All right men: stand by tactical trampolines, ready weighted baseballs, and dig in for some macaroni combat!
A colorful squad of American commandos sneaks behind enemy lines to steal German battle plans from a heavily guarded villa. The plot bogs down quite a bit, but the action scenes are all goofy Italian fun. Plus, Klaus by-God Kinski is in this as the suitably-evil SS Colonel.
Follows an Airborne company through the fighting around Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Remarkably gritty and unflinching for the time it was made. Look for young Ricardo Montalban and Richard Jaeckel (even if you don't know the name you'll recognize the face).
Kicking off a likely-irregular series of posts.
Lean-and-mean story of an Australian-Dutch commando unit infiltrating a Japanese-held island to recover the crew and passengers of a downed Allied plane.
The mission is fictional, but the unit was real: Z Special Unit conducted 81 covert operations in the South Pacific theater. And they really did use American M3 submachine guns ("grease guns") with suppressors, I figured that was just the surplus weapon the producers could get their hands on easily and cheaply.
Language warning: The heroes use a couple period-accurate terms to describe the Japanese, which don't land well on the ear in 2026.
