Les mercenaires de l'Apocalypse

The curse of stolen footage rears its ugly head and despoils what might have otherwise been a pretty good film here, in this Italian made, WWII themed flick.

The plot concerns an elite group of five mercenaries, each with highly specialised skills, who are hired to take out a German Command Center situated deep within a lime stone cavern system. Along the way to this objective, our intrepid soldiers of fortune also undertake various sub missions including blowing up an arms supply train and a German airfield (presumably said missions included by the filmmakers to pad out proceedings somewhat).

Sounds OK(ish) thus far? There's a slight problem though….Unfortunately, as mentioned previously, whenever said action scenes occur, one can't help but to notice the mismatched, grainy footage stolen from an obviously more ambitious, older war flick that is clumsily edited in!

Not so good then, but I must absolutely commend the music score in this which proves to be admittedly excellent and highly memorable. In fact, seeing as the trailer also features the exact same score whilst all the best bits from the film play out on screen it is probably more judicious to sit and watch that instead.

Apocalypse Mercenaries is a cheap, Italian, WWII men-on-a-mission war movie wherein a motley crew of military misfits—Mister (Vassili Karis), Fierro (Bruno Bilotta), Priest (Maurice Poli), Flyer (Thomas Rauser) and Doc (Peter Hintz)—are tasked with destroying a heavily guarded Nazi HQ located deep inside a limestone cave.

On the way to their target, the group team up with a female partisan, Mirka (Marinella Magri), and carry out several smaller missions, attacking a German supply train and blowing up an airfield full of enemy planes.

While the story might be formulaic, and the acting nothing to write home about, the battle scenes are great (I don't care if they've lifted footage from other films—it is integrated well enough), the scenery is stunning, and the whole thing moves at a decent lick, with almost non-stop action to keep fans of the genre happy.

5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

This terrible film takes its plot from the usual sixties Italian War film (you know - half a dozen or thereabouts misfits sent behind enemy lines to take part in a suicide mission), marries it with some eighties music, then has the actors within constantly react to footage from another film. For the entire duration of the film. It's awful!

WW2, central Europe, senior officer Paul Muller needs a bunch of specialized troops to destroy a German command centre just over the Yugoslavian border. You know the drill - there's the hardcore leader of the group, the explosives expert, the fluent German speaker, the muscly, Rambo guy as this is the eighties, and another guy whom I wasn't quite sure had a special skill. He was a pilot when we first meet him but didn't do any flying after that.

They also pick up a female partisan but as this film is purely a cardboard cut-out of films that weren't that great in the first place, why bother going on with the plot? There's a bit of reflection, a bit of romance, some truly terrible action sequences, blah blah blah. What's more annoying is that the film that the stolen footage is lifted from looks great! A full-on epic war film with a huge cast of extras, loads of tanks and planes, and loads of action - where's that one hiding?

Some chuckles can be had from the crappy acting of the extras and Maurice Poli's performance is like he's doing a pantomime in Glasgow rather than being an explosive expert in WW2, but I wasn't a fan of this plot the first time around, so the eighties version doesn't work for me either. The Rambo rip-offs, however, do float my boat.

The soundtrack's good though.