Les paras attaquent

One of the perks of a wartime tour of duty in Italy seems to have been stumbling upon local senoritas skinny dipping - since it happens again here - and meeting foxy nurses like Patricia Huston.

Slickly directed on what is obviously a reasonable budget for once by Tarantino's idol William Witney (although any footage of paratroopers actually jumping is inevitably stock footage), the cast is led by veterans Richard Bakalyan ('Chinatown') and Ken Lynch ('North by Northwest') in what feels strongly like a TV production whenever the action transfers to the soundstage.

Charlie (Bakalyan) joins the paratroops because he has failed at everything else in his life. When he accidently kills another GI, things really take a turn down. The cast of relative unknowns does a fine job, and Bakalyan shows flashes of brilliant acting ability that thus far have gone undiscovered. This one is low-buck all the way, puts stock war footage to good use, but well worth catching on the late show.

Meh. Way too unrealistic except for most of the uniforms..

In the short running time of 71 minutes Paratroop Command follows a small group of soldiers participating in landing in North Africa, Sicily, and Salerno which in actual time was about a year and a half. One of them, Richard Bakalyn accidentally kills one of his comrades in friendly fire and can't quite win the trust of the other men, including his lieutenant Ken Lynch.

Not that the incident was his fault, it wasn't. In fact it was a rather stupid way for the other guy to get killed if you watch the movie. Still Bakalyn just can't get the others to trust him.

Directing Paratroop Command is William Witney who was one of Herbert J. Yates's best B western directors. He directed films with all of Republic's western stars. His grind them out style honed with years working for Yates shows in Paratroop Command.

Nothing terribly special here, just some veteran movie makers doing their thing.

A young soldier (Bakalyan) feels he is jinxed...can never do anything right.....fellow soldiers agree with him, and persecute him in combat. Good low-budget war flick, featuring "unknown" cast. Of course our anti-hero redeems himself in the bullet laden conclusion.