After Grindhouse, the misfiring nod to the rough, no-budget movies of the 70s, Quentin Tarantino draws on the macho war-mongering of The Dirty Dozen for his latest venture. The director describes it as a \"spaghetti western but with World War II iconography\" but what he means is a gored-up celebration of Where Eagles Dare or Guns of Navarone. Brad Pitt stars as Lt Aldo Raine aka \"Aldo the Apache\", a fast-talking, vengeance-driven Tennessee hillbilly, who puts together a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers to exact a terrible revenge on the Nazis in Occupied France.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/Inglourious-Basterds-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Inglourious Basterds"},{"captionHeading":"QUEL MALEDETTO TRENO BLINDATO","caption":"
The inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's World War II caper Inglourious Basterds was this 1978 macaroni men-on-a-mission movie. Labouring under the title That Damned Armoured Train, this tells the story of five American GI's who escape from a prison convoy when it's attacked by the Bosche. Heading to Switzerland, they become sidetracked by a French resistance mission to steal the prototype gyroscope for the Nazi V2 from a heavily-guarded train. The movie survived the confiscation of its dummy weapons by the Italian police and the fact that you can clearly see several characters dying twice. In English speaking countries it was more commonly known by the moniker, The Inglorious Bastards...<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/Quel-Maledetto-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Quel Maledetto"},{"captionHeading":"THE DIRTY DOZEN","caption":"
Quentin Tarantino was so impressed he has remade the 1967 original as Inglourious Basterds. Although the 1978 Italian movie he nicked the name from was itself a Dirty Dozen rip-off. Action fanatics of a certain age will fondly recall the Robert Aldrich version, starring Lee Marvin as a US Army major assigned to recruit a dozen convicted murderers and train them as a mass assassination force. Naturally enough, top of the list of killer felons are Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson and Telly Savalas. Dropped into occupied France, Trini Lopez’s character was killed off early after his agent apparently asked for more money.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/The-Dirty-Dozen-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"The Dirty Dozen"},{"captionHeading":"WHERE EAGLES DARE","caption":"
Allied agents, including gung-ho Yank ranger Clint Eastwood and patronising Brit Dickie Burton, stage a daring raid on a Bavarian castle where the Nazis are holding an American general prisoner. However, there’s a traitor – nay a triple agent - among them. Director Brian G Hutton would go on to direct the ultimate caper movie Kelly’s Heroes, but this was a slick reworking of Scottish novelist Alistair MacLean’s novel. A rare, successful combination of action (plenty of explosions) and intrigue (who’s betraying who) and a better scrap on top of a cable car than Roger Moore’s James Bond managed in Moonraker.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/Where-Eagles-Dare-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Where Eagles Dare"},{"captionHeading":"KELLY'S HEROES","caption":"
It’s the litmus test of fatherhood: if you’re a dad and you don’t like this movie, you ain't a real father. Like the first stabiliser-less ride on a bike, the debut watch of Kelly’s Heroes with your proud dad is the sign of impending blokehood. Coming on as a WWII-set Ocean’s 11 with heavy weaponry, this ticks all the caper boxes. Awesomely terrifying Tiger Tanks? Ja. Clint Eastwood playing Dirty Harry as a GI. Jawohl. Telly Savalas as a pressure-cooker sergeant. Naturlich. A group of maverick American grunts veers away from the post D-Day advance into France to nick gold bullion from a bank behind enemy lines. Brilliant. And we haven’t even mentioned Donald Sutherland’s anachronistic hippy Oddball.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/Kellys-Heroes-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Kelly's Heroes"},{"captionHeading":"THE GUNS OF NAVARONE","caption":"
Part of the cycle of big budget WWII adventures including The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Longest Day and The Great Escape, this differed because of its fictional nature. Efforts by an Allied commando team to destroy the heavy guns of a German fortress controlling the shipping lanes of the Aegean Sea are put at risk by a German mole. The impeccable cast included Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn and – controversially – the movie contained an anti-war message. Bizarrely, some members of the Greek royal family were extras in the café scene.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/Guns-of-Navarone-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Guns of Navarone"},{"captionHeading":"THE GREAT ESCAPE","caption":"
This had all the ingredients of a caper movie except with a very nasty sting in the tail. It tells the stories of a group of crack POW escapists who are corralled in what the Nazis regard as the perfect prison camp. However, they haven’t reckoned on the resourcefulness of The Scrounger (James Garner), The Tunnel King (former coalminer Charles Bronson) The Forger (Donald Pleasance) or The Mole (Shughie McFee from Crossroads). Based on the real-life mass escape from Stalag Luft III, this is a gripping drama and a touching tribute to the captured men later murdered by the Gestapo. Few will forget the stunning motorcycle sequence where Steve McQueen attempts to jump the barbed wire into neutral Switzerland.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/The-Great-Escape-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"The Great Escape"},{"captionHeading":"DEAD SNOW","caption":"
