Hellboats - Grüße aus der Hölle

Given that this movie was made in 1970 on Malta, I can only guess that there was an actual MTB on Malta and someone thought "It'd be great to make a movie about MTBs at Malta" and instead of making an actual historical movie, they made this bit of garbage.

To give it credit, the boat that we see the main crew aboard does look good, the uniforms seem spot on (I am not an expert on British Naval Uniforms of WWII however), but the plot is just a throw-away, the combat scenes are hopelessly bad, the special effects are just plain awful (even for 1970) and the technique shown for picking up the two divers didn't exist in 1942 (and the Aqua-lung wouldn't have been in use by the British Navy, either).

Not very entertaining and certainly not educational.

Malta is its usual stunning self in this cinematically beautiful film. Why was it not filmed wide? What irritates me is the overly strong U.S. asserter officer shouting at the Brits to do something.

James Franciscus and Elizabeth Shepherd's relationship is ludicrously overblown and misconstructed. Sorry, filmmakers but the silly introduction where she is "starkers" and swimming and flaunts herself at him is priceless. She is so forward and up for IT, it's not true yet her acts all gallant and appears only mildly stirred... It's so awkward - it's clear she is says "Come on bog boy!" with everything she has but he is only modestly aroused. Oh you have to see it to understand it.

I find this film is embarrassing. It's full of bristly macho-ness and "U.S. attitudes will shake up the Brits and sort 'em out" and the Brits deference is bordering on obsequious.

A good story with weak characters. Elizabeth Shepherd is gorgeous and acts strongly but a poor story and and weak direction diminish what could have been a great part.

I hate giving bad reviews but this film seems to come from a time when studios squashed good film-making in the process of simply creating star vehicles and it makes it very difficult for me to watch it happily.

The real star of the film though is Malta.

The usual uninspired rehash of 60's war movies like 'The Guns of Navarone' and '633 Squadron' detailing the usual raid on an impregnable fortress with lousy special effects and lots of preliminary talk before the climactic gunplay against the backdrop of the island of Malta.

As usual the hero is American (we're told his mother was English). Although it's set in 1942, a wholly wasted Elizabeth Shepherd wears her hair swept back in an elegant sixties mane as the unhappily married chainsmoking commanding officer's wife who dallies with blond hunk James Franciscus before he sets off to kill a few Nazis. (When I saw Ms Shepherd interviewed on stage five years ago Franciscus was one of only two co-stars of whom she spoke ill, citing his obsession with how he looked in their big love scene.)

This movie clearly didn't have much of a budget, but what it lacks in effects it makes up for in the personal elements of the story.

There are no big stars in the cast, but they all do a good job with their roles, letting us see how the war affects people differently.

The plot is fairly straightforward, to blow up U-Boat pens in Sicily. The pens are storing glider bombs that the Nazis were using to sink allied shipping in the Med.

It's an enjoyable movie, all things considered, and my only complaint is that they couldn't do a better job of mocking up the very distinctive shape of a German E-Boat.

Apart from that, not a bad way to spend 90 minutes!

I adore Hell Boats, unapologetically.

The plot's engine or conceit concerns a naval officer (Lieutenant Commander Jeffords) planning to destroy a German glider bomb depot in Augusta, Sicily, with his flotilla of motor torpedo boats (MTBs). Whilst preparing for this attack in a Malta under tourniquet, he becomes part of a love triangle.

You could point out that it seems like a film where there were opposing creative forces at work, so that the parting shot of the movie, the final line of the script, falls like seed on marble. You could point out that in this movie, fairly inert objects seem to have an alchemical propensity for explosive combustibility when hit by bullets and that highly trained military individuals don't understand lines of fire, that Wehrmacht soldiers pointing machine guns at the back of spies magically fizz out of existence during a crunch, that Jeffords has a mage-like ability to become invisible in front of the enemy. You could point all this out but miss the beauty and oozing anguish of the film.

I just like the honesty of the film, the portrayal of lonely people living with death wishes, confronting raw sexual compatibility when unavailable, making sentimental love choices, envying, being hypocrites, behaving petulantly. It's all baked under the Mediterranean sun, shot beautifully, and scored wonderfully. The film is as much about what is unsaid or not shown and merely alluded to than what is heard and shown.

There's something crazy about watching these three creatures with irises like arctic meltwater, treading over Malta's quiet places, under the sandstone shadows, in and about its crenellations. The film seems much more in keeping with the tradition of Marguerite Duras and India Song than with typical World War II genre movies; Malta almost feeling like Camus's Oran.

What's also quite clear though is that the action that happens, whilst sometimes making a few elementary mistakes, often achieves with model work alone, a "Boy's Own" intensity, that makes following aerial bombs down in Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor seem academic.

It's well worth pointing out that director Paul Wendkos was in the Navy in World War II, and this film clearly meant a lot more to him than his usual fairly undistinguished output. Composer Frank Cordell served in military intelligence in the Mediterranean theatre during WWII and it would be fascinating to find out if he also had some influence as he was very much an engaged artistic collaborator.

Rarely is a film as human as Hell Boats.