Todeskommando Panthersprung

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.

Spaghetti/War film about a misfit team led by Gianni Garco who carry out a suicide mission behind enemy lines . A group of two-fisted soldiers formed by five experts are drafted to go on a near-suicide mission and attempt to take plans from a Nazi staff . ¨ Five for the Hell¨ is an entertaining film with Gianni Garco as tough officer along with the ordinary team of renegade soldiers of World War II whose mission is to steal the Nazi's secret attack plans -the Plan K on the Gustav Line- from a villa . Garco training a group of rebel and eclectic soldiers for a dangerous assault on a palace-château. In the hands of hardboiled director Gianfranco Parolini , alias Frank Kramer and a tough-as-leather cast , that's all the plot that's needed to make one rip-roaring wartime flick. Garco's mission is two-fold and in violent and cynical style : first turn his G.I.s into a valiant fighting unit and then turn them loose on a German villa located in Italia where they run into a brutal Nazi commander (Klaus Kinski) and being helped by a double agent (Margaret Lee). The diverse characters include a fun-loving Nick Jordan as acrobat , Sanson Burke as hunk man , Salvatore Borghese as safe-cracker , and Luciano Rossi as a lame-brained soldier specialist in explosives . The first half of the film allows the colorful cast of character actors to have their fun as they get their tails whipped into shape and develop shaky relationship with their leader . The final part is all action, as the brave commando wreak havoc and then run for their lives. Despite the fact that few of the "heroes" survive the bloodbath, the message here isn't that war is hell. Rather, it seems to be: war can be a hell of a good time... if you've got nothing to lose . The relentless assignment is set against strong training, risked adventures and hazardous feats . The dangerous mission includes a selected group formed by a motley and varied squadron played by usual of Italian B-series .This is a rugged WWII actioner concerning about an experienced officer , he's assigned by Military staff to train a dropout group of valiant G.I.s who get a chance to redeem themselves . They are a squadron of dispensable characters with no past and no future . Garco reprieves a bunch of soldiers , forges them into a two-fisted fighting unit and leads them on a deadly assignment into Nazi territory . The Privates are oddballs , rag-tag and undisciplined gang , under command a stiff Lieutenant and the team is hardly trained . In this film Garco and his motley band , are suppose to steal a plans located in a fortress where resides various Nazi officers . At the end they must participate in the suicidal mission behind the enemy lines , to wipe the German group by means of a violent assault over a strongly protected position .

Gianni Garco as Lt. Hoffman assumes the character of commando leader in this ordinary wartime movie regularly directed by Gianfranco Parolini. This moving film packs frantic thrills, perilous adventures , comedy , relentless feats , and buck-loads of explosive action and violence. The noisy action is uniformly well-made, especially deserving of mention the rip-roaring final scenes on the fortress , including some spectacular shootouts and bombing . Apart from the values of team spirit , cudgeled by Garco into his rebel group , the film is full of feats , suspense , and thrills . Rough Gianni Garco or Gary Hudson is good as leader of the motley pack together thwart the Nazi schemes, as well as the largely secondary cast with special mention to Salvatore Borghese , a habitual comic secondary in multiple Italian films . Atmospheric and functional musical score by Mancuso and mediocre cinematography in Eastmancolor filmed by Sandro Mancori . This is a wartime typical vehicle and into the ¨warlike commando genre¨ , in USA style which also belong the American classics as : ¨Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich) ¨ Where eagles dare(Brian G. Hutton) and Kelly's heroes(Hutton ), Tobruk (Arthur Hiller), Devil's Brigade (Andrew V McLagen) and many others .

The film is middling directed by Gianfranco Parolini or Frank Kramer. He began directing muscle-men epics as ¨Rocha¨, ¨The Macabeos¨ with Brad Harris and ¨The ten gladiators¨ with Dan Davis and Gianni Rizzo , Parolini's usual actor. After that he continued with ¨commissioner X¨ series with Tony Kendall , fantastic with ¨three supermen¨ and warlike movie as ¨5 per l'Inferno¨ with Gianni Garco (Sartana) and Nick Jordan. His first Western was ¨Johnny West¨ and later on , he directed the ¨Sabata trilogy¨ . It's followed by ¨ Return of Sabata¨ with similar artistic as Lee Van Cleff and Nick Jordan and customary technician team and finally ¨Indio Black ¨ with Yul Brynner . Rating : Average but amusing .

If there were a subgenre of WWII movies that nonsensically blend pure spaghetti western action with circus athletes enlisted for special missions, this film would undoubtedly be a masterpiece. But alas, I fear such a subgenre doesn't exist, and this isn't just a poorly conceived and executed B-movie. The plot is as thick as two short planks, the dialogues seem written by someone who's never seen a decent movie in his life. Everything is pure caricature, except for the production team who took it very seriously. This isn't to say that good movies can't be made by remixing some of the ingredients used here, but of course, to do so, one must be a good chef, and they do exist...

Gianfranco Parolini, Brad "Action" Harris' house director, was no stranger to anything. He also tried his hand at Macaroni Kombat films with his idiosyncratic mix of action and comedy, albeit without Harris as in this case.

Five US soldiers (Gianni Garko / Aldo Canti / Sal Borgese / Luciano Rossi / Samson Burke) are selected for a special team that is supposed to steal very secret documents from a Nazi villa. A German double agent (Margaret Lee) is supposed to help them there, but she is only able to maintain her cover with difficulty by doing love services for a nasty SS man (of course: Klaus Kinski). The original title of the film is: Five for Hell! And it also breaks out when the five warhorses haunt the villa in the tradition of the "dirty dozen"...

Well, it's not for nothing that MacaroniKombat has been less successful than the spaghetti western genre. There are also elements of slapstick that will certainly put some people off. Only for die-hard fans!

To watch this film is to follow five misfit American soldiers directly into hell, where they beat you up, take your wallet and abandon you.

In my WWII film and literature class, I show Five for Hell's opening credit sequence, which lasts about 15 minutes (pacing, people, pacing), as an example of war movie making at its worst. While the film is about a commando raid, the soundtrack is about a young woman who goes to Los Angeles to become a go-go dancer. Commander Baseball has clearly never thrown a ball in his life, but I guess that doesn't matter when you are going into combat against an army of Bond movie henchmen. Quite possibly a war crime, Five for Hell is a visual root canal.