The Misfit Brigade

The Misfit Brigade

The Misfit Brigade

The Misfit Brigade

I feel very close to what Laybarsinister said . As a long range reader of Sven Hassle books , I have been amazed by how close from the images we built at reading the Hassle war squad story , the actors have been selected. Especially Tiny , Old man and Alfred Kalb-the légionnaire -, they are so close in their physical and in their behavior,that there is almost no gap at all between the film and the book, which is a very rare performance ! Cheers for the choice of actors and for the actors themselves!.Forinstance Porta does not look so close, physically, but his actor job is so excellent, that we may think all of them are avid readers and fans of Hassle's books. This little film is unpretentious yet surprisingly a kind of artistic success in restoring the spirit of a story as the author has told it in his writing.Once more,a very rare success,as film makers don't usually bother too much sticking to the writer actual storyboard. Only one regret : with this team of actors and the Hassle saga ,so full of events and historical facts ,it could have given 2 or 3 more films without any danger of boring the public .

The cast makes all the difference in this reasonably amusing adaptation of a WWII novel by Sven Hassle (who's played in the film by Slavko Stimac). It's basically a variation on the Dirty Dozen formula, in which a group of misfits - including those who had been in prison - are recruited by the Nazis to be a fighting force. Our "misfit brigade" are sent on a delicate mission to get beyond the Russian border and destroy a train. They are told that if they succeed at this task, they can enjoy an early "retirement". Adequately directed by cult filmmaker Gordon Hessler ("The Golden Voyage of Sinbad"), the movie has a fairly colourful band of characters. These men are very much anti-authority and also pretty much anti-Nazi, resulting in an interesting hook. On location filming in Yugoslavia is one nice touch; period recreation is also good. Hessler manages to create some tension and the action is decently executed. This group of familiar faces does look to be having a good time. Bruce Davison ("Willard"), David Patrick Kelly ("Dreamscape"), D.W. Moffett ("Traffic"), Jay O. Sanders ("The Day After Tomorrow"), and Keith Szarabajka ("The Dark Knight") are among our heroes. If you're watching this as a fan of Oliver Reed, be warned that he only shows up at the end, with just a handful of lines. David Carradine is most amusing in his turn as a sneering Nazi officer. One does have to suspend their disbelief quite a bit with these very Americanized performances, and with no real attempt made to make people look Germanic. Personally speaking, this viewer did not have a problem with the light hearted approach of this adaptation. The healthy dose of humour does keep it watchable. It's nothing great, but it offers some fun. Seven out of 10.

When I saw that this movie was released in 1987, I was worried that it might be another 80s low-budget "wanna-be-big-war-movie" the likes of The Big Red One or Casablanca Express. Sad to say that my assumptions were correct. When I watch other movies on DVD that contain deleted scenes, I sometimes wonder why a director deleted certain scenes. If the scenes were deleted from this one that should have been, there would not have been much left. There isn't much more to say about this flick, except that I was never sure if it was supposed to be a comedy or a serious movie.

If you fell in love with the books of Sven Hassle, you might think this is a movie not to miss. Sorry, have to bring your hopes down. The movie doesn't catch anything from the books! The characters are nothing like in the books. Can it be so that they couldn't find any actors to resemble the characters in the books or was the directing so terrible? I don't know but I was SO disappointed after seeing this movie that I was sorry I bought it. As far as I'm concerned, this movie shouldn't have been done, at least not in the 80's! They probably had a very small budget which may be the reason for the terrible style of the movie and the story, that doesn't remind me of the exciting and cruel stories in the books of Sven Hassle. Skip the movie and stick to the books!

Yes, for the intended group of viewers, this apparently hits the mark, according to the reviewer of a respectable paper here. I didn't have to look for that; they put it on the cover. Another piece of evidence for how desperate they were to find *something* positive and inciting to put on there is the fact that they make mention of Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide giving it no less than two stars... you know, out of four. Is that supposed to be high praise? What, are they just proud that he noticed its existence at all? I get the impression that the following facts are not widely known in the rest of the world, and want to set the record straight. Sven Hassle is a fraud. He almost definitely never experienced battle, he talked to a bunch of people who had. It is probable that his wife authored the books(I haven't read a word of them, but what I hear is that they're pure war *), he dictated them to her. A Nazi, he worked for the Germans during the war, and then turned in his buddies in hopes of reducing his sentence once they lost. Whether or not it worked, he still got(though did not serve all) 10 years; in comparison, those who had worked as soldiers for the Germans got between two and four years, or only one. The allegations are confidential, so we don't know what he did; however, it can't have been all that small. This does match the tone of the novels, as far as I understand. The wise-guy attitude, as well. This comes dangerously close to throwing out all credibility and tension right at the beginning, and then proceeds to do so not much later, and then, in case anyone was still caring about anything that happens in this, it goes even further. Are we meant to accept whatever this deems fit to toss at us? What, because WW2 happened? This does not treats it with enough respect for that to be sufficient on its own. There is next to no sense of danger, the characters get off too easily. This has entirely too many goofy and silly instances, and it gets to be embarrassing. It makes the rest of the film tough to take seriously; I mean, it's farcical at times. We're talking cringe-inducing. Gone is the majority of the impact of the couple of powerful, emotional moments(also on account of them being immediately preceded or concluded by "comic relief" that isn't funny), what there is of authenticity, realism and richness in detail. You get an idea of how minuscule the charges had to be to get imprisoned... well, they seem fine. They get bad food in small portions! Don't worry, no one has a single line where they complain about it. Penal corps! Safe. Collective punishment! A punch-line. All that has any effect is the kid and the catch-22 of sorts/test. The tank action is reasonable. This has good pacing here and there. And it is impressive that the Hollywood aspect is not what ruins this(which is not to say it helps). The cast have a lot of acting chops, it's unfortunate they don't get to show it in this. There is a lot of disturbing content, a bit of violence, some strong language and a little nudity and sexuality in this. I recommend this to fans of the written originals, I guess. 5/10

I'm not sure where this film was trying to go, but definitely a dud in several respects. Boring and uneventful is an understatement.

An ill-advised adaptation of one of Sven Hassle's WW2 Eastern Front novels, WHEELS OF TERROR is a film that it's quite difficult to enjoy. Hassle's books were always grimly realistic and downbeat, and despite attempts to emulate that style, WHEELS OF TERROR feels cheesy and quite sentimental by comparison. What's obvious here is that the budget was quite low, meaning that the various action scenes are only averagely handled, and at times look more like they belong in a '60s Italian war film than a 1980s movie. I do like the work of director Gordon Hessler (THE OBLONG BOX, SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN, etc.) but this is one of his lesser efforts. The cast is a mixed bag of familiar faces. Some stand out, others are bland. Bruce Davison headlines things but was quite wooden, I thought, although the ever-snide David Patrick Kelly (COMMANDO) is better as the volatile one. The all-American David Carradine is an odd choice to play the German officer, but it works quite well, and it's hard not to enjoy Oliver Reed's cameo as the pompous general. Overall, though, I found WHEELS OF TERROR to be quite a shoddy film, and not really something I can recommend, which is a surprise given that screenwriter Nelson Gidding previously wrote the scripts for classics like THE HAUNTING and THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN.