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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
Film:4
DVD:5
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| Flying
on the coattails of Guy Hamilton's Battle
of Britain (1969), Eagles Over London
tries to squeeze epic aerial clashes into your basic men-on-a-mission
formula —
with often laughable or just plain embarrassing results. It's
an ambitious but goofy "Macaroni Combat" actioner from
Italian director Enzo G. Castellari (the original Inglorious
Bastards). |
|
June
1940... Allied armies are reeling before the onslaught of Hitler's
blitzkrieg in the West. As Anglo-French forces withdraw into the
bridgehead at Dunkirk in preparation for evacuation to England,
a small team of Nazi commandos —
dressed in British uniforms —
slaughters a squad of British soldiers and assumes their identities.
The Germans then split up, individually infiltrating the retreating
Allied troops during the hastily-prepared sealift. Before being
evacuated, British infantry officer Captain Stevens (Frederick
Stafford) discovers the bodies of the massacred men, noting their
missing ID discs and paybooks. Stevens smells a rat but his suspicions
are overtaken by events amid the chaos of the Dunkirk pullout.
While waiting to be extracted from the beach, he befriends fellow
officer Lt. Martin (Franciso Rabal, Nightmare
City), who is actually one of the disguised German
infiltrators. Stevens is completely fooled by Martin's amiable
manner and flawless command of the language. |
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Once
in England, the Nazi commandos rendezvous at a London safe house
arranged by a female spy (Teresa Gimpera) working as a barmaid.
Team leader Major Krueger (Tragic
Ceremony's Luigi Pistilli) lays out their do-or-die mission:
to sabotage the enemy's new, top secret network of radar installations.
Should this early warning system be significantly disrupted then
the hard-pressed Royal Air Force could be overwhelmed by the Luftwaffe,
leaving Britain wide open to invasion. Absolutely nothing must
be allowed to interfere with this goal, Krueger reminds them,
and they are all expendable. Because the British are quickly reorganizing
their forces the commandos need to constantly change their individual
covers, murdering enemy soldiers for their identity papers. Corpses
start turning up in and around London, alerting the Brits that
something is up, but Krueger’s men hope to complete their mission
—
and possibly win the war —
before they can be run to ground. |
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When
Capt. Stevens' report about the bodies he found at Dunkirk is
brought to the attention of higher brass, his infantry company
is assigned to special homeland security duty —
his troops are to hunt down whoever is killing the soldiers. Meanwhile,
the famous "Battle of Britain" has begun in earnest;
the Luftwaffe launches its massive campaign to sweep the RAF from
the skies. Stevens has even less time for romance with fiancée
Meg (Evelyn Stewart), an RAF auxiliary serving on the staff of
Air Marshal George Taylor (Van Johnson). Taylor, responsible for
coordinating the British fighter squadrons, has a hard enough
time dealing with the Jerries as it is. But now the Nazi commandos
make their move, staging direct attacks on the all-important radar
sites... |
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I've
enjoyed many of Enzo Castellari's movies. A skilled journeyman
with a flair for action, he has a decidedly Roger Corman-like
knack for squeezing maximum results out of meager budgets. Indeed,
Eagles Over London looks like a much
more expensive project than it actually was, particularly evident
in the Dunkirk evacuation scenes —
for what is basically an exploitation film trying to emulate an
A-List production* these possess
an undeniably 'epic' feel. Castellari also injects welcome elements
of visual style (the very first camera shot, for example, is through
a bullet hole in a helmet) and handles the ground-based action
sequences with his typical adroitness. |
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So
why am I compelled to shoot this flick down? (Check your Six,
Enzo!) |
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Let's
put the cardboard characters and generally dull performances aside.
Mainly it's because the screenplay bites off way more than it
can chew. The entire subplot focusing on the historical Battle
of Britain is unnecessary — the film would have been much better
served, and played to Castellari's directorial strengths, had
it hewed strictly to the Nazi commandos and the effort to thwart
them. This is because the models and miniatures used to depict
the dogfights are laughably cheesy (despite what fanboy Quentin
Tarantino says in the DVD's supplements). Suspension of disbelief
is almost completely impossible; not for a second will you swallow
any of it. Making things worse, the actual historical facts are
pretty much tossed out of the plane without a parachute. Now,
as a military history buff in addition to being a cinefreak I've
come to expect some degree of laxity when it comes to errors and
anachronisms in war movies. But Eagles Over
London is simply a bridge too far. Virtually none of the
hardware on display is even remotely accurate; there are even
shots of model Spitfires painted with German markings! By using
color-tinting and a split-screen technique Castellari takes a
novel approach to incorporating old WWII stock footage into his
aerial combat scenes, but it can't disguise the fact that said
footage still looks crappy and doesn't mesh well. |
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The
film is also marred by some inexplicable casting. Van Johnson
and Frederick Stafford (real name: Friedrich Strobel) looped
their own dialog for the English dub; thus the Czech-born Stafford,
playing a British soldier, has a distinct Central European accent,
while veteran American actor Johnson, playing a high-ranking
British commander, sounds like the East Coast Yank he actually
was. (???) There's a throwaway line about Stafford's
character being the child of Hungarian immigrants, but why is
he named "Stevens"? And why not hire a genuine English
actor to portray the air marshal? I just don't get it.
|
| *
Battle of Britain was
produced by Harry Saltzman — at the time co-honcho with Albert
"Cubby" Broccoli of the James Bond franchise — and features
a host of topnotch actors such as Laurence Olivier, Robert Shaw,
Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer. |
|
|
| Severin's
DVD presents the film in its original widescreen aspect ratio
(2.35:1 anamorphic) with a Dolby 2.0 soundtrack. The source print
ain't exactly pristine —
colors look somewhat faded; some dirt and damage pops up here
and there; there's noticeable image jitter in a couple of scenes
—
but it's far superior to the way the vast majority of Macaroni
Combat titles have to date been treated in North America (i.e.,
banished to the bargain bin hell of public domain box sets, sourced
from fullscreen VHS dupes). Audio quality is disappointing although
not a deal-breaker. Yes, the brass section of the orchestra which
performed the film’s score does sound like a high school
marching band, but apparently this was intentional! |
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The
trailers for Eagles Over London and
Inglorious Bastards are on hand,
along with a very brief scene deleted from Eagles
that is purely inconsequential to the final cut. (The film didn't
lose a thing by dropping it.) Two interesting featurettes are
included. Enzo Castellari and Quentin Tarantino Part 2
(14 min.), a continuation of their discussion found on Severin's
Bastards disc, focuses on the making
of Eagles and the extensive use made
of battle footage cribbed from it for later European war pics
such as Umberto Lenzi's From Hell To Victory
(1979). Eagles Over Los Angeles (16 min.) concerns a screening
of the film held in L.A. in May 2008; Tarantino waxes enthusiastic
in an introductory talk while a clearly delighted Castellari fields
questions from the audience afterwards. |
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These
featurettes are certainly enjoyable and worthwhile if you're a
Castellari and/or Tarantino fan, but at $27 I still think the
disc is too pricey. (There's also a Blu-ray
edition available, which is seven bucks cheaper than its
standard def counterpart.)
11/21/09 |
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