambitious locale (the city of Dubrovnik, a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea) but does nothing with them. He was probably filming five other movies to save money. Most of the actors are so annoying that you'd wish for their death early on. They are cardboard thugs, not emphasizing any emotion at all. Mickey Rooney as Terence Scanlon, Henry Silva as John Durrell and Stewart Granger as Major Richard Mace are just a few found in this stinker.<br/><br/>The Germans aren't much better since they seem to be played by idiotic Slavics and a highly annoying boneheaded commander. They can't seem to shoot very well either, having great difficulty in killing the idiotic "Secret Invasion" force. The last half just deteriorates so badly that it won't do you any good to watch it.<br/><br/>It's hard to tell what Raf Vallone (Italian footballer and international film actor) is saying with his heavy accent, it's even harder to tell why he's snapping his fingers throughout the film. The plot is so convoluted that you have to stop just to scratch your head. These guys take a small boat into German-occupied Yugoslavia and find a graveyard to dig a hole to the big German-occupied castle that has some Italian general. They dig a few hours, and it must be about two miles to the big German-occupied castle. Okay, brilliant guys. Then they get caught and are stuck inside and manage to kill about every German guard inside. Heck, why not send them to the Italian front to defeat the German divisions? <br/><br/>The ending made no sense at all either. But that wasn't really surprising. In all, I guess people who don't appreciate decent war films will love this ridiculous rubbish. Anyone with a brain will probably go get Hell Is for Heroes (1962), directed by Don Siegel and starring Steve McQueen for the tenth time.
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