Five for Hell
Five for Hell
| 18 January 1969 (USA)
Five for Hell Trailers

Lt. Glenn Hoffmann is the the fun-loving leader of a bunch of oddball, acrobatic G.I.s whose mission is to steal the German's secret attack plans from a villa behind enemy lines, where they run into a brutal Nazi commander.

Reviews
SincereFinest disgusting, overrated, pointless
Majorthebys Charming and brutal
Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.
Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.
Bezenby I love Italian film but their sixties war films can be a bit of a slog (compared to the Last Hunter and Strike Commando in the eighties), however, this one has a good bit of style, and a few actors who are always fun to watch.Also, Klaus Kinski is in this, but he actually has a substantial part! Sit down for this, right, but he's playing a German bad guy who is a bit crazy. Gianni Garko on the other hand is a hard-arse GI out to steal plans from a safe with his team, consisting of Sal Borghese! Giovanni Frezza (I think that's his name), and two other guys, one of which looks like Guillano Gemma, is a acrobat like Guillano Gemma, but is not Guillano Gemma. Strange.This dirty half a dozen minus one head towards this villa occupied by Kinski, and a double crossing agent called Helga. That's really the plot, to be honest. It's fun though, and has a bit of style as it's made by that guy who made that Sartana film.I'd also add though however that this IS a sixties Italian war film, and they really kind of follow a formula.
bensonmum2 The plot of Five for Hell isn't anything overly original. Those who have seen The Dirty Dozen or The Inglorious Bastards (the best of these over-the-top Italian war movies) will find things very familiar. A group of five American GIs are sent behind enemy lines to obtain a copy of Nazi battle plans stored in the safe of a heavily guarded villa. The GIs have help on the inside in the form of a double-agent named Helga (played by the ludicrously gorgeous Margaret Lee). Her main objective is to keep SS Col. Hans Mueller (the great Klaus Kinski) otherwise occupied. Meanwhile, Lt. Hoffman (Sartana himself – Gianni Garko) and his men make their way to the villa, open the safe, and battle their way back to safety. It's very simple, but nicely put together.After reading reviews for Five for Hell on IMDb and around the internet, I think there are a bunch of people who have forgotten how to have fun watching a movie. That's what I did with Five for Hell – I had fun. Forget realism, forget history, forget the normal conventions of a good movie – this is classic Italian genre cinema. Just relax, don't take things too seriously, and go with it. A few familiar actors (Lee, Kinski, Garko, Sal Borgese, Luciano Rossi), a catchy soundtrack (I dare you to get that main theme out of your head), bad dubbing (I've gotten so used to this by now, it doesn't phase me), a gimmick or two for interest (exploding baseballs and a crazy trampoline), over-the-top action (the final 15 minutes are just one big machine gun fight), a really rotten bad guy to root against (Kinski at his evil best), and a beautiful woman (I think I've already expressed my feelings about Margaret Lee). Yep – Five for Hell's got it all.
xiangdo Let's see: tap dancing, gymnastics, lousy music, a painful dubbed soundtrack, stilted dialog, ridiculous situations. I'm sorry, I'll have to take the previous reviewer's word for quality action scenes at the end. I stopped watching it at the point I was starting to wish someone would hurl a lead-weighted baseball at my head. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind films with a comedic take on war, nor do I have an objection to fictional story lines based on real wars; many films fit either or both of those criteria and are fine fare. Neither do I require that a war film be an epic like "Lawrence of Arabia" or have the historic scope (not to mention stellar cast of "The Longest Day", "A Bridge Too Far" or "Midway". Lots of films that fall short of those works are perfectly fine viewing."Five for Hell" was just too much for me - or, to be accurate, too little. There's a world of difference between "comedic" and "so awful it ridicules itself", and this one does. I can see little that would make this film worse; only, perhaps, had it been an Ed Woods production, or included gratuitous (and ridiculously anachronistic) scenes with bikini-clad girls it could be so.If a war-movie equivalent to "Mystery Science Theater 3000" existed, "Five for Hell" would be a prime candidate for inclusion therein. It's not a case of "so bad it's good", it's so bad, it's awful. I can't accept it as a comedy. A bad attempt at comedy is many things, but it isn't funny - and if it ain't funny, it ain't comedy.
grahamsj3 But I've also certainly seen better. This film has good points and bad ones. The worst aspect of the film is the musical score. First, it sounds like it belongs to a Saturday morning kiddie show, not a war film. The score also suffers from very poor sound editing, although the rest of the audio is OK. There are two scenes in the film where the music begins to build, then is abruptly cut off in mid note. The story is OK and, from most of the cast, the acting is at least somewhat decent, though certainly nothing to write home about. I've watched a lot of war films and this one rates about a 5 out of ten, which is what I voted for it in this venue. It has a sort of well-written screenplay and the action sequences are fairly good, which is why I rated it that high.