Hell in Normandy (1968)

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

A different way of telling a story

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Spaghetti/War film about a misfit outfit led by Guy Madison who carry out a suicide mission behind enemy lines , in Omaha Beach . The movie is set during World War II in the days just prior to the D-Day invasion. A special parachute unit is sent to destroy a German flame thrower installation on Omaha Beach . A group of two-fisted soldiers formed by various experts are drafted to go on a near-suicide mission and attempt to destroy an installation from a Nazi fortress . ¨Hell in Normandy ¨ is an entertaining film with Guy Madison as a stiff officer along with Peter Lee Lawrence posing as a Nazi lieutenant . Guy Madison leading a group of motley and eclectic soldiers for a dangerous assault on a beach . In the hands of hardboiled director Alfonso Brescia , alias Al Bradley , and a tough-as-leather cast , that's all the plot that's needed to make one rip-roaring wartime flick . Madison's mission is two-fold and in violent and cynical style : first turn his G.I.s into a valiant fighting unit being parachuted , then turn them loose on a French location in Normandy where they run into partisans (Erica Blanc) and there Lt. Strobel (Peter Lee Lawrence), a German spy, helps them penetrate a flamethrower installations which threatens the landings on Omaha Beach . The first half of the film allows the colorful cast of character actors to have their fun as they get their tails whipped into shape and develop shaky relationship with their leader . The final part is all action , as the brave commando wreak havoc and then run for their lives . The dangerous mission includes a selected group formed by a motley and varied squadron played by usual of Italian B-series . This is a rugged WWII actioner concerning about an experienced officer , he's assigned by Military staff to train a group of valiant G.I.s who get a chance to redeem themselves and later on , they pull off a extremely risked assignment called ¨Operation Gambit¨ . At the end they must participate in the suicidal mission behind the enemy lines , to wipe the German group by means of a violent assault over a strongly protected position .Guy Madison as Capt. Jack Murphy assumes the character of commando leader along with Peter Lee Lawrence as Lt. Strobel in this ordinary wartime movie regularly directed by Al Bradley . This moving film packs frantic thrills , perilous adventures , relentless feats , and buck-loads of explosive action and violence . The noisy action is uniformly well-made , especially deserving of mention the rip-roaring final scenes on the beach fortress , including some spectacular shootouts , firing and bombing . Apart from the values of team spirit , cudgeled by Madison into his varied group , the film is full of feats , shots and thrills though contains excessive dialog and a lot of night scenes . The notorious Spaghetti actor , Peter Lee Lawrence is good in his usual tough role , here playing the unshakable lieutenant Strobel . Blond German youth Peter Lee Lawrence, who made his uncredited debut in Sergio Leone "For A Few Dollars More" (1965), was the hero in many Spaghetti Westerns. His short cinematographic history can be enclosed in nine years of Italo-Spain co-productions such as "More Dollars for the MacGregors" , ¨Winchester justice¨,"Pistol for a Hundred Coffins", ¨The man who killed Billy the Kid¨ , ¨Fury of Johnny Kid¨ and several others . Rough Guy Madison is good as leader of the motley pack together thwart the Nazi schemes, as well as the largely secondary cast with special mention to Philippe Hersent , Pierre Richard , John Bartha and Giovanni Ivan Scratuglia as Navy officer , all of them habitual secondary players in multiple Italian films and mostly playing brief interventions . Atmospheric and functional musical score and mediocre cinematography in Eastmancolor filmed by Fausto Rossi , being necessary an urgent remastering because the film copy is washed out . This is a wartime typical vehicle and into the ¨warlike commando genre¨ , in USA style which also belong the American classics as : ¨Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich) ¨ Where eagles dare(Brian G. Hutton) and Kelly's heroes(Hutton ), Tobruk (Arthur Hiller), Devil's Brigade (Andrew V McLagen) and many others .The film is middling directed by Alfonso Brescia . He began directing muscle-men epics as "The Conqueror of Atlantis" ; ¨ The magnificent gladiator¨, ¨La Rivolta dei Pretoriani¨. After that , he continued with Spaghetti Western as ¨Winchester Bill¨ , ¨Ley Del Colt¨ , ¨I Giorni Della Violenza¨ , Adventure as ¨Zanna Bianca¨, ¨Amazons against Supermen¨ and warlike movie as ¨Objetivo Rommel¨ , ¨Misiones Ardientes¨ and this ¨Hell in Normandy¨. Rating : Average but entertaining .

