Todeskommando Panthersprung

While Germany worked furiously on secret weapons like the V-2 rocket and jet engines, America matched them with the invention of a portable trampoline and lead filled baseball. See machine gun nests knocked out by a gymnast that flies higher than the Luftwaffe! Exclaim as a GI takes out Nazis with sniper-like precision with a baseball! Gasp as Klaus Kinski acts like he always does in most any film... sleazy! This Italian made Dirty Dozen clone has its up and downs. For the most part it flows through as any low budget Italian WWII film. Expect inadvertent humor at times that are supposed to be serious and many flubs. Note that the movie is based around a collapsible trampoline and weighted baseball and the commandos that use them. Dancing commandos at that! Watch for the Fred Astaire like moves of the trampoline wielding commando that dances to the movies theme on the radio. Note that few woman can escape the fate that awaits theme in a scene with Klaus Kinski in any film. Almost as an apology to the general awfulness of this film the climax is actually well filmed and runs well as good WWII actions scenes. One of the more amusing Italian b-grade war films.

The plot of Five for Hell isn't anything overly original. Those who have seen The Dirty Dozen or The Inglorious Bastards (the best of these over-the-top Italian war movies) will find things very familiar. A group of five American GIs are sent behind enemy lines to obtain a copy of Nazi battle plans stored in the safe of a heavily guarded villa. The GIs have help on the inside in the form of a double-agent named Helga (played by the ludicrously gorgeous Margaret Lee). Her main objective is to keep SS Col. Hans Mueller (the great Klaus Kinski) otherwise occupied. Meanwhile, Lt. Hoffman (Sartana himself - Gianni Garko) and his men make their way to the villa, open the safe, and battle their way back to safety. It's very simple, but nicely put together.

After reading reviews for Five for Hell on IMDb and around the internet, I think there are a bunch of people who have forgotten how to have fun watching a movie. That's what I did with Five for Hell - I had fun. Forget realism, forget history, forget the normal conventions of a good movie - this is classic Italian genre cinema. Just relax, don't take things too seriously, and go with it. A few familiar actors (Lee, Kinski, Garko, Sal Borgese, Luciano Rossi), a catchy soundtrack (I dare you to get that main theme out of your head), bad dubbing (I've gotten so used to this by now, it doesn't phase me), a gimmick or two for interest (exploding baseballs and a crazy trampoline), over-the-top action (the final 15 minutes are just one big machine gun fight), a really rotten bad guy to root against (Kinski at his evil best), and a beautiful woman (I think I've already expressed my feelings about Margaret Lee). Yep - Five for Hell's got it all.

A cheap and fitfully amusing WW2 film from our Italian cousins. This one riffs on THE DIRTY DOZEN quite extensively in the predictable story of a behind-enemy-lines mission, in which a group of goofs and oddballs are sent to retrieve some vital documents from the Nazis. Will they succeed? Nobody seems to care really, but when the emphasis is on goofy action throughout then you won't either.

The film stars spaghetti western regular Gianni Garko as the protagonist; he plays your usual English dubbed hero, happily mowing down squads of Nazis and performing various feats of derring-do. His adversary is none other than Klaus Kinski, who must have worn more Nazi uniforms throughout his career than even Curt Jurgens and Anton Diffring; what a sigh of relief he must have breathed when he hung his up for the last time.

In a slightly bizarre spin on the usual formulaic action, a lot of comedic scenes involving trampoline action have been inserted into the mix. I'm familiar with this trampoline stuff from THE THREE FANTASTIC SUPERMEN film and all the similar ones that followed; unsurprisingly, director Gianfranco Parolini worked on both productions. However, it doesn't really fit into a WW2 movie as well as it did in a superhero film; the result is an odd concoction to say the least...

This Italian action/adventure set during the Second World War is essentially a riff on the then recent American smash hit The Dirty Dozen (1967). Its story is broadly similar where we have a specially selected group of five American soldiers being chosen to go behind enemy lines to steal some heavily guarded battle plans from a well-protected German stronghold. But the question you need to ask yourself is could that earlier Hollywood blockbuster have been improved with the inclusion of scenes involving its crack commandos jumping off mini trampolines, using baseballs as weaponry and indulging in extended tap dancing routines? Well, this is the film that essentially answers that particular question. I'm not going to give you the answer though as I think it's best a person decides for themselves on such matters.

