From one week to the next, I have learned to count on late-night Italian TV to come up with forgotten but worthwhile native movies from the past: this imitation of Jack Cardiff's Congo-based actioner DARK OF THE SUN (1968; one of Martin Scorsese's guilty pleasures) is yet another such example. The director here is a debutante and, after a cursory glance, not much else in his filmography elicits much interest – except for EVIL EYE (1974; with Richard Conte) which has recently been deigned with a R1 DVD release – even though, come to think of it, I have missed out on SCORTICATELI VIVI aka SKIN 'EM ALIVE (1978) a couple of times already and OVERRUN! (1970) seems to be an unofficial follow-up to the film under review itself! Still, a more interesting name in the credits would be co-writer Piero Regnoli, an indefatigable craftsman whose self-directed ghostly crime opus TI ASPETTERO ALL' INFERNO (1960) I had seen for last year's Halloween marathon. Anyway, the only two cast members which stand out (more from their familiarity than for any particular acting merit) are star Ivan Rassimov and former mythological muscleman Kirk Morris (in his penultimate film); for the record, I have also just scored the latter's TERROR OF THE STEPPES (1964) in another nightly excursion in Italian TV land. Rassimov is a misanthropic French guide reluctantly hired by the titular misfit band of soldiers to lead them through the desert in search of some vaguely important documents. Needless to say, the band is divided by race (two of the group are negroes and one of them is a trigger-happy German!), sex (the medical officer, surprisingly enough, turns out to be a woman and so is an imprisoned reporter they meet up with along the way) and loyalty (the leader of the pack is a former member of a previously decimated group seeking to retrieve the incriminating documents). Most of them are going to be dead before the film's end, of course, but no one suffers more than the lady doctor: having her shirt torn open by her 'companions' on the truck (thus revealing all her womanhood to the gasping group); being raped(!) by the clearly troubled Rassimov in the midst of combat; almost drowning while crossing an infested, swamp-like stream; and being shot dead in a train compartment (after having just cuddled up romantically with Rassimov!) at the end. The various action sequences are above par for the course and the obligatory rousing (and electric guitar-led) score is not to be amiss under the circumstances: all in all, a pleasantly enjoyable 90 minutes is to be had by undiscriminating viewers.
5 Reviews
Bongo Fury
Bezenby9 November 2018
I've watched Skin Em Alive first and the amount of footage that turns up in that film from this one is unbelievable. It seems that director Siciliano did just film Guiseppe Castellano rolling about in his back garden, then inserted that into the African footage from this film. Somehow he ended up with a much tamer film, because Congo Hell has a much more nastier tone to it that Skin Em Alive.
In the Congo, some cowardly Captain has just gone and had all his men captured, tortured and killed, with the exception of a French woman. The Captain has made it back to base, but has lost important documentation that he must regain (he actually used it as a bribe to escape his captors). Now he must return with another squad of mercenaries.
When I think about it, this is just the usual 'Dirty half-dozen' Italian war movie plot, only set in Africa. The mercenaries vary from the racist German guy who loves to blow up wounded enemies with grenades to the guilty Captain to the female doctor ("Wait - you're a....woman?). Combine the 'behind enemy lines' story with a strangely proto-Cannibal movie setting and that pretty much sums it up.
You've got the jungle setting full of swamps, booby traps, deadly animals and unfriendly natives. There's the racist white folk coming to a stick end, a bit of (sigh) animal cruelty, and Mister Cannibal movie himself, Ivan Rassimov! Ivan also starred in Deep River Savages, Last Cannibal World and Eaten Alive, so he was well familiar with rolling about in a jungle, screaming.
I'm a sucker for films where people travel through hostile landscapes fighting with each other so I kind of enjoyed this one. If you're tempted to watch Skin Em Alive, watch this instead. It's also full of racist characters, but at least there's a couple of African mercenaries in here too to balance things out a bit.
In the Congo, some cowardly Captain has just gone and had all his men captured, tortured and killed, with the exception of a French woman. The Captain has made it back to base, but has lost important documentation that he must regain (he actually used it as a bribe to escape his captors). Now he must return with another squad of mercenaries.
When I think about it, this is just the usual 'Dirty half-dozen' Italian war movie plot, only set in Africa. The mercenaries vary from the racist German guy who loves to blow up wounded enemies with grenades to the guilty Captain to the female doctor ("Wait - you're a....woman?). Combine the 'behind enemy lines' story with a strangely proto-Cannibal movie setting and that pretty much sums it up.
