L'espionne des Ardennes

Armored Command is set in the Western European theatre of operations shortly after D-Day ,and it opens promisingly with a scene showing a jeep bearing two German officers and a young woman approaching across a snow shrouded landscape.The woman climbs down from the jeep and walks a short distance with the senior officer,who lights a cigarette for her and then shoots her as she stands against the skyline.She is discovered alive by a passing American patrol and cared for by them in a local inn they have commandeered. She is a spy sent by Germany to infiltrate the American army and feed news back to the Abwehr.One plot strand revolves around her attempts to do so and also tackles the impact her presence has on the patrol ,especially when the sergeant becomes infatuated with her and a private (played in slimy and impactful style by a pre- stardom Burt Reynolds giving the best performance in the movie)entertains altogether less exalted designs upon her person.

The other main plot strand deals with the efforts of an American officer to persuade his high command that German forces still constitute a danger in the area. He is proven correct and the climactic battle scene is the best thing in an otherwise flat and bland picture which never matches its striking opening .Poor performances by Howard Keel as the cigar chomping Colonel and Tina Louise as the spy drag proceedings down and the movie never really sustains the interest beyond its neat opening. Stick with "Attack" the brilliant Robert Aldrich movie on the same campaign -that is a work of consummate genius where this is just studio double bill material

A squad of dogfaces move into a small French town in the Vosges, and rest up. There's a German army not too far away, but they're just sitting there. They discover Tina Louise, and move into her house where she is exhausted by the entire matter. They don't know she's actually a German spy who is getting word through to her bosses as they prepare for a local attack to draw attention away from the Ardennes Offensive.

It's a cheap movie with plenty of 1960s cynicism about war and the stupidity of colonels far from the front lines. Shot cheaply in Germany using all American military equipment, director Byron Haskins seems more interested in getting his compositions and explosions right than making his characters more than sketches. There's 56-year-old Carleton Young as their front-line captain, Earl Holliman, a non-singing Howard Keel, Burt Reynolds (in his second big-screen role) and Marty Ingels.

I have to say that this film has a little spot of nostalgia for me as it was a favorite when I was a kid. On a winter afternoon in the days of three or four channels of TV per market, it made the grade and also led to playing army out in the snow. Many of these actors were on the tube at the time including Tina Louise, Burt Reynolds, and Earl Holliman and we all liked Howard Keels performance.

This is an average war film based on a real battle that seemed meant to showcase a lot of young talent rather than anything else. I think one would have seen this at the Bijou as the second feature. It is better than a lot of the imports that were beginning to saturate the market at the time.

The casting is good and the cast is competent. Howard Keel, Warner Anderson, and Carlton Young anchor this exciting young cast. Tina Louise is the femme fatal and gives you a peak at her pre "Ginger" acting on "Gilligan's Island!" because she is an authoritative bitch when she commands her fellow spy's! Good or bad, Earl Holliman and Burt Reynolds give performances not unlike what they given throughout their entire careers.

Everyone gave this the college try in no doubt thanks to Byron Haskin's workmanlike direction. The producer of the film also wrote it which might explain the "Battleground" and other war movie clichés but this makes the film an encyclopedia of clichés and you have to be a war movie nut to notice them. Marty Feldman reminds me of the kind of role that they would have had George Tobias do. I do not know the name of the guy playing the Frenchman but he is cool right down to his beret.

In staging the battle, the budget soon starts to strain but just a bit. It is ambitious to do any film about the Battle of the Bulge and the money people had to surrender to reality very early. Still, compared to the phony Tiger tanks in "Attack" the M 60's (?) used are more than OK and the action footage creates drama. It almost looks like they used the West German Army while it was out on maneuvers. You wonder what they could have done with a fraction of the budget for "Battle of the Bulge", the Cinerama fantasy war film with super NAZI Robert Shaw that would be released a few years later or the "Longest Day" which was released just before this.

PS: The German's are at their best "Combat" acting style! I like the atmosphere of this film. I have it on in the background as I enter this. It is winter outside here and we are in the middle of a snow storm. I wonder if someone like Tina Louise is lying out there somewhere?

Nah!

What was supposed to be a tense, suspenseful war drama turned out to be rather confusing and boring. Sometimes these spy flicks go over my head, so if that's your genre of choice, you might feel differently about this one. I ended up writing other reviews while the movie was running to distract me from the boredom.

Tina Louise plays a German spy, but because she's an attractive and vulnerable woman, the soldiers who rescued her after her injury don't suspect a thing. They're too busy fighting over her to notice she's sneaking out secrets to the enemy. Howard Keel, Earl Holliman, Burt Reynolds, Carleton Young, Warner Anderson, Clem Harvey, Marty Ingels, and James Dobson are the men in the film, but with hardly any fight scenes, Armored Command doesn't really feel like a war movie. It's a little slow, and even though I just finished watching it a couple of days ago, I can't even remember what happens in the end.

The Nazis release a woman into the open and take one shot at her. American soldiers later find her and treat her back to health. Her name is Alexandra Bastegar (Tina Louise). She is actually a spy sent to get information on the Americans for the upcoming Ardennes offensive and the start of the Battle of the Bulge. Colonel Devlin is sure that the obvious German attack should be coming right at him, but few others believe in his suspicions.

This movie never completely takes off. It's great to see a pre-Gilligan Tina Louise. Maybe she should be revealed as a spy much later. That would be a great shock to spice things up. Burt Reynolds is also in this with a disturbing scene. He did play some evil villains early in his career. That shock is not necessarily what I'm looking for in this movie.