This one features the go-to bad guy actor of the day, Klaus Kinski, in a role of a ruthless Nazi and the delectable Margaret Lee as a German double-agent. The five-man army, on the other hand, were decidedly less distinctive than this pair. The film itself is reasonably entertaining in a lots-of shooting kind of way but it is also very by-the-numbers too. The final assault on the German base drags somewhat until it becomes a machine gun fest. So I reckon it could have been a bit more interesting really but in fairness, like its title characters, it still gets the job done.

OK, enough is enough. Stop talking trash about this movie, obsessing over equipment or uniforms, put down your history of World War 2 facts checklist and PAY ATTENTION:

Simply put, FIVE FOR HELL is a violent, cartoonish Spaghetti Western masquerading as a war film. I once encountered a very heated discussion about FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE where contributors were trying to argue who was probably a better shot in real life, Clint Eastwood or Lee Van Cleef. (Answer: they are both ACTORS, and it's only a movie.) I sense the same kind of desperation in the bulk of the comments made here about this wonderful, stupid, energetic little movie, which has as much in common with reality as a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Italian cult genre cinema is about exaggerations. The events depicted in FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE were no more rooted in history than FIVE FOR HELL. In the same way that DOLLARS just happens to involve cowboys shooting each other's hats, FIVE FOR HELL just happens to be about Americans and Germans shooting each other's helmets. And in the same way that DOLLARS is set in the old west, FIVE FOR HELL is set during the Second World War. Instead of being about two gunfighters who infiltrate a gang of evil Pistoleros to exact revenge & make off with their loot, FIVE FOR HELL is about a squad of commandos who infiltrate a Nazi stronghold to make off with some battle plans, or whatever it is that they are after.

See, it doesn't matter what they are after, because the point of the movie is not to educate viewers about real events that their textbooks didn't cover, but to entertain people with an outrageous story, kinetic stunts, choreographed shootouts, sneering evil Nazi Waffentroops, explosions, goofy physical comedy, and a dash of risqué material involving megababe Margeret Lee. You aren't supposed to be watching it with your textbooks open but with your brains switched off. THE MOVIE IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN, NOT REAL. So all these concerns about equipment, uniform type or whether the Nazis hung the toilet paper on the left or right side of the loo is irrelevant and distracting. With that said, I can understand why a lot of detractors may have a problem with this movie, which is that it dares to have fun with World War 2. You could say the same thing about Italian mob movies getting a thrill out of organized crime or spy thrillers exploiting the cold war for giggles or even Spaghetti Westerns making light of the cowboy experience. I wouldn't advise one doing so, but you could ...

So here is a Spaghetti Western -- with all of the good, bad, and ugly that term inspires -- that just happens to have machine guns, tanks and Klaus Kinski as a Nazi, instead of having six shooters, horses and Klaus Kinski as a ruthless hired killer. His "Sartana" co-star Gianni Garko plays the tough American Lt. who leads the rabble of misfits on their hopeless mission behind enemy lines: Instead of worrying about the make of the machine guns, worry about whether they will make it back alive. Especially Sal Borgese's "Syracuse", because he's so much fun to watch. And worry about Margeret Lee: do you think that rotten Klaus is going to have his way with her? Hell, I would!!

The bottom line is that this is a fantasy, a cartoon, a big colorful ripoff of THE DIRTY DOZEN that for my money is twice as entertaining, funny, and inappropriate as that movie, and about half as long. FIVE FOR HELL is a win-win situation for viewers: you are only diminished by missing it. But for Christ sake it's NOT the History Channel, it was only meant to be entertaining, and the movie is eager to please. Perhaps a bit over-eager, which would be my only complaint, and about as close as you can come to a party movie about war. If that is a bad thing my apologies, but sometimes movies are made to just be watched, enjoyed, forgotten and still leave enough room for another one just like it on a double bill. On that consideration it's a brilliant success, and a great introduction point to the genre for viewers just starting out. You can find it on DVD for a dollar, go enjoy.

9/10