Triple Cross (1966)

Director:  Terence Young

Writers:  Rene Hardy, Frank Owen, William Marchant

Composer:  Georges Garvarentz

Starring:  Christopher Plummer, Romy Schneider, Trevor Howard, Gert Frobe, Claudine Auger, Yul Brynner, Anthony Dawson

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  MASTER-CRIMINAL! SUPER-SPY! AND ALL TRUE!

Plot:  During WW2, convicted bank robber Eddie Chapman becomes a triple agent working for both the British and the Germans.

My rating:   6/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

SPY SPOILERS AHEAD!  YARRRRRR!!!

I like the cast even though some of them don't sustain the level of quality they generally maintain in this picture.  For example, Brynner is does a fine job, playing his usual stern self until the end when it's time for his overly dramatic exit.  It's all too easy for him to over do it.  The rest of the cast does a fine job.  But when it comes to Plummer in the lead, he's mostly great except he sometimes comes off as a super cocky narcissist which makes him difficult to like, and he's the lead so you're kind of supposed to get behind this guy.  Plummer seems quite good at accents.  At times he sounds like a young Errol Flynn which only got me wanting to turn this off and watch a good ole Flynn adventure.  

 

As the title suggests, there's some double and triple cross action going on.  We spend more time with the Germans than with the Britich and most of the Germans aren't all that bad.  They don't display any of the evil side that we know about.  All that means is these Germans have personalities and they're not saying or doing evil things.  Maybe that's on purpose to give the audience room to suggest that maybe Chapman (Plummer) could genuinely be working for the Germans.  It really doesn't matter where his loyalties lie (except really you know he only seems to care about himself and which way the wind is blowing - he doesn't want to get stuck playing on the losing side no matter what).  

 

 Look at how shoddy this shot is?  I promise you they had a budget but they didn't always use it.

The plot moves at a nice enough pace but only once do you get a sense that he's in danger and that's on his first 'mission' for the Germans which ends up being a test that he barely catches onto in time to save his ass.  And that's part of the problem.  Aside from that tension-filled moment, there's little to no suspense.  It doesn't feel like it matters who's side he's really on.  You hope that he's really helping England more than Germany but you don't know until the end.  And by then I almost didn't care.  Speaking of not caring, what about that song playing over the end credits?  That's really out of left field.  It's more appropriate at the end of a Bond spoof.  With this being directed by Terence Young, the director behind 3 of the first 4 Bond pictures, that sounds about right but it's still beneath him.  But this isn't a spy spoof, it's based on a real guy that did these things.  There are enough ingredients in this picture that should've yielded something better and darker.  They had the opportunity to make a strong thriller taken from true events but instead they made a passable WWII spy drama that casually entertains and doesn't try too hard to not be forgettable.  

Sailor of the King (1953)

Director:  Roy Boulting

Writers:  C.S. Forester, Valentine Davies

Composer:  Clifton Parker

Starring:  Jeffrey Hunter, Michael Rennie, Wendy Hiller, Bernard Lee, Peter van Eyck, Victor Maddern, John Horsley, Patrick Barr, Robin Bailey

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  The greatest story of the sea by today's greatest storyteller!

Plot:  In 1940, Canadian sailor Andrew Brown is prisoner on a battle damaged German raider and he plans to delay the raider's at-sea repairs until a British naval task-force can destroy it.

My rating:   7.5/10

Will I watch it again?   YES!

SNIPIN' SPOILERS AHEAD!!!  YARRRRRRR!!!

The film starts out during WWI with a sappy romance when a soldier (Rennie as Richard Saville) meets a girl (Hiller as Lucinda Bentley) before going abroad with the two falling in love in the hours/days before his departure.  They speak of marriage but it never happens.  Did they do the nasty?  It's possible but not all that hinted at.  This happens in the first fifteen minutes and it's pretty by the numbers lovey-dovey stuff of its time.  Cut to more than twenty years later and Saville is an admiral commanding a fleet in WWII.  This is where the film kicks into gear and gets interesting.  Saville is hell-bent on sinking a German warship, the Essen, and he makes the call for one of his ships to hold their position until the fleet arrives.  That ship is destroyed, leaving only two survivors that end up as prisoners on the Essen in sick bay, Earnshaw (Maddern) and Brown (Hunter).  The Essen is damaged and seeks shelter in a small cove, hidden from the sea and Brown gets the crazy idea to steal a rifle and an inflatable boat and secure himself on the cliff overlooking the Essen, shooting those who attempt at repairing the ship in an effort to delay them long enough for the rest of the fleet to find them.  THIS is pretty damn intense and makes for one hell of a show!  

