User Reviews

Directed by Peter Duffell, this tidy little thriller stars Telly Savalas & James Mason as former WWII adversaries heisting millions in lost Nazi gold bars. They have to somehow get the location of the loot from a war criminal held at an impenetrable prison. They rope in Robert Culp to help mastermind the plan. Also in the mix is Doris Kunstmann (who previously played Eva Braun to Alec Guinness's Hitler), Aldo Ray as a gruff army officer and Günter Meisner, who usually plays a Nazi but here is just a former German soldier. Adrian Hoven, who worked with everyone from Udo Kier to RW Fassbinder, plays an unlucky doctor blackmailed into helping out. It's a fun, very disposable heist film with clever direction by Duffell, who had previously directed the Amicus classic THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD. The unbelievably inappropriate music score, combining what sounds like a saxophone and a synthesizer, is by Konrad Elfers

Recently, I watched a video online that talks about what seems to be a real life counterpart to the world war 2 movie Kelly's Heroes. The plot of that movie involves some US military personnel during the war coming across a huge amount of gold owned by the nazis, and the video I saw presents a similar story. According to it, up to half a billion dollars worth of gold was taken by these GIs (whoever they were) and the stash was never found, although some people claim it still exists under the mountains of switzerland. This movie is interesting because its plot is almost the same as the premise of both that video and Kelly's Heroes. Inside Out also coincidentally stars Telly Savalas, who was also in the aforementioned movie. This movie's story is pretty complicated and has many minor details to keep track of, so I probably won't list them all. The basic premise is that a group of men in post war germany, 30 years after ww2, must try and break a former nazi out of prison in order to find out where a german gold stash worth millions of dollars is located. The story starts with Harry (Telly Savalas) meeting with Ernst Furben (James Mason), a former nazi who witnessed a truck driver named Hans Schmidt have one of his deliveries get intercepted by some SS officers back during the war. His original orders were to deliver whatever the truck was carrying to the nazi central bank, but after Hans discovered the cargo was gold, he was sent to fight the USSR in the east, eventually getting captured, and he wasn't released until the 50s. As it turns out, the order to transport the gold was later countermanded, which could only be done by someone as powerful as Hitler himself. Schmidt says someone named Reinhardt Holtz was the man who gave the countermand, and now Ernst wants Harry to help him with breaking Holtz out of prison. Some time later, Harry is in the netherlands to meet up with Sly Wells (Robert Culp), who agrees to participate in the heist. A girl named Erika is also brought in to add further authenticity to a confidence game the gang will pull on Holtz once they break him out. After Harry, Sly, and a master sergeant gain access to the prison and make off with Holtz (and put a double in his cell), they bring him (along with Erika) to a derelict courthouse decorated to resemble a nazi office building. A sedated Holtz enters a swastika flag-adorned room and sees Schmidt (dressed as Hitler) and Sly (dressed as a member of the SS). "Hitler" tells Holtz he betrayed germany by stealing the gold and that it must be found at all costs. Because Holtz is apparently too stupid to realize Schmidt isn't really Hitler, he tells him where the gold stash is, which is in a bunker next to a house in what is now east germany. Harry and the others cross the border into the USSR puppet state and find out the location of the gold has been built over by another building. A guy named Schlager is called upon to help the group get to the gold, but he betrays them by alerting the russians and calling in Colonel Kosnikov. Kosnikov enters the house and kills Schlager, but doesn't notice Sly take the Walther PPK handgun off his corpse. Kosnikov gives the remaining men bomb disposal equipment so they can break into the concrete area in the bunker where the gold is, and eventually it is found. After retrieving the treasure, Kosnikov holds everyone at gunpoint and demands all of it to be given to soviet glory. Sly shoots him with Schlager's gun when he's not looking. After returning to west germany, the group convert the gold to US dollars, and Holtz, now back in his cell, says he thinks he saw Hitler. This is one of the weirdest movies I've seen recently. The plot is kind of ridiculous and I never thought I would see Robert Culp in a nazi uniform, but you'll find the film is pretty loyal to actual ww2 history in most respects. For one thing, they mention how the prison Holtz is being held in has only one prisoner, that being him. The idea of a big prison only having one inmate seems laughable, but this was exactly the case with Rudolf Hess, a leading nazi who was imprisoned post war until his eventual suicide in the late 80s. Not only this, but they also show how the prison was guarded by men from the USSR, USA, britain, and france, just like the one Hess was kept in. The movie also demonstrates more historical knowledge during the scene where Holtz has to tell "the fuhrer" where the missing gold is, and he says he hid it to protect it from Hermann Goring, head of the luftwaffe. Again, it's a known fact that Goring was probably the most flamboyant of the nazi high command, as he liked to collect art, nice uniforms, and even model trains. As someone who studies world war 2, it was nice to see them be aware of his opulence. As for the movie itself, the plot is pretty easy to understand, but confusing at certain parts. There's lots of tiny details and trying to keep track of them all can get tiring, but with such great acting and funny moments, it's difficult to understand why this film is so unknown. It's a rare example of a ww2 movie that is actually mostly comedic.