By Richard Winters
My Rating: 5 out of 10
4-Word Review: Tracking down nazi gold.
Harry (Telly Savalas) is head deep in bills when he comes across a letter from Ernst (James Mason) an old friend inviting him to meet him the next day at a hotel. Since Harry has nothing to lose he shows up at the agree upon location and learns that Ernst has plans to retrieve some gold that had been misplaced during the war. The problem is that the only one that knows the exact location of where it’s hidden is Holtz (Wolfgang Lukschy) who is locked up in a high security prison. Harry must then hire a team of men that can not only find a way to infiltrate the prison, but also trick Holtz into giving away the secret and then dig up the loot despite it being behind enemy lines.
The film, which was surprisingly written directly for the screen and not based on any book even though I think it would’ve made a great novel that could’ve been actually better than the movie, approaches the material in all the wrong ways. I’ll admit it’s a great concept, but director Peter Duffell unwisely decided to enter comedy into the proceedings, which wasn’t necessary. He also implements a goofy sounding music track that would’ve been better suited for a TV-sitcom. The facility that houses Holtz was shot at Plotzensee Prison in Berlin, which looks like an old rundown building that is barely able to stand on its own and like it’s ready to crumble at any minute. To really make it exciting and daring the place should’ve been modern and state-of-the-art and thus making it more of a challenge to break into.
Spoiler Alert!
Everything comes off too easily and thus hurts any potential tension. The kidnapping of Holtz is especially problematic. The group is able to infiltrate the prison by dressing up in guard costumes, but those costumes wouldn’t be an exact replica of the real guard’s uniform and thus should be easily spotted by a prison employee, and yet that doesn’t happen.
They blackmail Holtz’s doctor Maar (Adrian Hoven) to agree to take Hotlz’s place in the prison cell and pretend to be him while disguising Holtz as the doctor in order to sneak him out, but it’s unlikely anyone would agree to stay in a prison for even a day and trust that this group, whom he really didn’t know, would come back and get him out and not just leave him there. Maar, is also much shorter than Holtz, so the real guards would notice the difference in height and realize he was an imposter, but for whatever reason they don’t.
The drug that they inject Holtz with, which is never named, is unusual in that it puts him to sleep, but still allows him to walk. Most of the time drugs that could knock a person out would make their limbs go limp and force the group to have to drag him away as he slept versus here where they are somehow able to get him to sleepwalk.
The sequence where one of them disguises themselves as Hitler, played by Gunter Meisner, in an effort to trick Holtz to divulge the location of the gold since he had sworn only to give it out to the Fuhrer himself is highly improbable as well since the man really doesn’t look all that much like Hitler and you’d think Holtz, even in the drugged state that he is in, would notice the difference and not share the secret, or give out incorrect information.
I’ll give the script some credit as it does come up with a few unexpected wrinkles, but all these do is stymie the group’s efforts slightly and don’t really put a monkey wrench into the whole thing. For instance, they learn that an apartment building has been constructed on the site where the gold is buried, which most likely would’ve ruined their chances of getting at it, but here they’re able to sneak into the building’s basement via an unlocked door (don’t facilities lock their doors in East Germany?) and then create a ruse to get the tenants out of the building so they can plant a bomb that will cause an explosion to crack the cement floor. There’s even a little boy who sneaks in to witness their efforts and risks getting injured but like with everything else it gets quickly resolved when Telly spots him at the last second and whisks him away to safety and then eventually back to his mother’s arms. However, what’s to say he won’t tell his mommy what he saw? Apparently here he doesn’t, but in reality, he probably would’ve and thus another potential loophole that the film glosses over.
I enjoy Telly more when he’s playing bad guys, but he’s still fun as the protagonist and something that helps keep the movie watchable. Overall though the direction should’ve been tighter and the complex mission gets pulled off too seamlessly and thus seeing them walk away with the fortune isn’t all that satisfying as the complication would’ve been too immense for it to have ever succeeded in real life.
My Rating: 5 out of 10
Released: November 27, 1975
Runtime: 1 Hour 37 Minutes
Rated PG
Director: Peter Duffell
Studio: Warner Brothers
Available: DVD-R (Warner Archive)
Scopophilia 