The first, short, act is by the numbers romantic BS.  Get past that and you've got yourself a pretty damn good action thriller.  The performances are very good, especially from Hunter (who goes shirtless and hunky from the time he ditches the German vessel).  

 

 

The direction during the standoff is tight and tense.  This is some really good shit and well worth a watch.  It is weird, though, with the first act feeling tacked on considering the rest of the movie ALMOST has nothing to do with it.  The ending is upbeat and only slightly hints at something possibly relating to Hiller as it's said by Brown that he has a mother and Hiller was in the beginning of the film which are the only two time a woman is either shown or spoken of.  Are we supposed to draw the conclusion that Brown is Saville's son?  Yeah, I think so.  It's really driven home (and emotionally so) when you watch the alternate ending found on the DVD which changes Brown's fate.  Yeah, I choked up a bit.  The alternate ending at least ties her to the story in such a way that more so justifies the first fifteen minutes.  Without it, you're left scratching your head a little bit wondering what the point was except either it was bad writing, filler or studio intervention.  All of those things are still possible but it makes more sense that there's a bigger, more intimate story here.  Regardless, the action/standoff portion is well-handled and worth watching.   Drop the opening BS and this is easily an 8/10.

 

 

Action of the Tiger (1957)

Director:  Terence Young

Writers:  Robert Carson, James Wellard, Peter Myers

Composer:  Humphrey Searle

Starring:  Van Johnson, Martine Carol, Herbert Lom, Gustavo Rojo, Jose Nieto, Helen Haye, Anna Gerber, Anthony Dawson, Sean Connery, Yvonne Romain, Norman MacOwan, Brian Sunners, Helen Goss

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  How a beautiful blonde and a tough smuggler escape the net of Continental conspiracy!

Plot:  Carson is an American contraband runner approached by Tracy, a French woman who wants him to help rescue her brother from Albania where he is being held as a political prisoner.

My rating:  5.5/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

With the exception of maybe BATTLEGROUND (1949), I don't think I've seen any Van Johnson movie where he was the lead.  Even if I had, judging by his performance in this film, I don't think I would've remembered.  Here, he's bland and his voice is often monotone or close to it.  I mostly watched this for an early Sean Connery performance and for Herbert Lom.  Lom has a pivotal role and has about fifteen minutes of screen time while Connery has about a minute each in the beginning and at the very end so if you blink, you'll miss him.  Connery has a lot to do in those couple of minutes but it's nothing much to speak of.  The film itself suffers from a lackluster male lead and a screenplay with some poor dialogue for Carson (Johnson).  The movie has some action but it's also got that family kind of action drama as Carson has to travel several miles on foot with Tracy (Carol), her blind brother and several children.  Carson is supposed to be a hardened and impossible man but he puts up with this lot as if it were an eye-rolling family film.  And partly because of that, you just know that Carson and Tracy are going to end up together at the end.  Ugh.

South Sea Woman (1953)

Director:  Arthur Lubin

Writers:  William Rankin, Edwin Blum, Earl Baldwin, Stanley Shapiro

Composer:  David Buttolph

Starring:  Burt Lancaster, Virginia Mayo, Chuck Connors, Arther Shields, Barry Kelley, Leon Askin, Veola Vonn, Bob Sweeney, Hayden Rorke

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  THE ROUSIN' CAROUSIN' ADVENTURES OF A LEATHERNECKIN' GUY AND HIS HULA-LULU LADY!

Plot:  AWOL marine Sgt. Jim O'Hearn is court-martialed for a variety of offenses that carry 143 years in the stockade or the death penalty but refuses to aid in his own defense.

My rating:  7/10

Will I watch it again?  Maybe.

