Dans l'enfer des sables

Of course, it's a low-budget film, and one can't expect much more than a passing grade for the effort put into making it. The spaghetti western style is evident from the very first frames, both in the way it's shot and in the dialogue.

It's always amusing to see mistakes that are clearly a result of the limited budget, like finding oneself in the middle of an intense battle between Sherman tanks, even if they belong to opposing factions.

A film without glory or sorrow, with a certain moral message, albeit not overly profound.

For genre enthusiasts, it's just another film about the Africa campaign of World War II, but for others, it can still help them get a little glimpse into the lives of those soldiers scorched by the sun in the midst of the vastness of the North African desert.

Having recently watched a number of mildly enjoyable Italian WWII "B" films from the same era – BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN (1969), EAGLES OVER London (1969) and CHURCHILL'S LEOPARDS (1970) – I decided to check this one out as well, given also that it featured Anton Diffring in the lead (surprisingly, not cast as a Nazi but a British officer!). It turned out to be not as worthwhile – then again, the only other films I'd seen from this director where a couple of sci-fi turkeys from the 1970s, so I guess I shouldn't have expected much from it to begin with; even so, I'd still like to catch a reportedly good giallo of his – NAKED GIRL KILLED IN THE PARK (1972) – someday…

Anyway, from the title it's obvious that the plot deals – as did BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN – with Rommel's African Campaign; in fact, halfway through the picture, a suicidal attempt is made on his life by the Allies – but their target turns out to have been merely a decoy (interestingly enough, another low-brow war epic I watched not too long ago – CASABLANCA EXPRESS [1989] – featured a similar ruse, only the victim in its case was to have been Winston Churchill)!

While the film offers pretty much standard excitements throughout, with a few of the action sequences being quite competently handled, its central focus lies in the battle-of-wits between martinet Diffring and a 'rebellious' American soldier commissioned to his outfit (blandly played by Carl Parker) – which feels somewhat like 'MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY In The Sand'; still, the comments the film makes about the impossibility of maintaining a code of ethics in wartime are perceptive enough…but, then, the introduction of a sympathetic German soldier in the second half (captured by the Allies but who ends up having to take care of the wounded survivors of the group through a good part of their desert trek!) seems rather too good to be true.

OK, now here's a fun example from the Euro War fad of 1967 - 1970. It's a wretched film to be sure but like most of these little potboilers has a sort of endearing, idiotic charm that brings to mind playing army as a kid out in the sandlot by the lake house up in Maine or wherever you went on summer vacations. It's yet another bunch of Italians dressed up like British and German soldiers chasing each other around the deserts of Northern Africa, and has absolutely nothing to do with anything that actually happened during WW2 to anybody who was actually there. It is as realistic a depiction of history as a Gladiator Peplum or a Spaghetti Western: Even Rommel fails to show in spite of the fact that the movie is called KILL ROMMEL. The highest ranking German officer we see is referred to as a general though he is probably wearing a colonel's uniform or some absurd irregularity like that.

It doesn't matter, which is why I love these things and why most war movie buffs or military history fanatics will be appalled, which in turn appeals to my geek factor at being sexy enough to get the joke. The Germans and Brits are even probably driving around in American surplus trucks and tanks because all the actual German stuff got blown up during the war and the British nicely cleaned up after themselves once the shooting was over -- all that was left in Tunisia by 1969 were the old American trucks, which is what they had to make do with on the meager budget the film was doubtlessly made. It's funny how critics of these things love to point out the use of American made tanks etc, seeming to miss the point that if the Germans had won the Italians would have made movies using their leftover tanks. They didn't care what kind of tanks they used and neither did the 14 year old boys this film was made for in 1969, seeing 55 year old men get worked up over stuff like that makes me sad.

