Os 7 de Marsa Matruh

More Spaghetti War from the late 1960's courtesy of the Italians, who once again take on the Germans in the deserts of North Africa while dressed up like British soldiers and show once again that even though Mussilini was a fascist, the Italians were OK Joe's for the most part. They never seem British for a minute, something having to do with the body language, or perhaps all the hooked Caesar noses.

Anyway, this is basically a re-tread of DESERT COMMANDOS where a group of mismatched misfits have to cross the desert battling nature, the Germans, and each other's frayed nerves after a battle gone horribly wrong, with Ivan Rassimov chewing the scenery as a stubbornly dignified and by the book British officer who insists on being called "Captain, Sir" even after somebody has saved his neck. But chain of command be damned after the four survivors meet up with an early Italian genre film version of Charlie's Angels. These aren't just British nurses and a USO showgirl, they are high-class war fashion babes who's makeup and hair is perfect even after fighting with a Nazi for a machine gun, aren't afraid to shoot somebody, save the life of the son of the local Beduin warlord even though they are mere women, all have great legs, and put out during soulful chats by the campfire with guys who have huge, hooked noses. Sure, they screw up whatever military discipline the guys would have had on their own, but with eyes like those who would complain?

You just have to love stuff like this because it flies in the face of conventional wisdom about how war should be handled as a subject for films. The only reason to have this film set during WW2 is that the subject was red-hot in 1969: This could be a western or a crime thriller or even a gladiator movie, all you'd have to do is shift the reference points around a little bit and you could even work a giant killer shark into the mix. It's set in the desert during WW2 though, which means there will be a water rationing scene, a heroic sacrifice to save the others scene, a commander dressing down the subordinate scene, a Singing Drunk Nazis scene, the requisite War Is Hell sequence where some shockingly brutal yet ironic atrocity will be staged to demonstrate that fun is fun but War Is Hell, a friendly local LAWRENCE OF ARABIA reminding Beduin tribe who will fight the Nazi Panzer tanks on horseback with swords, and naturally everybody has plenty of cigarettes to smoke during the cigarette smoking scenes. I can just hear the dialog in my head -- "The tank's about to blow, Captain, Sir!" "Make sure you grab those cartons of Lucky's!!"

This movie is absurd, inappropriately amusing, seemingly ineptly dubbed into English on purpose for comedy effect, sexist to the point where the showgirl even puts on a little show for the soldier boy who catches her eye, and at the end there is a huge, violent, complex battle scene involving what appear to be exactly the same surplus tanks (invariably American & British, since we blew up all the Panzer tanks winning the war and all), trucks + extras from BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN, BATTLE IN THE DESERT, DESERT COMMANDOS, HELL COMMANDOS, KILL ROMMEL, just plain COMMANDOS, and THE WAR DEVILS, probably others I can't think of right now. If you say that's a bad thing you are in a minority around here, I look upon it as a testimony to the hardiness of WW2 era technology. Those things take a licking and they keep on ticking, and are right now probably carrying chemical weapons somewhere in Syria. We will see them again on CNN before the fall is out I wager.

This is exactly the kind of stuff that will annoy traditionalist war movie buffs. I am not a war movie buff, I like cult genre cinema, and prize the film in the way one would prize a kitsch cuckoo clock or a pair of salt n' pepper shakers shaped like Tiki Torches. Euro War potboilers are advanced forms of viewing however because the seeming target audience -- war movie buffs -- will make the grave mistake of taking it all seriously, because we have been taught that we are supposed to take war movies seriously, and that they should be made with a solemn attention to detail that rivals a History Channel re-enactment narrated by Morgan Freeman. Here is one that says No, you don't, and has the nerve to be fun.

7/10, but then again I am in on the joke.