Burt Lancaster is a solid actor in my book.  I've never seen even an average performance from this guy.  In his early and mid years, he had this unusual, fast speech pattern but in a more straightforward manner than James Cagney.  Anyway, it's on show here when he's all riled-up with excitement and he's great.  The movie's kind of strange in the way it begins the picture in a courtroom and tells the story in flashback with courtroom interruptions. It's weird because when you've gotten the whole story, you'll probably wonder how it was even possible that O'Hearn (Lancaster) would've been on trial in the first place.  It's loosely explained but it's not exactly ruining the movie.  The fun stuff has O'Hearn flirting with broads and killing the bad guys.  It's amazing how many ships he destroyed in the big, explosive finale.  There are some good laughs, too.  It's definitely worth a watch.

Tank Force (1958)

Original title:  No Time To Die

Director:  Terence Young

Writers:  Richard Maibaum, Terence Young, Merle Miller, Ronald Kemp

Composer:  Kenneth V. Jones

Starring:  Victor Mature, Leo Genn, Anthony Newley, Bonar Colleano, Luciana Paluzzi, Sean Kelly, Kenneth Fortescue, Anne Aubrey, George Coulouris

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  When iron men in iron monsters fought for a continent!

Plot:  During WW2 in North Africa, an American sergeant serving with the British 8th Army is captured by the Germans but he hatches various plans of escape from the POW camp.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Here's another hot-headed American surrounded by an international cast and he saves the day.  It's been a stupid movie trope probably since just before WWII.  Usually the only way it doesn't call attention to itself is when the movie is good.  This one isn't good nor bad, it's just kind of there.  There's nothing all that interesting or exciting in the action,  drama or suspense.  Thatcher (Mature) and friends get caught after a tank battle in the desert with the Germans and are then thrown into a POW camp.  At that point the only thing I could think about is how much more terrible it must have been.  It's already bad enough to be in a POW camp, but to be in the hot desert to boot.  No thanks.  Thatcher's isn't going to stick around (he's got a good reason to get away from the Nazis, more than the usual reason of just not wanting to be around them to begin with) so he busts out on day 2 along with some fellow prisoners.  From this point on it's simply a matter of survival as they hide out in a cantina for a few hours before having to fight their way out, more desert trekking, being hunted down by the Nazi-bribed local Arab tribe, escaping their encampment, more desert trekking and finally one last tank battle before being saved at the last minute by a British tank brigade (or whatever you call it).  There are enough different scenes and obstacles for the cast that it's about the only thing that keeps this from being duller.  It's an OK movie at best. 

Victor Mature does a fine job but he feels out of place in the role.  Over the past twenty years I've seen a few of his movies from the 50s and 60s and every time he looks like his face is heavily caked on with makeup.  I don't know what the deal is with that but it was easily noticeable here, too.  Maybe it's more obvious in this one because of the heat.  In this one he's also a lot heavier than you'd think someone at war in the desert would be.  Just sayin'.

This flick has a lot of future Bond alumni like director Young, writer Maibaum, producer Broccoli, actor Robert Reitty,  and stuntman Bob Simmons.  And as a neat coincidence (or is it?), the latest Bond picture is called NO TIME TO DIE, the original British title of this film.

The Secret Invasion (1964)

Director:  Roger Corman

Writer:  R. Wright Campbell

Composer:  Hugo Friedhofer

Starring:  Stewart Granger, Raf Vallone, Mickey Rooney, Edd Byrnes, Henry Silva, Spela Rozin, William Campbell

More info: IMDb

Tagline:  A Mad Major! A Master Criminal! A Demolition Demon! A Forger! An Assassin! Yet All Became Heroes When They Launched...

Plot:  In 1943, a group of hardened criminals is pardoned on the condition it accepts a mission to free a captive Italian general from the clutches of the Nazis.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I digs me those 1960s WWII action pictures and I was so ready for this one...that is until I saw Roger Corman's name in the opening credits.  He's the opposite of big budget all-star action movies.  But still, I'm open to new things.  The story gets right to the point from the get-go by assembling the team and presenting the mission in the first five minutes!  And in the next 6 minutes, they're off to the beautiful shooting location of Yugoslavia!  Corman does a quick job of getting this picture moving.  The scenery is gorgeous.  That helps the movie more than anything.  The cast does a good job with mixed results.  Granger does his standard down-to-business/I'm-carrying-the-weight-of-the-world-on-his-shoulders performance. Raf Vallone is easily the MVP here.  He's fantastic.  Mickey Rooney can be fun when he isn't over-doing it.  It's so easy for him to over-act and he takes advantage of that.  Henry Silva doesn't talk much.  He was probably hired for his unusual mug and not his thespian skills.  And William Campbell looks like the Tony Curtis they could afford but he does a pretty good job.  Overall, they make a good team of actors.