Ein, Zwei, Die! With a tagline line that who can resist this chilling tale of Nazi zombies rising from the frosted earth? This Norwegian gore-fest features a group of medical students on a skiing holiday who rather stupidly awaken a platoon of undead SS stormtroopers. Scythes, sledgehammers and chainsaws are the kids' weapons of choice. \"We should have gone to the beach like I told you!,\" one about-to-be-dismembered teenager admits.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/Dead-Snow-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Dead Snow"},{"captionHeading":"ILSA, SHE-WOLF OF THE SS","caption":"
\"It was a chance to put my craft to work. Even so, my Jewish friends were appalled that I would appear in such a film.\"<\/p>
So said former Star Trek actress Dyanne Thorne when accepting the role of the torpedo-chested Ilsa in what would become a string of movies celebrating the Nazi villainess with a penchant for sex and torture. Banned in Australia and Norway, and twice refused a UK cinema certificate by the BBFC and never submitted for home video or DVD, which is probably wise. The grubby story of a death camp doctor who castrates the male patients after sex and does even more unspeakable things to the women, all in the name of Aryan research, this lady is not for turning, or the easily offended. <\/p>
Director Don Edmunds apparently decked an actress on set because she complained too much. That's all we really need to know.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/Ilsa-She-Wolf-of-the-SS-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Ilsa She Wolf of the SS"},{"captionHeading":"THE EAGLE HAS LANDED","caption":"
Michael Caine goes to ground as German paratrooper Colonel Steiner, a crack soldier who - after opposing the round-up of Jews by the SS - is sent on an assignment to England to abduct Churchill. His loyal parachute group dress as Polish soldiers and take over a sleepy Norfolk village and wait for Winnie. Based on the best-selling Jack Higgins novel, this also starred Donald Sutherland as an English-loathing IRA man who charms horsey country filly Jenny Agutter into bed. The sharp-eyed will spot a 1970s-era Robin Reliant in one scene and Larry Hagman also gets the chance to go into full JR mode as a Texan colonel.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/The-Eagle-Has-Landed-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"The Eagle Has Landed"},{"captionHeading":"BLACK BOOK","caption":"
For all those who continually carp that \"they don't make 'em like that any more\" here's a rattling caper that could have rolled into the Odeon thirty years ago. There's nasty (and nice) Nazis, a heroine happy to drop her camisole before you can say \"Heil Hitler\" and more boys' own action than you can shake the muzzle of a Schmeisser machine pistol at. It's a classic, old-fashioned wartime guilty pleasure and wouldn't look out of place in a double bill alongside Von Ryan's Express, Kelly's Heroes or even The Great Escape.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/Black-Book-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Black Book"},{"captionHeading":"OUTPOST","caption":"
A group of grizzled mercenaries find themselves on the receiving end of some supernatural nastiness when they find a bunker that was the site of some dodgy SS experiments during World War II. Debuting British director Steve Barker handles the action with a sure hand and if you fancy seeing a shell case being pushed into a quivering soldier of fortune's eye then this is the place to come. Grimly accomplished.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/Outpost-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Outpost"},{"captionHeading":"THE BUNKER","caption":"
No, not the subterranean Berlin hideout where Hitler and his cronies met their maker but an old fortification somewhere in Belgium. Nine battle-weary German troops find the advancing American forces are the least of their worries when they unleash something nasty in their new hiding place. Among the true Brits playing Gerry are Jason Flemyng, Eddie Marsan and Jack Davenport.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/Bunker7-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Bunker7"},{"captionHeading":"HELLBOY","caption":"
OK, so goose-stepping Nazis only really feature in this at the beginning...but they do get things off to a good start. In the final days of World War II, the Allies raid a remote Scottish castle where Hitler's elite are attempting black magic to bring forth a monkey-like demon aka Hellboy. Apparently, the American unit who rescue the fledgling hellboy were - in real life - actually defending the town of St Vith, Belgium during the events in the opening scene.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/Hellboy-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Hellboy"},{"captionHeading":"THE ODESSA FILE","caption":"
After the big screen triumph of The Day of the Jackal in 1973, the following year saw another Frederick Forsyth novel bearing fuit. This tells the story of Jon Voight's Hamburg journalist and his investigation of the Odessa group of former SS men who have inflitrated post-war German society. Efforts to capture the real-life Eduard Roschmann (played by Maximilian Schell), who was living in South America, were stepped up after the book and the movie. Conspiracy theories claim he was offed by Odessa itself after he put the organisation at risk.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/The-Odessa-File-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"The Odessa File"},{"captionHeading":"THE KEEP","caption":"
