*** This review may contain spoilers ***
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.