Some of what dragged the picture down were things like the dialogue not flowing smoothing, unnecessarily padded, longer scenes, idiotic solutions for some of the problems they encounter and a general low budget vibe in spots.  The whole snapping of the fingers bit was set up and executed awkwardly.  First of all, they weren't keeping strict time and they were supposed to, which was the whole point of doing it in the first place.  It was used like what you'd see in a heist movie where several people each have a job to do that hinges on everyone doing their job at precisely the right moment or it falls apart.  They're busting out of a Nazi prison with a plan that relies on a few thought out beats but the rest has them winging it so a fixed schedule was impossible.  It's that kind of silliness that hurts the picture.  I also got the feeling like the film makers started with some scene ideas without a fully fleshed-out way of linking them.  Plus, the story feels rushed.  This picture definitely would've benefited from spending more time on the story.   Oh, and the dubbing has some pretty bad spots, too.

Fortunately for us, Corman couldn't resist an exploitation-y opportunity!

LT. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD...YARRRRRR!

There's a ballsy-as-fuck scene when Silva and Rozin are dangerously close to being discovered by German guards.  Her baby starts to cry and Silva covers its mouth to stop it.  Once the guards leave and they're safe, the baby isn't moving anymore.  THE FUCK?  They had the balls to kill a baby?  WOW!  NICE!!!  Hats off to Corman and writer Campbell!  I did not see that coming.

The often cheap feel is expected since that's what Corman was used to but he does a good job at times with elevating this to the level of what you'd expect from the film's big time siblings of the day.  The story is a bit reminiscent of the best of the "prisoners assembled for a secret WWII mission" sub genre with THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967).  Nothing comes close to that one as DOZEN is one of the all-time great films.  THE SECRET INVASION benefits by pre-dating DOZEN by three years.  If you're a fan of these types of pictures, you're going definitely going to want to see this but lower your expectations.  There are some nice things to be found here but overall, it's lacking.

The Black Parachute (1944)

Director: Lew Landers

Writers: Paul Gangelin, Clarence Upson Young

Composer: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

Starring: John Carradine, Osa Massen, Larry Parks, Jeanne Bates, Jonathan Hale, Ivan Triesault

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Meet a Two-Fisted Yank Who's No. 1 Man in a Band of Balkan Guerrillas!

Plot: An imprisoned King must be rescued from the Nazi general holding him captive.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I'm guessing due to the film's short running time of 64 minutes that this was made as a lower budget B picture to accompany a higher budget A picture.  I'm OK with that.  They don't often transcend their goal of giving the ticket buyer a little more time at the movies but as long as they're entertaining, I don't care.  This one isn't too bad.  The lousy quality print I watched was distracting especially in the night scenes, but I was still able to enjoy it a bit.  This flick doesn't have grand ambitions but what it does it does fairly well.  There's action sprinkled every once in a while and there's enough going on that the pacing moves fast enough to keep boredom from setting in.  The plot has more going on than you'd think given the film's modest budget and length.  And the last act has a few surprises for those who haven't abandoned it by then.  It's not too bad but it's not a picture that's going to be remembered.

Flat Top (1952)

Director: Lesley Selander

Writer: Steve Fisher

Composer: Marlin Skiles

Starring: Sterling Hayden, Richard Carlson, William Phipps, John Bromfield, Keith Larsen, William Schallert, Todd Karns, Phyllis Coates, Dave Willock, Walter Coy

More info: IDMb

Tagline: Bombshell story of the Navy's Hell-Divers ... scorching the Pacific skies!

Plot:  During the Korean War, aboard the U.S.S. Princeton, Navy Commander Dan Collier reminisces about his first assignment on the same aircraft carrier in the war against Japan.

