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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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Churchill's
Leopards
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4 |
Salt
In The
Wound
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5 |
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5 |
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That
notorious "madman" of Euro-Cult cinema, Klaus Kinski
(Venus in Furs,
The Great Silence),
fights for both the Axis and the Allies in this World
War II action double feature from Wild East.
1969's Salt
in the Wound (AKA
The Liberators) is interesting because Kinski is cast
against type, as an American soldier. The other film on the
double bill, Churchill's Leopards (1970),
is a thoroughly humdrum potboiler about a commando mission behind
German lines, just one of a gazillion such movies made in Europe
during the late 1960s and on through the '70s. In it, Kinski
plays the character you'd expect him to — the villain, a Heil
Hitlering SS officer.
The titular "leopards" are a small team of British
Special Forces troops commanded by Maj. Powell (The
Last Man on Earth's Giacomo Rossi-Stuart). In the spring
of 1944, with the D-Day invasion imminent, they're assigned
a daunting task — the destruction of a massive concrete dam
located somewhere in southern France. During Powell's mission
briefing it's explained that blowing up the dam will cause major
flooding, washing away key bridges and disrupting the movements
of a German panzer corps that could reinforce the Normandy beaches.
An air strike on the dam isn't a viable option; the adjacent
mountains are too close to allow low-flying bombers safe exit
from the target area. A commando assault is the only way, as
illustrated by a general using a scale model of the dam and
surrounding terrain.
Making the mission feasible is the Allies' ace in the hole,
a 'ringer' planted among the enemy. A British officer, the half-English/half-German
Lt. Benson (Richard Harrison of Challenge
of the Tiger and Ninja
Terminator), assumes the identity of his Nazi twin brother,
commander of the Wehrmacht engineer detachment stationed at
the dam. French guerillas secretly assassinate the brother and
dispose of the body, allowing Benson to take his place with
a simple change of uniform. Benson is shaken by the murder of
his twin sibling — he didn't know he was to be killed — but
gets over it fairly quickly... Bro was a Führer-lovin'
fascist, after all, and foxy Resistance fighter Elise (Pilar
Velázquez) gets his mind on other things. He can't afford any
distractions, though, what with SS security chief Capt. Holtz
(Kinski) always sniffing around. Holtz and his brother were
friends, so Benson must be doubly cautious whenever the captain
drops by to socialize or talk shop. Meanwhile, Maj. Powell and
the commandos, having parachuted in undetected, hide out with
the Resistance and await the moment to strike. Will Benson be
discovered before they can make their move?
An Italo-Spanish co-production,
Churchill's Leopards serves up
a familiar menu of WWII commando movie clichés without
the kind of rousing action required to make 'em tasty. There's
only one major battle scene, coming at the end, and it's pretty
routine stuff. Amusingly, the model used for the destruction
of the dam in this sequence looks nothing like the one
shown to Rossi-Stuart at the beginning of the movie! (Where
did the mountains go?) Fidgeting with props and smoking
a lot, Kinksi twitches through his role with a noticeable lack
of enthusiasm; while he may be just going through the motions
for a quick paycheck he's still the most interesting performer
onscreen. (It's unfortunate that Kinski didn't record his own
voice for this English-dubbed version. He had an excellent command
of the language and his natural accent fits the character.)
SS-Hauptsturmführer Holtz is an efficient, businesslike
officer not given to the red-faced tirades and sadistic cruelty
of the stereotypical movie Nazi, so in consequence Kinski is
fairly laid-back throughout. Top-billed Richard Harrison
doesn't really do much of
anything except bed the women in the cast (Velázquez and Helga
Liné, who pops up as the Nazi girlfriend of Benton's
dead twin) and stand around with a vacant look on his face.
(Some hero.) Military buffs will notice that the B&W
newsreel footage used for the opening/closing credits is mainly
from the Eastern front (Russia), despite the story's setting
in Occupied France.
While
Kinksi is only a supporting player in Churchill's
Leopards, in Salt in the
Wound (made a year earlier and with a
bigger budget)
he takes the leading role.
He's also much less restrained, as his character is a vehicle
for the coiled brooding, intense glares and emotional outbursts
the actor is best known for. It's strange to see him playing
an American G.I., a low-ranking "dogface". As with
Leopards Kinski is dubbed by someone
else, which in this case makes more sense —
it'd be even stranger to have him playing an American soldier
with a pronounced German accent. Yet Kinski's role is demonstrative
enough so that his performance surmounts being voiced by another
actor.