But the film is by Alfonso Brescia, the Al Adamson of the Italian genre film craze. He's best known for his deceptively crummy looking STAR WARS ripoffs from the latter 1970's like WAR OF THE ROBOTS and BATTLE OF THE WORLDS, as well as BATTLE OF THE AMAZONS. The man had a penchants for absurdity, but in reality this isn't too shabby of an effort even though his idea of a desert mechanized battle is to have two lines of tanks face off across a half mile stretch of desert and approach each other in formation with all guns blazing, ala MEGAFORCE. Interspersed between action scenes we get terse dialog between the hardy British Tommies and their noble German captor who time and again risks his life for theirs even though they are enemy combatants. Brescia had already proved himself a competent war thriller director with the under-appreciated but ultimately silly HELL IN NORMANDY, and here he concentrates on keeping the pace while combining the least subtle moments from DESERT COMMANDOS with the quieter battle scenes from BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN, with a dash of BATTLE IN THE DESERT's humanist factor as the warring soldiers come to respect one another even while their comrades continue to blow each other to bits.

So in other words, yes, this is Spaghetti War, and one of the more entertaining or shall we say less boring examples of the very special sub-genre. I estimate that maybe 60 of these things were made between 1967 and 1970, with the French Countryside Commando Raid and the Desert Battle plot lines being the dominant forms -- this would be a Desert Battle film, more engaging than COMMANDOS and less boisterous than THE WAR DEVILS but still a gas for anyone who loves Spaghetti cinema. You aren't supposed to learn anything or be particularly moved by what you see, and the film even manages to work in a couple of red-hot Italian supporting actresses for the middle section to remind viewers of what we were fighting for. This is a fantasy vision of war no different than what a 10 year old kid might dream up to kill an otherwise boring summer afternoon, was shot in a couple of weeks for less than $50,000 and has stood the test of time to remain just as absurd, pointless, empty headed and undeniably entertaining as it was in 1969 provided you don't think about it very deeply.

7/10

I saw this film on "Movies for Men" last night. It is clear that it was filmed in Egypt not Tunisia (as another reviewer suggested)as the Great Pyramids at Giza appear in one shot! Also the "German" tanks in one sequence were Shermans specially fitted with the turret and gun from the French AMX tank. This was a unique and odd-looking variant of the Sherman used only by the Egyptian Army.

To my delight the "British" tanks in the same sequence were Shermans with short - barrelled 75mm M3 guns,correct for the period.This was one of the few war films I have ever seen which features Shermans and of the correct mark. By comparison the critically acclaimed "Patton" was totally inaccurate in its use of M-47,M-24 and M-41 tanks to depict British,German and U.S. Armour.

Even the largely accurate "A Bridge Too Far" features the wrong Mark of Shermans.

The more I see of the Euro war movie, the more I notice certain common traits that keep recurring. Kill Rommel is an example that features three. For one thing its action is set in the North African desert which seemed to be a favourite location for many an Italian made World War II movie; secondly its plot-line centres on a small group of troops on a special, border-line impossible, mission; and thirdly it features the very specific idea where a lookalike of a famous figure of the war is integral to the story, others in the sub-genre which also use this are Casablanca Express (1989) where its Churchill, while in When Heroes Die (1970) its Rommel, as it also is in this film.

This one was helmed by Alfonso Brescia who would go on to be a bit of a specialist in Star Wars (1977) rip-off flicks with the cheese-fests War of the Planets (1977) and War of the Robots (1978), while he would also add a bit of sex action into the sci-fi idiocy mix with The Beast in Space (1980). So this was the first time I had seen a Brescia movie that wasn't a bit of sci-fi hokum. It has to be said that despite the difference in genre, it's essentially of the same quality level as his other movies though. As I mentioned earlier, its plot-line is one that covers a lot of familiar ground featured in other movies of its time. But at the end of the day more of the same is kind of the general idea when it comes to a lot of this genre stuff and is what makes them kind of fun in truth. This one doesn't really fail on account of its derivative nature; it's more due to the tedium it generates too much of the time. It's not the most dynamic of films and it only really does just enough and no more to get over the line. It is still obviously worth checking out if you are a World War II buff though, as it still essentially does what it says on the tin, albeit in a somewhat underwhelming manner. On a final note, there was actually one thing that did stand out in this one and that was the casting decision to use the go-to guy for cinematic Nazis, Anton Diffring, as a British officer. That was certainly something different and must've made a nice change for Diffring who in reality was about as far removed from a Nazi sympathiser as it was possible to get.