film rating:
disc rating:
company: Fida Cinematografica
year: 1969
runtime: 112′
director: Enzo G. Castellari
cast: Frederick Stafford, Van Johnson,
Francisco Rabal, Ida Galli, Luigi Pistilli
disc company: Severin Films
retail price: $34.95
release date: October 13, 2009
disc details: Region A / Single Layer BD25
video: 1080p HD
audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
subtitles: none
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reviewed from a screener provided
by Severin Films LLC
In 1940 the Nazi army attempts an insidious plot (can a Nazi plot ever be anything other than insidious?). A command of German soldiers, dressed as Englishmen with papers stolen from the recently dead, are to infiltrate England and sabotage a cutting-edge radar system that has been put into operation there. It’s up to the suspicious Captain Stevens (Frederick Stafford, Werewolf Woman) and his unwilling ally Air Marshall Thompson (the very American Van Johnson, Brigadoon), with whose mistress Stevens is having an affair, to foil the plot before it’s too late, and the full force of the Luftwaffe is amassed against them.
From the moment the leader of the German saboteurs (Luigi Pistilli, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly) angrily demands that his comrades speak English, not German, audiences know just what sort of war film they’re in for. Pistilli’s order even makes it to the Nazi high command, where the generals inexplicably speak English as well! The Longest Day this certainly isn’t, but Enzo G. Castellari’s (The Inglorious Bastards) war-epic-cum-pulp-espionage-thriller is no less fun for its brainlessness.