My rating:  6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

If there's one character type Sterling Hayden excelled at it was the hard-nosed, no nonsense, gettin' shit done kind of guy and that's exactly who he is here.  He's the leader of these flyboys, he's got the 3rd most confirmed kills in the Navy and he expects nothing but the best from his boys even though they find him to be an uncaring S.O.B..  It's that kind of picture.  Fortunately for the audience they get lots of chances to take down the enemy at sea and on a coastal base and I do mean lots.  Usually movies like this give you a couple of action scenes in the air and that's it but not this one.  Once the fighting starts it keeps going every few minutes.  That's a huge plus in addition to seeing Sterling Hayden gnaw on some dialogue.  The color areal combat photography is great, too.  As you'd expect, all of the shots of the pilots flying (from inside and outside of the cockpits) is cheesily done but what are you going to do?  If anyone can point me to some examples of the era when it was done well, please let me know.   I don't know how else it could've been done back then but there must have been a way to cut down on the phony-ness of it.  It's poorly done in this film.  The uncredited list of actors on IMDb lists James Best and Alvy Moore in this but I didn't see them.

Hillbilly Blitzkrieg (1942)

Director: Roy Mack

Writers: Ray Harris, Carl Harbaugh, Glen Lambert

Composer: Paul Sawtell

Starring: Bud Duncan, Edgar Kennedy, Cliff Nazarro, Lucien Littlefield, Doris Linden, Alan Baldwin, Jimmie Dodd, Frank Austin, Nicolle Andre

More info: IMDb

Tagline: IT'S HOWL-OSSAL!...THRILL-ARIOUS! Enough to make a top sergeant laugh!

Plot: Nazi spies mistake Snuffy Smith's moonshine for a new secret rocket fuel and try to steal the "formula."

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I had no idea they made movies with the beloved comic strip characters Snuffy Smith & Barney Google.  Bud Duncan and Cliff Nazarro were nicely cast as the pair (especially Duncan).  It looks as though Duncan came out of retirement to do PRIVATE SNUFFY SMITH (1942) and this one before retiring from film acting for good.  When he stopped the first time in 1931 he'd made over 200 films, nearly all of them comedy shorts.  In this picture the 4'11" Duncan stars alongside one of the most consistently great character actors, Edgar Kennedy (who stands over six feet).   Kennedy had an impressive nearly 450 credits before he died at the young age of 58.  Here he plays a sergeant to Duncan's private but he's only Snuffy's part time foil.  Snuffy, Barney and Sgt. Gatling have Nazi spies to contend with.  It's harmless fun and for the most part I found it mildly amusing until the end of the picture when Snuffy finds himself airborne after hiding inside the experimental rocket the Nazis were after.  It's right out of DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) that was another 22 years away.

Kubrick just had to have seen this which makes me chuckle just thinking about what that must've been like.  Maybe he saw it as a kid (he would've been 14 at the time of this release).  It's only 62 minutes long so it's an easy investment in your time.  Who would've thought that the Nazis had such a hard on for getting their hands on moonshine-based rocket fuel.  I'm sure this was an effort by the War Department to make sure every American felt threatened by our new enemies and even Hillbillies had a steak in seeing that we pushed those goose-steppin' bastards all the way back to Berlin before they got their hands on our precious party liquor and barefoot women!

The Way to the Stars (1945)

AKA: Johnny in the Clouds

Director: Anthony Asquith

Writers: Terence Rattigan, Anatole de Grunwald, Richard Sherman

Composers: Nicholas Brodszky, Charles Williams

Starring: Michael Redgrave, John Mills, Rosamund John, Douglass Montgomery, Renee Asherson, Stanley Holloway, Basil Radford, Felix Aylmer, Bonar Colleano, Joyce Carey, Trevor Howard, Jean Simmons, Anthony Dawson

More info: IMDb

Tagline: THRILLS IN THE SKY!  And romance below...

Plot: Life on a British bomber base, and the surrounding towns, from the opening days of the Battle of Britain, to the arrival of the Americans, who join in the bomber offensive. The film centres around Pilot Officer Peter Penrose, fresh out of a training unit, who joins the squadron, and quickly discovers about life during war time. He falls for Iris, a young girl who lives at the local hotel, but he becomes disillusioned about marriage, when the squadron commander dies in a raid, and leaves his wife, the hotel manageress, with a young son to bring up. As the war progresses, Penross comes to terms that he has survived, while others have been killed.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

If you like your WWII pictures on the romance-y, dramatic side then maybe you'll dig this one more than I did.  It's OK I guess but I couldn't get into it.  The performances are good and the pacing moves along moderately.  It's never really boring but it never seemed to get interesting or exciting.  Keep looking if you were wanting any kind of war action.  There's nothing and that hurts a little as this is all about the RAF and bombing raids.  I can't remember even seeing the inside of a plane.  I can easily see forgetting everything about this film in less than a week because it was that bland, which is weird because it's a well-shot and made film. 