If you subscribe to the old adage of 'if you have seen one low-budget, bullet-blasted Italian WW2 actioner you've seen 'em all, then it seems entirely logical to say that if you liked one, you'll probably dig em all! Director Mario Siciliano's not uninteresting desert-set shoot 'em up is given additional lustre by the charismatic presence of dashing euro-cult icon Ivan Rassimov as the stern, hard-line stiff upper lipped Lieutenant Alan Crossland. Precariously cut-off from their own unit, consistently threatened by advancing hordes of Rommel's relentless Afrika Korps, this rag-tag outfit take increasingly daring risks just to survive! After a desperate skirmish or three, this wearisome, perpetually thirsting patrol pick up three stranded, delicious-looking nurses, which adds a welcome reprieve from the sweaty macho tableau of desperate, fearfully fighting men!

While Siciliano's shrapnel-shredded 'Overrun' doesn't offer a ceaseless barrage of maniacal, macaroni-flavoured militaristic mayhem, it certainly delivers on the acting performances, which are uniformly strong, with the delectable starlet Monica Strebel being especially pleasant to behold! The stridently dubbed voices are soothingly familiar, and the noisome final act builds up to a rousingly ordinance overloaded climax, wherein our dangerously outgunned and oppressively out-Tanked heroes stoically battle against hellacious hordes of Hitler's Hellhounds! There's a far from displeasing Spaghetti western vibe throughout, due in no small part to the hazy expanses of heat-blanched desert vistas and music maestro Cipriani's dynamic knack for writing uniquely exhilarating themes! And once again, the mesmerically masculine Ivan Rassimov's angular, intense visage lights up the screen like a prism!

Overrun is another Macaroni Combat movie from the genre's heyday. This is one of a sizeable grouping of these flicks that were set in the North African desert. In this one we have a group of British soldiers finding themselves stranded in enemy territory after a German victory in a key battle during WWII. We spend the rest of the film watching them flee the enemy, overcome obstacles and encounter various unexpected groups of people. Of the latter, there is a group of good-looking nurses and a tribe of sword wielding Bedouins. The girls are basically wedged into the narrative in order to give this male-oriented movie some eye-candy and I for one can't see any fault in this objective. The Bedouins are there to provide some exotic colour and, along, with the ladies do lend events some distinctive elements. Like most other Italian war movies from this period, this isn't truthfully a particularly good film quite honestly. But it's less expected aspects are fun, while it's cast of characters all sport various, impressively unconvincing British regional accents which I thought was kind of funny. It also admittedly does feature one genuinely good suspenseful scene, where our heroes find themselves on top of a landmine; this was dealt with in a unique and effective manner I have to say. All in all, this one is not bad for this kind of thing.

Another Spaghetti warfilm with the same cast of olicve skinned immaculately coifed Italians as so many other.s Storyline is the usual 'lost behind German lines' and facing many dangers before eventually reaching safety. The actors have no idea of how to portray typical British and the girls ditto though their miniskirts look good. Interesting location shows perfect examople of topography left by The Flood 4,350 years ago.

One of the many Italian WW2 films set in North Africa from the 1960's & 70s. If you have seen any one of these films Overrun will seem very familiar. Having said that Overrun is probably the best of the bunch - out of the ones I have seen at any rate. The story is pretty similar to the 1958 classic 'Ice Cold in Alex' - so if you liked that then you'll probably enjoy this. The people and events the group encounter on their desert journey back to Allied lines are generally interesting, varied and entertaining. This is what really sets this film apart and stops from being boring. Although having said that the film is definitely overly long in places (cutting about 20 minutes from this film would have improved it). The action is a mixed-bag of good and bad, but never strays into strays into the territory of being laughable. The English dub of the film has better clarity than most, however is marred by some annoying over the top fake accents. Some equipment and almost all vehicles in this film are historically incorrect, with most of the vehicles cleary being of 1950s French and Soviet origin. Judging from the variety of vehicles, and the location, I would guess that they were loaned for the film production from the Egyptian military. However this only detracts from the film if you are a military history buff. Not a brilliant film, but still alot better than most of its contemporary competition.