The film opens with
a bizarre, puzzling prologue that really has nothing to do with
the story, in which a stentorian male voice reads passages from
the Book of Genesis over stock footage of deserts, oceans, and
mountains. For a moment there I was wondering if something hadn't
gone wrong during the pressing and a different movie altogether
put on the DVD... It's
like something out of one of those cheesy Sun Classics pics
from the '70s! After about two minutes of this we're suddenly
pitched into a close-quarters battle between U.S. and German
troops in 1943 Italy. An African-American soldier named Grayson
(Ray Saunders) goes berserk in the heat of combat and mows down
a gaggle of surrendering Germans. When a white officer tries
to stop him, Grayson freaks out and machineguns him, too.
Cut to Corporal Haskins
(Kinski), an American soldier looting the house of an Italian
family. He's startled when an old woman comes into the room,
accidentally shooting and killing her. For their crimes both
Haskins and Grayson find themselves before a military tribunal
and are sentenced to death. Put in charge of the firing squad
is Lt. Sheppard (George Hilton - The
Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh), a new arrival to the Italian
front. Sheppard is a pompous, by-the-book officer, fresh out
of West Point, who has never seen combat. Driving out to the
execution site with the prisoners and a rifle squad, he stupidly
gets their truck lost, apparently much too close to the front
lines. German infantry launch a surprise attack on the Americans
just before the two men are to be shot. Panicking, Sheppard
cringes in skivvy-soiling terror while Haskins and Grayson escape
amid the chaos of the firefight, bolting into the woods. Sheppard,
the only other surviving Yank, takes off after them.
To evade the Germans
the three men have to forge an uneasy truce, one that proves
very difficult to maintain. Sheppard naively thinks he can return
the condemned men to Allied lines and have their sentences carried
out. Haskins, a bitter career criminal, isn't going to let that
happen regardless of what he has to do to prevent it. Grayson's
mental stability — normally calm, his sudden outbursts of violence
are savage and unpredictable — is a big question mark. When
the trio stumbles upon a village in No Man's Land and are welcomed
as liberators by the grateful, happy civilians, this tension
is temporarily relieved. For a brief time the war is forgotten.
The misanthropic Haskins finds his own humanity in the arms
of a beautiful peasant girl (Betsy Bell); Grayson develops a
fatherly relationship with a young orphan boy while Sheppard
basks in the glow of being a "hero", however undeserved.
None of this can last, however, as both the German and American
armies mount major offensives in the area, turning the idyllic
backwater village into a charnel house.
As mentioned, Kinski
is very good despite being dubbed. Hilton and Saunders shine
through the dubbing as well. Battle scenes are well-mounted
if somewhat oblivious to real-world infantry tactics and historically
accurate equipment. (How did the Wehrmacht conquer most of Europe
with troops that constantly charge willy-nilly into enemy fire?
And those are obviously European SMGs modified to look — sort
of — like American Thompsons.) The grim, taut first act easily
stands out as the best part of the film; it's only after the
men reach the village that things start to get sappy. Kinski's
romance with Bell is unbelievable (what would she see in
this surly jerk?) and Saunders' supposedly tender interaction
with the boy is eyerollingly saccharine. Ol'
Klaus does get a great over-the-top final scene, though, taking
on a tank.
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Known
for their spaghetti western releases, Wild East Productions taps
into the "Euro-War" genre for the first time with this
DVD. Although
clearly the inferior movie, Churchill's
Leopards gets pride of place on the disc
since it was sourced from much better elements, by a wide margin,
than its companion.
In this regard the DVD reminds me of Retromedia's pepla product
(such as the War
Gods of Babylon/War Goddess double feature), wherein one film
looks good and the other is beat all to holy hell. In a sense,
the flick in the crappiest shape should be looked upon as a "bonus"
supplement.
I was surprised at how nicely Leopards
is presented here. To date I've only screened a limited number
of Wild East's offerings (among them the recently released Kill
Them All and Come Back Alone), but this is by far the best-looking
of the bunch. The anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer displays only minimal
print damage and colors are strong — it's not too dark or faded,
nor is there the slight brownish tinge I've noticed with other
WEP discs. Audio (English-language mono) is solid if unremarkable,
pretty much the norm for Euro-Cult films issued by most U.S. companies
large or small. A pair of one-second dropouts near the beginning
of the movie (during Powell's mission briefing) are the only deficits.
Salt in the Wound,
on the other hand, is a disappointment if not downright
hideous in certain spots. Damage, dirt, blanched colors, emulsion
lines and heavy grain permeate throughout. (Apparently it's a
composite print culled from different sources.) It's watchable,
chiefly because the correct widescreen AR (2.35:1) is preserved,
but only barely so. Fortunately Salt's
mono audio track fares better than the visuals, sounding flat
and tinny but otherwise okay.
Extras are limited to image galleries for each
film (stills, lobby cards, posters), the Italian trailer for Churchill's
Leopards (no subtitles), the English-language opening and
closing credits for Leopards (no
differences other than the text), and the U.S. trailer for Salt
in the Wound (in dire shape).
4/20/08 |
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