Tank Commandos

A unit of WWII demolition experts find themselves increasingly called upon to carry out the work of the infantry amongst the ruins of Italy. Burt Topper's low-budget war picture is dedicated to wartime demolition experts, but until the final scene we see nothing of their expertise. Instead, we're subjected to seemingly endless scenes of third-rate actors hopelessly over-emoting as they pretend to buckle under the pressures of war. The characters are so poorly defined that they're virtually interchangeable

Movies are meant to entertain. Tank Commandos did that for me, but not in the conventional way. In my opinion, it was so bad, it was good! I wondered if this movie was a weekend project for an amateur theatrical group that had some uniforms and weapons and too much time on their hands. One commodity they seemed to be very much short of, in addition to acting talent, however, was in FILM. This was constantly evidenced by seeing how many of their patrol they could get into the same frame of film. The concept of "don't bunch up" must have escaped these brave G.I.'s or maybe they were sick that day in Boot Camp when it was explained. Not only would a grenade or an "88" take out the whole patrol, a single rifle shot could have had at least two or three of them. Oh... and how about a little "security" when out there in the 'Badlands'? The way they lounged around in a bombed out building in the enemy town, you would have thought they were in the South Bronx. Oh... and how about noise discipline??? Three G.I.'s in a bombed out house are talking so loud about how they were going to do in two German soldiers standing outside, it's a wonder these two enemy combatants weren't on their way to Berlin by the time the plan was put into action. It was so magnificantly bad.... it was good!

This movie is just another WWII drama, one of the countless that Hollywood shoveled out in the 50's. Nothing particularly remarkable about the characters or plot, it's just the simple story of a demolitions group out to destroy a barely submerged bridge that Nazi tanks are using to cross a river. The characters are not particularly memorable, it just seems to blend in with the zillion other WWII movies made over the years.

It's not that it's bad, it's just bland and forgettable. It is very dry and procedural, it has almost a documentary feel to it in places (the heavy use of file footage of tanks and artillery contribute to this).

If I can make any compliment about it, it is that documentary feel to it, it doesn't relish the drama, it's about men on a mission and accomplishing that mission.

In the 1950s, American International Pictures specialized in films about juvenile delinquents as well as war stories. The one commonality of these films were very low budgets and most no-name actors, though a few went on to excellent careers. In general, these films are not great by any stretch...but a few manage to be timeless and entertaining despite the studio's reputation for cheapness. Is "Tank Commandos" a decent AIP film? Or, is its current score of 4.3 accurate...indicating it's not especially good?

The story is set in Italy in 1944. An American demolition unit is given the task to find out HOW and WHERE the Germans are bringing in reinforcements. For much of the film, the unit searched in vain and suffered significant losses. However, an Italian boy manages to help...how and what happens next, you'll need to see for yourself.

Despite the no-name cast, the film is well made. Of course, some of the stock footage is too grainy....but other than that it actually was well made and emphasizes the ugliness and losses in war. Well worth seeing and NOT a bad film at all.

You don't see many tanks in this economy-sized AIP war movie (given grandeur as usual by cameraman John Nickolaus), unless you include those worn on the backs of the frogmen who sabotage the bridge used by the stock footage Axis tanks to attempt to cross a river.

Talk being cheaper than action, there's a lot of reflection ("When this war is over I'm gonna have myself one big cry!"), while there's a cute Italian war orphan called Diano who's the subject of a song over the opening and closing credits!!

Wally Campo plays a GI who speaks Italian, and a bit of German is spoken too; but whether it sounds as phoney as English always does when spoken in foreign-language movies I'm not in a position to confirm or deny...