I had not heard of this movie but today it showed up on the broadcast TV channel "Movies!" which specializes in older movies. We were having a cable outage and it was a way to pass time with no internet, no streaming.
The premise is that during WW2 there was a Nazi prison camp on a Greek Island. The prisoners hatch an escape plan and their ultimate mission is to get to Athena where they think valuable items stolen by the Nazis are being hidden.
By modern standards, this is not an especially good movie.
The tone of the film is wildly uneven, there are lots of funny bits but also lots of shooting and killing. Often it feels like separate scenes were ineptly joined together. I didn't feel that the mixture of the broad comedy and action-adventure sequences worked.
Also the Germans are depicted as very incompetent, as happened in many post-WW2 movies and TV shows. The movie is mainly interesting for the array of stars in it.
A particular novelty was Sonny Bono as one of the prisoners. He comes across as an inexperienced actor but does fine in his limited role. This came on the heels of the very popular 1970s TV show "Sonny and Cher."
The premise is that during WW2 there was a Nazi prison camp on a Greek Island. The prisoners hatch an escape plan and their ultimate mission is to get to Athena where they think valuable items stolen by the Nazis are being hidden.
By modern standards, this is not an especially good movie.
The tone of the film is wildly uneven, there are lots of funny bits but also lots of shooting and killing. Often it feels like separate scenes were ineptly joined together. I didn't feel that the mixture of the broad comedy and action-adventure sequences worked.
Also the Germans are depicted as very incompetent, as happened in many post-WW2 movies and TV shows. The movie is mainly interesting for the array of stars in it.
A particular novelty was Sonny Bono as one of the prisoners. He comes across as an inexperienced actor but does fine in his limited role. This came on the heels of the very popular 1970s TV show "Sonny and Cher."