Jackbooted Nazis and the supernatural are a common combination (cf Hellboy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Outpost etc) and this Michael Mann chiller is at the silly end of the spectrum. A platoon of German soldiers, including a goose-stepping Gabriel Byrne and sympathetic Jurgen Prochnow (riffing on his Das Boot character) arrives at a castle keep and discovers something spooky that wants them all dead. A fantastic opening sequence as the platoon's convey arrives in the mountain village soon gives way to a film that is feeble rather than fearsome. Even the presence of Sir Ian McKellen (dubbed) and Scott Glenn (on another planet), and some heavy re-editing, can’t pull this back from the abyss. Like the Tangerine Dream score though.<\/p>","url":"2009/3/19/The-Keep-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"The Keep"},{"captionHeading":"THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL","caption":"
Laurence Olivier plays a Nazi hunter who stumbles on a barking plot by South American ex-SS nasties to resurrect Adolf Hitler and establish the Fourth Reich. Auschwitz's \"Angel of Death\" Dr Mengele (Gregory Peck) leads the over-nostalgic Nazis who plan to clone the Fuhrer, and there's an early blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by Bruno Ganz, who would go on to play Hitler in the sublime Downfall. A snarling pack of murderous Dobermanns deserve top billing, and yes, that is a pre-Police Academy Steve Guttenberg as the journalist who discovers the diabolical plan early on.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/28/boys-from-brazil-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"boys from brazil"},{"captionHeading":"THE SOUND OF MUSIC","caption":"
Divine intervention - in the form of Julie Andrews' nunnery chums removing the distributor caps from the pursuing Nazi's cars - allows the Von Trapp family to hotfoot it up an Alp and safely in to Switzerland. While not exactly a caper movie, this cheerfully conforms to the Nazi stereotype of Aryan thugs and delights in them being outwitted by seven kids wearing curtains. One problem: if they really had crossed the border near Salzburg...they'd be in Austria - Hitler's birthplace. Scheisse.<\/p>","url":"2009/2/18/The-Sound-Of-Music-10.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"The Sound Of Music 10"},{"captionHeading":"VALKYRIE","caption":"
Tom Cruise was actually not bad at all as Hitler's wannabe assassin in this old-fashioned tale of honour and derring-do. He played Wehrmacht Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (by the time you'd said his name the Gestapo would be at the door) who led the German rebels in the July 20 bomb plot against Hitler. Cruise's selection to play the resistance hero drew early criticism from the Von Stauffenberg family because his Scientology religion is regarded - like Nazism - as a totalitarian organisation in Germany.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/31/Valkyrie-19.jpg","width":570,"height":360,"alt":"Valkyrie 10"},{"captionHeading":"RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK","caption":"
Steven Spielberg knows more than most the shock value of a monocled Nazi, and brilliantly incorporated Hitler’s obsession with the occult into the first Indiana Jones outing. Rather than blitzkrieg their way across the globe, the simple thing for Third Reich would be to get their black leather-clad mitts on the Ark of the Covenant. However, they don’t count on Nazi-hating archaeologist Indiana Jones. Shamelessly harking back to the likes of Where Eagles Dare and Kelly’s Heroes, this is a first-rate caper with Paul Freeman relishing every spat-out order as the German’s hired hand Rene Belloq.<\/p>","url":"2008/11/19/Indiana-Jones-The-Raiders-Of-The-Lost-Ark-5.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Indiana Jones & The Raiders Of The Lost Ark - 5"},{"captionHeading":"DEFIANCE","caption":"
Perhaps not the best example of a “Nazi caper movie”, this WWII story of steely grit and determination follows a group of Jewish partisans and their guerrilla war in the Belarussian forest against the Hitler's hordes. While the Germans are never more than vicious, village-torching ciphers, this also asks disturbing questions about the level of anti-semitism in the Soviet Red Army. Daniel Craig plays the Jewish leader as a sort of well-armed Moses.<\/p>","url":"2008/12/19/defiance-10-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"defiance 10"},{"captionHeading":"THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN","caption":"
The desperate fight against Hitler's Luftwaffe took to the skies in this boys' own \"their finest hour\" caper, with a dream cast including Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine (pictured), Trevor Howard, Michael Redgrave and even Lovejoy himself, Ian McShane. Outgunned and outmanned, no true Brit can fail to be moved when they see plucky Spitfire and Hurricane pilots engaging the Hun over the White Cliffs of Dover. The film is actually pretty faithful to events although mock-ups of the British fighters were fitted with lawnmower engines so they could taxi around the airfield.<\/p>","url":"2008/12/2/Battle-of-Britain.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Battle of Britain"},{"captionHeading":"SS DOOMTROOPER","caption":"
At a Nazi fortress, a mad scientist uses atomic radiation to create the ultimate soldier... but the monster he unleashes is uncontrollable. Captain Molloy of the US Army hand-picks a squad of military misfits to blow up the lab and stop the death-dealing fiend. With achtung-in-cheek, the Dirty Half-Dozen take on 'Das Hulk' in this cheap and cheesy sci-fi horror.<\/p>","url":"2009/6/4/SS-Doomtrooper.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"SS Doomtrooper"},{"captionHeading":"IRON SKY","caption":"
It's not going to be here until 2010...but we really like the sound of this. In 1945, the Nazis went to the moon. In 2018, they’re coming back. Director Timo Vuorensola’s sci-fi action/comedy is based on the literally lunatic notion that Hitler's henchmen have been holed up in a swastika-shaped space station on the dark side of the moon just waiting for the chance to deal with unfinished business. That's right - the Fourth Reich. Madchens in tight blouses, space travelling stormtroopers, - was ist not to like, ja?<\/p>","url":"2009/6/4/Iron-Sky1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Iron Sky1"}];