You've got the jungle setting full of swamps, booby traps, deadly animals and unfriendly natives. There's the racist white folk coming to a stick end, a bit of (sigh) animal cruelty, and Mister Cannibal movie himself, Ivan Rassimov! Ivan also starred in Deep River Savages, Last Cannibal World and Eaten Alive, so he was well familiar with rolling about in a jungle, screaming.
I'm a sucker for films where people travel through hostile landscapes fighting with each other so I kind of enjoyed this one. If you're tempted to watch Skin Em Alive, watch this instead. It's also full of racist characters, but at least there's a couple of African mercenaries in here too to balance things out a bit.
Epic Italian war rip-off with an African setting
Leofwine_draca24 October 2016
Warning: Spoilers
Imagine my surprise - and delight - on picking up an original of this rarest Italian war film - made at the peak of the genre's popularity following such US successes as THE DIRTY DOZEN and, most obviously, THE GREEN BERETS - at a small, sunny, coastal resort here in the UK. Imagine my horror after returning the film home to discover that the BBFC, in their infinite wisdom, found it necessary to hack almost THREE MINUTES out of this movie's running length. Now add that on to the fact the movie has been classified eighteen as it is, and you have to wonder just what they saw necessary to cut out! A movie made in the '60s is rarely that gory in my opinion - unless the director is one H. G. Lewis - so the unnecessary butchery of this film is just another in a long line of bizarre and confounding actions taken by our beloved national censors. At least the print is nicely letterboxed so I can forgive Stablecane Video a little.
Cuts aside, this Italian war film benefits from some location shooting in Egypt which nicely adds to the authenticity of the African locales. The sweaty, humid atmosphere rubs off and had me shifting in my seat - check out the excellent vista of a diseased river with a million flies buzzing over it hungrily. It also means that some budget must have existed for a change which is nice. Added to this the star performance of one Kirk Morris (better known as muscleman Maciste after tons of appearances in sword and sandal films like MACISTE IN HELL) and you have one unmissable movie in my opinion. Morris plays a macho blond-haired Irishman who joins a rag-tag group of weirdos who trek into the Congo and fight off hundreds of black militants single-handedly.
Along the way the predictable adventures and escapades occur (attacks from snakes, jungle traps and ambushes, villages being burnt to the ground, illness and malaria taking hold), but THE RED BERETS is a bit different in that the story is downbeat and dirty - instead of uplifting and carefree - focusing on character breakdowns and mental instability. Various members of the group become deranged, haunted by past atrocities, and sexism and racism causes a stir right from the beginning. Eventually such undercurrents come to the fore and rape and murder take place as the group destroy themselves from the inside, kind of like SOUTHERN COMFORT. Finally they find themselves on a train headed towards freedom but an army of uprisers are heading towards them. The excellent finale involves a full-scale war between the few surviving members of the group on the stranded train and an army of militants, with the odds just about equalling those in ZULU; it makes for very tense and impressive viewing.
The film is bolstered by both an effective score - which recalls spaghetti western music, particularly Morricone's - and a fine cast who succeed well with their roles. Particularly good is Ivan Rassimov playing a tormented French guide with an air of mystery hanging over him. However, the rest of the cast are also pretty good, especially the female doctor and the German soldier who loses it in the hot dusty canyons and goes berserk. Mario Siciliano delivers some impressively epic-feeling action sequences and the editing and photography are also above average. War fans, check this one out.
Cuts aside, this Italian war film benefits from some location shooting in Egypt which nicely adds to the authenticity of the African locales. The sweaty, humid atmosphere rubs off and had me shifting in my seat - check out the excellent vista of a diseased river with a million flies buzzing over it hungrily. It also means that some budget must have existed for a change which is nice. Added to this the star performance of one Kirk Morris (better known as muscleman Maciste after tons of appearances in sword and sandal films like MACISTE IN HELL) and you have one unmissable movie in my opinion. Morris plays a macho blond-haired Irishman who joins a rag-tag group of weirdos who trek into the Congo and fight off hundreds of black militants single-handedly.
Along the way the predictable adventures and escapades occur (attacks from snakes, jungle traps and ambushes, villages being burnt to the ground, illness and malaria taking hold), but THE RED BERETS is a bit different in that the story is downbeat and dirty - instead of uplifting and carefree - focusing on character breakdowns and mental instability. Various members of the group become deranged, haunted by past atrocities, and sexism and racism causes a stir right from the beginning. Eventually such undercurrents come to the fore and rape and murder take place as the group destroy themselves from the inside, kind of like SOUTHERN COMFORT. Finally they find themselves on a train headed towards freedom but an army of uprisers are heading towards them. The excellent finale involves a full-scale war between the few surviving members of the group on the stranded train and an army of militants, with the odds just about equalling those in ZULU; it makes for very tense and impressive viewing.
