Happy Memorial Day all!
Let's pay tribute to the troops with today's trio...
Ski Troop Attack (Filmgroup, 1960)
Roger Corman went out to snowy South Dakota to film this low budget WWII flick. Set in Germany, the story has a small patrol of American soldiers discovering they have a chance to take out a bridge vital to the Axis efforts, and the film details their efforts to make it happen despite roving bands of Nazi ski soldiers. The great thing about this one: Roger enlisted a local high school ski team to populate his ski shots in American and German uniforms. The movie's not great, as the low budget allows more cranky American arguing than battle or action scenes, but all of Corman's flicks from this era are at least worth a look.
Midway (Universal Studios, 1976)
Once again, Sensurround takes top billing. This is a kind of a weird movie anyway, even if it wasn't enhanced with super sub woofer audio effects. For some reason, Universal decided in 1976 to make a war movie and cut costs by using stock footage from several other war movies, including some shots that were over thirty years old even then! So, half the time in this movie you're actually watching war shots from Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Away All Boats (1956), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), and even newsreel footage from 1942, all of it cropped and mashed to fit a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Not sure why they thought no one would notice - but it's glaringly obvious, and despite the all star cast, makes this expensive motion picture seem like an average TV movie of the time.
Zone Troopers (Empire International, 1986)
Cool poster - note the "borrowed" Twilight Zone font for the title. Charles Band's Empire International produced this neat little World War II flick, giving it their usual high concept twist: a squadron of American soldiers lost "somewhere in Italy" has to fend off both Axis soldiers and aliens whose saucer has landed nearby. A great B movie cast headed by Tim Thomerson and including one of those pesky Van Pattens (in this case, Timothy), Art La Fleur, and Biff Manard make this one an entertaining watch. Sadly unreleased on DVD in an authorized edition, this one has to be tracked down on VHS or bought on a gray market DVD-R to see these days. I wish MGM would put a remastered print on MGM/HD.
LGOOH thanks all of our servicemen past, present, and future for their service, fighting for our freedom and our privilege to enjoy goofy movies!
Til next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!
You gotta love Roger Corman. I have not had the privilege of seeing this flick, but now I must. Ski Troopers and Nazis. Nazis are a low budget film side dish, like they make everything just a little tastier or something.
ReplyDeleteAnd I so love Tim Thomerson. He is one of the B Kings for sure.