Hannibal Brooks (1969)

Director: Michael Winner

Writers: Michael Winner, Tom Wright, Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais

Composer: Francis Lai

Starring: Oliver Reed, Michael J. Pollard, Wolfgang Preiss, John Alderton, Helmuth Lohner, Peter Carsten, Karin Baal, Ralf Wolter, Jurgen Draeger, Maria Brockerhoff, Til Kiwe, Ernst Fritz Furbringer, Erik Jelde, James Donald

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Supersoldier in the Super Adventure

Plot: A prisoner of war working at a zoo gets the chance to escape from the Germans, so he does and he takes with him the elephant that he's been caring for. Together they head for the Swiss border and freedom.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I've been wanting to see this for more than thirty years since I saw it sitting on the shelf at the video store.  I also had the soundtrack LP for two decades in which the cover is total bullshit with only Pollard's face on the cover.  Well, now I've seen it.  It's a weird flick.  It feels like it wants to be a comedy but it's only mildly amusing at best.  There are no jokes, per se, just the occasional character laughing and smiling.  That hardly makes it a comedy.  You could make the case that it's a family film except for the abundance of killing and that the world is at war with the Germans and our 'hero' is behind enemy lines trying to get to safety.  Pollard is horribly miscast.  His goofy grin doesn't belong in this film.  His line deliveries and behavior is off enough to where you'd think he was high on weed the whole time.  I normally dig the guy but he had no place in this film in that role.  The Austrian location shooting is GORGEOUS and it's worth watching just for the mountains and the countryside.  Lai's music is lighthearted and family friendly but, like the 'humor' in the film, it's sometimes at odds with what's on the screen.  The story itself is pretty ridiculous.  How possible is it for someone to take an elephant behind enemy lines like this and have any hope of making it to Switzerland?  I'd say none at all.  I'll hate myself in the morning for saying this but that's the elephant in the room.  You'll have to suspend your disbelief a lot for this picture.  I'm surprised there were enough people of influence that thought this was a movie that should or needed to be made.

Colditz (1972) TV series

Composer: Robert Farnon

Starring: David McCallum, Richard Heffer, Paul Chapman, Jack Hedley, Bernard Hepton, Hans Meyer, Christopher Neame, Robert Wagner, Edward Hardwicke, Anthony Valentine

More info: IMDb

Plot: This grim and claustrophobic drama chronicles the lives of the prisoners in Colditz Castle from the arrival of the first British prisoners after Dunkirk until the liberation of the castle by the Americans in 1945. Colditz was a "special" camp, designed by the Nazis to hold high-risk and politically important prisoners. Many of the series' plots are based on real events.

My rating: 9/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes.

Outstanding!  The first three or so episodes deal mostly with a few future residents in their escapes that led to their being sent to Colditz castle.  Once these introductions are dispensed with the rest of the episodes are nearly all spent at the prison camp.  Those first few episodes run rather slow but once most of the time was spent at the castle and hanging around these guys full time I liked it more and more.  It gets better as it goes and the second half was much more engaging and it's in some of these episodes you will find the best of the entire run.  Some of them had me quite emotional toward the end.  I'm fresh off of binging the show (being sick allows you to do nothing all day and feel good about it) and I can't say enough about it.  It's a show that takes the subject seriously and doesn't spoon feed the sugar.  Actions have consequences and people have to deal with them.

One thing I learned was that the POW camps were under the jurisdiction of the Luftwaffe and not the SS or Gestapo.  I'm sure I knew this at one point but had simply forgotten about it.  The Kommandant for most of the series (played by Hepton) is an honorable man.  Most of the Germans in the show are portrayed this way.  They're good men doing their duty, abiding by the law and the rules of the Geneva Convention.  The prisoners are treated fairly and with dignity.  I like the respect both sides had for each other.  It's when Major Mohn (Valentine) shows up as second in command when we have a villain to boo and hiss at.  He's a Nazi that couldn't care less about the Geneva Convention and does his best to make it difficult for the prisoners.  There is some fantastic storytelling in this show and anyone interested in this sort of thing needs to fast track this to the top of the list.  It's on YouTube in full.