The film is bolstered by both an effective score - which recalls spaghetti western music, particularly Morricone's - and a fine cast who succeed well with their roles. Particularly good is Ivan Rassimov playing a tormented French guide with an air of mystery hanging over him. However, the rest of the cast are also pretty good, especially the female doctor and the German soldier who loses it in the hot dusty canyons and goes berserk. Mario Siciliano delivers some impressively epic-feeling action sequences and the editing and photography are also above average. War fans, check this one out.
Nice scenery! Crap movie!
coogansbluff9 April 2005
After sitting through the 100 minutes of this film the only enduring feature about it is the occasional shot of the beautiful African country side. There just simply wasn't anything else good about it.
The movie centers around a group of hard as nails mercenaries whose assignment is to penetrate deep into the jungles of the Congo to retrieve Government documents captured by a rebel army. The mercenaries, or red berets as they are called, are made up of a motley bunch of hombres, there's the tough Irish man, the angry and un-social French man, the useless Captain who's trying to save his tattered reputation and a murderous German who is a pro-Nazi, and yes he hates every man, woman and child that happened to be born black.
When watching this movie the cheap production values become apparent, (but hay I wasn't expecting a Hollywood blockbuster!) I believe the producers blew the majority of the budget on the enormous logistical nightmare of moving the crew, actors and equipment all over the African jungles and deserts. Other bad points are the pacing, which is quite slow and dull, I found I was actually looking forward to going to the can to get away for a few minutes! The acting is nothing to write home about either, nor are the few battle sequences which aren't exciting or realistic. I also found that the plot didn't always make sense, it appears the video version I watched was chopped and cut from the original. In the end I didn't care as I didn't really give a toss about the characters or the movie in general.
In short the only redeeming feature to this film is the interesting location work (which the producers claim to be the first people to shoot a movie there), but this alone couldn't save this turkey. I only recommend this film to the die hard war movie buffs, but even then don't expect too much.
The movie centers around a group of hard as nails mercenaries whose assignment is to penetrate deep into the jungles of the Congo to retrieve Government documents captured by a rebel army. The mercenaries, or red berets as they are called, are made up of a motley bunch of hombres, there's the tough Irish man, the angry and un-social French man, the useless Captain who's trying to save his tattered reputation and a murderous German who is a pro-Nazi, and yes he hates every man, woman and child that happened to be born black.
When watching this movie the cheap production values become apparent, (but hay I wasn't expecting a Hollywood blockbuster!) I believe the producers blew the majority of the budget on the enormous logistical nightmare of moving the crew, actors and equipment all over the African jungles and deserts. Other bad points are the pacing, which is quite slow and dull, I found I was actually looking forward to going to the can to get away for a few minutes! The acting is nothing to write home about either, nor are the few battle sequences which aren't exciting or realistic. I also found that the plot didn't always make sense, it appears the video version I watched was chopped and cut from the original. In the end I didn't care as I didn't really give a toss about the characters or the movie in general.
In short the only redeeming feature to this film is the interesting location work (which the producers claim to be the first people to shoot a movie there), but this alone couldn't save this turkey. I only recommend this film to the die hard war movie buffs, but even then don't expect too much.
Not that bad.
searchanddestroy-125 September 2020
First, don't even dare compare this film with Jack Cardiff's masterpiece THE MERCENARIES, also setting in Congo during the Simba revolt. Do not dare. But this little Italian film is worth seeing, though being lousy, worth seeing because there is no real lead hero character, and that's not so usual, you can't focus on one character in particular. And the lost patrol scheme is always interesting to watch. Some details are taken care off, for instance the Simba village attack, during which the mercenaries don't forget to change the ammo magasines. You don't see this in every action film, even the best ones. So, that's a pretty good point to me. Well, I expected far far worse before watching this movie, speaking of racism; but this was the period: late sixties. No boredom at all, and you find here the pure Italian films trade mark, I speak of machismo manners, for instance slapping women for anything, in the most natural way. You have this in nearly, if not every, Italian crime film or western from the sixties and seventies. The village attack by a platoon before getting back thru the jungle has already been made a thousand of times before, the most famous one being PREDATOR. But there were plenty of others, Vietnam topics, mainly Philippine productions. And I also did not expect such character study, for this kind of production I mean. Do not be too hard with this film, OK?
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