Peter Lee Lawrence plays a theatrical actor whose mission is to infiltrate and destroy a German flamethrower installation at Normandy Beach before the allied attack there. His mission is only partly successful, but he is able to join up with a squadron of paratroopers sent to finish the job and guides them to the installation. Hell in Normandy climaxes with fairly standard fast-paced war action.Lawrence was 23 when he starred in this film, and his promising career would be tragically cut short six years later by his suicide. The rest of the cast mixes American and continental European actors and actresses, mostly of the spaghetti western genre. The acting is generally good, though Guy Madison seems a little uncomfortable with his sad-sack paratrooper captain at times. Erica Blanc is excellent as a brave and intelligent member of the local resistance.Brescia's Hell in Normandy is a cleverly plotted and well-directed military action-adventure centered on events preceding the allied victory at Normandy during World War Two. The film is fictional and makes no pretense at engaging the realities of the battle. But it does remain mostly within the constraints of plausibility. The cinematography is very good - hardly unexpected from an Italian film. But the script is horrendous. The writer included several token American idiomatic clichés - probably at the insistence of the cast - but did way too much exposition through dialog. The version I saw was dubbed. Perhaps the dialog is better in Italian? Recommended for war film fans only.

Poor Guy Madison was reduced to picking up "coffee and dough-nut" money making second rate Itailian stinkers during the 1960s and early 1970s. I saw this film in Italy and it was the non-dubbed version. Surpringly, I thought Guy came across very well dubbed in! I'm joking! Seriously, Guy looked stiff and unhappy here. He plays a Captain in the U.S. Army who leads a group of doomed paratroopers on a "deadly" mission. Nothing much to the whole thing. Nice uniforms, some stock black and white film on World War II, a bit of action, and really nothing else. If you look hard enough, you can find "cult" actor William Conroy playing a German soldier in yet another of his countless uncredited roles in Italian made 1960s films.

This is yet another tolerable low-budget Italian war film, which also happens to be the most satisfying effort I've watched from this director. As the title suggests, the narrative centers around the D-Day landings: the Nazis have prepared a booby trap for the Allies about to 'invade' Europe from the sea, so a select band of paratroopers is flown over beforehand to nip their plan in the bud! While I wasn't familiar with any members of the cast other than Guy Madison and Erika Blanc, the film emerges as a fairly engaging actioner which also features a couple of stage actors assigned to impersonate the distinguished professor who invented the Nazi's latest gadget and the young German officer accompanying him. An unusual subplot involves an old French peasant who informs on the whereabouts of the commando outfit (they're being sheltered by his partisan daughter Blanc) because he's afraid of what the Nazis might do to him if they get wind of the situation.Though the film ends with the D-Day operation itself (shown through black-and-white stock footage), the downbeat climax sees the majority of the Allied squad perish trying to destroy the Nazi's Normandy beach outpost. Nevertheless, there's a healthy dose of comedy throughout – with Madison as perhaps one of the most cynical soldiers ever depicted on the screen; my favorite bit, however, was in a scene where a German officer rebukes the guard dogs for failing to detect any trace of the Americans' presence in a barn – whereupon one of his underlings (off the screen) quips sarcastically, "You should be glad they didn't die from all the stench!" The film has probably been out of circulation since its release, as the print I watched was in extremely poor shape: scratched, grainy and excessively dark (yet faded enough at times to expose the day-for-night shooting!).