rayxt

'0' stars

Unbelievable mindlessness from beginning to end.

How anybody would invest a cent in such a script defies the imagination. That Travolta and Hawke didn't fire their agents for having got them into this dog (which only managed $61K box office!!) is equally staggering.

Using the 32x 'action speed meter' it's immediately apparent NOTHING happens until so far in when a half-baked psychotic hired gun ratchets up the anticipation of bloody confrontation. But by that time few have hung around, especially those craving gratutious violence. And the potentially interesting 'elements' and characters are routinely squandered by a writer aspiring to create a work beyond his talents; while the director & producer didn't have the creative talent to correct the flaws.

To compare it to 'The Quick and the Dead' is a travesty. It's not even fit to be called a real piece of schlock.

Everybody's talent is wasted.

Hard to understand how Van Johnson got railroaded into this B-movie trash, except he was on the downhill grade by then and his agent had bills to pay.

As it happens he was involved with Clover Productions again.

Clover's enviable slate of schlock - some now total classics:

It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Giant Claw (1957) Zombies of Mora Tau (1957) Don't Knock the Rock (1956) The Houston Story (1956) Rock Around the Clock (1956) New Orleans Uncensored (1955) The Enemy General (1960) The Werewolf (1956) Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)

Director Arthur Dreifuss, German by birth had an enviable B-movie list behind him, and certainly the background touched home with him. But obvious budget restrictions lead to basically intolerable errors: German officers with British Sten guns. Or German troops using Browning machineguns. Plus Arthur isn't a natural adept of the 'action genre'.

If they had a combat 'technical advisor' he was drunk on the job. NOBODY would last 10 seconds with this kind of 'action'.

On the other hand there would still be a large number of combat veterans from WW2 & Korea in 60's audiences, so anything more 'realistic' and brutal might cause traumatic memories to return they preferred to try to forget. (But if so, why go to a war movie???)

There's a message but like most of the swathe of 'Battle of The Bulge' outings from the 50's and later like the pitiful 'Ardennes Fury' (2014) why waste time even looking for them?