Assaut final

I saw this under one of its many titles, "Hell River", and was pretty unimpressed. It has a few things going for it--for one thing the photography is quite crisp, unlike many 1970s Euro-made WW 2 "epics", which tended to be either washed-out or muddy--and the music is at least appropriate and doesn't drown out or overwhelm what's on screen--but there are a lot more cons than pro's. The performances aren't particularly good, especially Adam West, wildly miscast as a Nazi officer; he is stiff as a board, has no chemistry or connection with anyone in the cast and slips in and out of an embarrassingly bad German accent. Rod Taylor is stalwart as usual, but he's simply too old to play an action hero. Xenia Gratsos, here billed as "Brioni Farrell", matches West's wooden acting and is rather plain-looking to boot. The plethora of action scenes are done in a very by-the-numbers fashion and tend to be unrealistic, i.e., when the partisans attack a German armored column the Germans are mowed down by the dozens but only a very few partisans fall, despite the Germans opening up with everything they had.

All in all it's not as bad as a lot of the cheap WW 2 crapfests the Italians ground out like sausages in the 1960s and 1970a--my God, what a tsunami of stinkers they were--but it's nothing to write home about. Watchable, to a degree, but not memorable.

Another low rent WW2 epic made in Yugoslavia with a largely local cast and crew, propped up by a couple of big Hollywood names. HELL RIVER is the condensed version of a four part TV movie entitled PARTIZANI, and it simply isn't very good. The direction is weak, the action sequences feel like stock footage although they're not, and Hollywood offers much slicker, more professionally made war films than this one.

Saying that, HELL RIVER isn't the worst of its type. Some of the imagery is pretty good, like the line of tanks rolling through a debris-strewn township, and the producers certainly get their money's worth from the WW2-era weapons, costumes, and vehicles they have access to. I've always enjoyed Rod Taylor's acting performances and he doesn't disappoint here either, although he does seem to have aged very rapidly in the space of just a decade. Adam West is as wooden as ever and struggles in one of his most miscast roles as a Nazi officer. There's action a-plenty, but it all feels rather repetitive and, like the whole film, a bit of a waste of time.

This is exactly the sort of war movie most buffs envision when they hear "Yugoslavian War Movie". Sure, for every good bigger-budget war movie like "Neretva" or "Sutjeska" that the Yugoslavs turned out, they made about 10 awful, cheap ones. This goes in the latter category, with poor acting, badly directed action scenes, unrealistic and un-scary villain, and poverty-row equipment and effects.

The first indication is the poor quality opening scene when partisans attack a German riverboat. The confused and bewildered Germans put up little fight and Adam West (totally unbelievable as a German officer) escapes to reap his vengeance. His later idiotic ski-troop attack is one of the worst, most one-sided action scenes in war movie history. I don't think the Germans even attempted to sneak up on the Partisans, much less actually wound or kill any of them.

The final action scene has a lot of the expected sledgehammer Yugo propaganda with a motley crew of barely armed freedom fighters beating back wave after wave of German tanks and soldiers. Sure, they had high morale and eventually won out due to overwhelming numbers (and Soviet intervention) but this movie makes it look like 30 Germans died for every 1 Partisan. Yeah right.

Right down there with "BOMB AT 10:10" and "BATTLE OF THE EAGLES".

A Yugoslav raised in America (Rod Taylor) fights the invading Germans as a leader in the National Liberation Army, aka Yugoslav Partisans. Adam West plays a German captain who's sympathetic toward the Serbians because he's actually Austrian and in love with a Jewess (Brioni Farrell).

"Hell River" (1974), also known as "Guerilla Raid" and "The Partisan" (amongst other titles), is a Serbo-Croatian WW2 film that originally ran 3 hours on Yugoslavian television. This shorter version was released for other markets.

Loosely based on the true events, it comes in the tradition of "The Guns of Navarone" (1961), "The Heroes of Telemark" (1965) and "Hornets' Nest" (1970) and is similar to the future "Force 10 from Navarone" (1978) and "The Eagle Has Landed" (1976). Sure, it's not on the level of the better ones, but it's quite well done and not far off. The longer version is no doubt more compelling.

Interestingly, a few seconds of "Hell River" are featured in Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019) as the fictional movie "The 14 Fists of McCluskey," an Italian flick Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) starred in because he couldn't get significant roles in America.

The film runs 1 hour, 42 minutes, and was shot in Serbia (Sabac, Lazarevac, Mountain Zlatibor and River Drina by the border of Bosnia).

GRADE: B-/B.

I consider my taste in movies to be quite traditional (i like stuff like Lord of the Rings), yet i have completely enjoyed the two biggest Yugoslavian war films, The Battle of Neretva and this. Partizani is a big scale war adventure about Serbian partisans and Nazis exchanging blows in 1941.

A triangle drama between the rebel leader (Rod Taylor), a reluctant nazi (Adam West) and an upper class chick (Brioni Farrell) is woven into the story, but it never gets in the way of the action. And there is plenty of it, involving planes and tanks. The equipment is unfortunately wrong, but the tanks manage to look a bit Wehrmacht.

I really liked Rod Taylor in this movie, he is aged but not tired. He carries the simple warrior role with his charisma. Adam West is more wooden but adequate, and Brioni Farrell is competent and never annoying. The musical score, involving a bit of Mikis Theodorakis, is good and sentimental in an Ennio Morricone way.

This is a high class, big budget film that shouldn't disappoint any friend of war adventure. Better than mediocre Hollywood, and one of the best to ever come out of continental Europe.