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Eagles Over London
[Severin]
1969; color
Directed by Enzo G. Castellari
Starring: Frederick Stafford, Van Johnson, Francisco Rabal, Evelyn Stewart, Renzo Palmer, Christopher Hay & Teresa Gimpera
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Eagles Over London is the first war epic shot by Inglorious Bastards director Enzo Castellari. Filmed a full nine years before that truly great war movie, and after a career mostly spent reinventing (read: ripping off) Sergio Leone's Clint Eastwood films, Eagles is almost like a trial run of Bastards only with an inverse plot. In Bastards the plot centers around a group of US soldiers disguised as Nazis, behind enemy lines, helping the French Resistance and killing as many Nazis as they can; the storyline of Eagles puts Nazis in British uniforms and sends them to London as saboteurs trying to bring down the UK's radar network, while killing as many British army men as necessary. All comparisons aside, Eagles is (for the most part) a very good and definitely original war movie. The first half-hour is where it seems most of the production budget was spent, with a huge scale recreation of the British retreat and evacuation from Dunkirk (France) in the Spring of 1940. This conveniently also sets up the Nazis getting to England, and an unexpected buddy-ing up between a Nazi in disguise and an unsuspecting British officer. As fate would have it, the Brit winds up stumbling onto the Nazis plot to knock out the new British radar network, and becomes the head of a secret squadron whose assignment is to find and stop the Nazis before they can accomplish their mission. There's also a backdrop of dual romances between the British officer and his female counterpart who works at the radar central command station, and his Nazi pal and his undercover fraulein who works as a barmaid / spy in a pub frequented by tons of Brit officers. (It should be noted that not only do the Germans 'speak' with flawless British accents, but almost all of the Brits and Germans are obviously speaking Italian and are dubbed.) As the two groups move closer and closer to their inevitable confrontation we get abbreviated versions of the blitzkrieg over London and the Battle Of Britain. (Both air battles that look unfortunately fake and might be the only visual weak spots in the film — but, then again, it's not really about those incidents as much as it's about the defense of England and the attempts to sabotage said defense). Things do drag a bit in the build-up to the time said final conflict between the Nazis and the Brits happens, but those final 25 minutes are as tight and riveting as the first and make the dip in pacing forgivable. While it's not as polished as his more famous film, this is still well worth seeking out.
—the Kommandant
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