Escuadrón blindado

Armored Command finds Tina Louise playing a German spy plunked down in the middle of a neglected front during the Battle Of The Bulge counteroffensive with the Germans still trying to pull something out. Tina's even given a shoulder wound courtesy of the Wehrmacht to make her story convincing.

For those of you who are used to seeing Tina Louise as the vapid movie star on Gilligan's Island this will be a revelation. She's quite the cool and ruthless character.

She's left out on the front lines for a passing American patrol to find and one headed by Sergeant Earl Holliman does. She's taken back to their billet and of course everyone starts thinking with their hormones. Especially Holliman and Burt Reynolds who was in his second big screen film in Armored Command.

In the meantime the commander of the area, Colonel Howard Keel is convinced an offensive will come through there, but he's having trouble convincing the higher ups of his notion. It seems to Holliman's squad to get the job of digging up the evidence to prove Keel's theories and they've got a spy in their midst.

Armored Command was shot on location in Germany near Munich and Howard Keel relates in his memoirs he was given the job of directing some of the second unit battle scenes which he enjoyed. He did not enjoy however when one of his extras which were some US Army troops stationed in Germany nearly got killed.

Keel gets on to Louise early, but then she gets on to him getting on to her. They have an interesting battle of wits as neither of them are stupid.

The film was done by Allied Artists and maybe a bigger studio with better production values could have gotten a higher rating for it. As it is it's not a bad war film and those into that genre will probably like it.

Plot In A Paragraph: During the battle of the bulge, a sergeant (Earl Holliman) in charge of a small band of men finds a woman (Tina Louise) with a gun shot wound lying in the snow. The take her to a local town with them where they are staying at an inn as they await further orders.

There are two parts to this movie, one that deals with the growing lack of respect that the group and in particular one soldier, a pollack named Skee (A young Burt Reynolds in only his second movie) have for the sergeant and the fact that the sergeant and Skee both have the hots for the injured woman. And one where (Howard Keel) tries to warn his superiors that his men are about to be attacked and over run any time soon.

The contrast between Holliman's and Reynolds characters could not be more different. Holliman is a love sick school boy towards to woman, where as Reynolds is the confident Alpha male who will have her, if she wants him to or not. This is the second movie in a row where Reynolds has raped a woman during his early career. Luckily he did not get typecast in such roles.

In a side note several sequences of action are repeated during the final battle scene.

The Nazis release a woman into the open and take one shot at her. American soldiers later find her and treat her back to health. Her name is Alexandra Bastegar (Tina Louise). She is actually a spy sent to get information on the Americans for the upcoming Ardennes offensive and the start of the Battle of the Bulge. Colonel Devlin is sure that the obvious German attack should be coming right at him, but few others believe in his suspicions.

This movie never completely takes off. It's great to see a pre-Gilligan Tina Louise. Maybe she should be revealed as a spy much later. That would be a great shock to spice things up. Burt Reynolds is also in this with a disturbing scene. He did play some evil villains early in his career. That shock is not necessarily what I'm looking for in this movie.

What was supposed to be a tense, suspenseful war drama turned out to be rather confusing and boring. Sometimes these spy flicks go over my head, so if that's your genre of choice, you might feel differently about this one. I ended up writing other reviews while the movie was running to distract me from the boredom.

Tina Louise plays a German spy, but because she's an attractive and vulnerable woman, the soldiers who rescued her after her injury don't suspect a thing. They're too busy fighting over her to notice she's sneaking out secrets to the enemy. Howard Keel, Earl Holliman, Burt Reynolds, Carleton Young, Warner Anderson, Clem Harvey, Marty Ingels, and James Dobson are the men in the film, but with hardly any fight scenes, Armored Command doesn't really feel like a war movie. It's a little slow, and even though I just finished watching it a couple of days ago, I can't even remember what happens in the end.

This is the second WWII picture I've seen from Allied Artists, the first being the cheapo quickie HEROES DIE YOUNG. This film is far better than HEROES DIE YOUNG but still is not very good.

ARMORED COMMAND centers on a war-weary group of GIs who are caught by surprise when Hitler launches Operation North-Wind. Most of the movie centers on a beautiful spy (Tina Louise!!) who is taken in by an exhausted squad who takes her for a French civilian. Earl Holliman, the squad leader, and a young Burt Reynolds vie for her affections. Their rivalry culminates in a massive Nazi Panzer attack on the already rubble-strewn town.

The movie features decent but typically cliched performances by Holliman, Reynolds and Louise. Howard Keel commands the unit and does all right as a tough Colonel.

The battle scenes are quite sparse. We have a brief shootout between a squad of Americans and a German machine gun in the middle; then a huge German tank assault on the town. The battle starts out well but gets monotonous as the same footage is used over and over again.

Overall, a very dull war movie that had potential but never really got off the ground. The melodramatic romance plot should have been ditched, and the movie should have approached the combat the way ATTACK did. (ATTACK is a fine film that tells of the same German attack.)