This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

WW2 action movie has Errol Flynn leading a RAF bombing mission into Germany and being shot down by the Nazis. Flynn and his crew (including Alan Hale and Ronald Reagan) are taken prisoner but manage to escape with some valuable information. Now the men fight to get out of Germany alive, doing as much damage and killing as many Nazis as they can along the way.This one is just so much fun between the exciting action scenes and the zippy dialogue delivered by a great Warner Bros cast. There's never a dull moment! Raoul Walsh directs with style and a great pace. The always-reliable Errol Flynn leads a terrific lineup that includes the aforementioned Reagan and Hale plus Arthur Kennedy, Ronald Sinclair, Nancy Coleman, Sig Ruman, and Albert Basserman. Ronald Reagan has one of his most enjoyable roles here, snapping off quotable lines one after another. Raymond Massey plays the lead Nazi and makes for a fine villain. An interesting thing about this movie that may surprise some viewers is that, unlike most WW2 films that were understandably serious in tone, this one has such a light, humorous feel that it's almost jarring upon first viewing. You have protagonists killing and also dying, yet nobody stops for more than a minute to dwell on that before continuing with the quips and punches. It's fascinating to watch and so very entertaining but some won't care for the "whistling past the graveyard" approach the film takes. I definitely recommend you give it a shot, particularly if you're a fan of the many excellent movies Errol Flynn and WB made to help with the war effort. This is one of the best.

I stumbled onto this beauty on TCM a few weeks ago, and could not believe it. It is the closest thing I have seen to a prototype for the much-maligned Hogan's Heroes television program. We have a multinational Alied group in Germany doing as much damage as they can to the Axis war effort, with laughs all along the way wherever they can be found. It even has received some of the same criticism that Hogan's Heroes received.There are some substantial differences: Sargent Schultz is on the Allied side; I am not sure if he, played by Alan Hale, is supposed to be American or English. There is a sort of Sargent Schultz for the Germans, in Sig Ruman (who I believe also played Schultz in Stalag 17), but he is a little tougher and a little smarter than Schultz. Colonel Klink in this picture, played by Raymond Massey, is a thoroughly bad baddie, sort of a Major Hochstedder with a monocle and a promotion. The biggest difference is that the boys are on the road, not stationed in a prison camp. But then, to turn it into a long running TV show, putting them into a prison camp makes perfect sense.Most reviewers think this movie is totally silly with unrealistically stupid and incompetent Germans and too many hair's breadth escapes by the boys. I do not agree, as the Axis German establishment showed themselves to be not the supermen they were billed to be. After all, with an incompetent lunatic leader and incompetent lazy assistant leader in Hitler and Goering, and a German military and Gestapo drilled to blind obedience, it should not be surprising that people brought up in an environment that values independent thinking are able to outwit them time and again. And in spite of that, only three of the bomber crew survived to get out of Germany - the majority of the crew perished, mostly on-screen. Two things that did not ring true did capture my attention: 1) I don't think the railway junction that was the target existed, or if it did it was not where they said it was; and it appeared that the mission failed to hit it anyway. 2)I am not familiar with the Lockheed 2-engine bomber that was supposedly used, but I doubt that it could have made the round trip that would have been necessary to reach the target and return.A couple other notes: Regarding the "Japs" comment. It may or may not have been racist, but the Japanese military government of the time earned a reputation for evil, and deserved no polite consideration. Their treatment of Chinese civilians and American and British prisoners of war is sufficient evidence (see "Rape of Nanking" and various documentaries on the Bataan Death March). Even today, it is my belief that the Japanese have never officially apologized or made any atonement for what they did. This is in sharp contrast to the Germans, who I believe murdered fewer innocent non-combatants than did the Japanese (or Joseph Stalin throughout his career for that matter).

***SPOILERS***Entertaining but utterly mindless allied WW II propaganda movie that has a group of downed allied pilots, American Australian and British, trek their way across hundreds of miles of enemy territory from the German/Polish border to Holland and the English channel with no more then a company of German troops to stop them. This gang of five with two of them Sgt. Llyod Hollis II & Sgt. Kirk Edwards , Ronald Sinclair & Alan Hale, not making it back are lead by Flight Lt. Terry Forbes, Erroll Flynn, who seem for the most part to live charmed lives. They amazingly gets themselves out of one tight squeeze after another with the help of a number of British & American supporting German civilians helping them, putting the lives of themselves and their families on the line, along the way.The task to get these allied fliers into custody falls on the shoulders of German Major Otto Baumeister, Raymond Massey, who at first screwed up by letting them get the best of him and making their escape after Maj. Baumeister's men had initially captured them. The movie then turns into a Willie Coyote Road Runner cartoon with Maj. Baumeister playing the part of the thankless and frustrated Willie Coyote who no matter how hard he tries just can't get his hands on his speedy adversity, the escaped allied fliers, even with the help of the entire German Whermacht and Lufftwaffe.The escaped fliers who include future US President and leader of the Free World Ronald Wilson Reagan, as the wise cracking US fly-boy Johnny Hammond, have a field day in making the Germans look both incompetent and ridicules as they hopelessly bumble their way through the movie in trying to apprehend them. Forbes Hammond & Co. easily make their way to the English Channel, knocking out dozens of Germans on the way, with the only thing stopping them from making it back home is that their car, carjacked from the German Army, ran out of gas.Just when you would think that it's curtains for Lt. Forbes and fly-boy Hammond together with numbers man, or accountant, Jed Forrest, Arthur Kenndey, Lord and behold there's a British Lockeed Hudson bomber materializing right before their eyes as if it were a desert mirage! The Lockeed Hudson happens to be the very plane that the trio were trained to fly and there it is right there for them to hijack and fly back to England! The dastardly and not at all cricket Germans were going to use the Birtish bomber to sneak over the channel and knock out the Battersea Waterworks that, among other things, supply the water for the London Fire Department! Only the scheming and not on the level Nazis would think of something as evil as that being that the waterworks are the reason that kept London from burning down during the German Blitz of 1940/41!Forbes Hammond & Forrest gun down scores of hapless Germans, who have no idea in how to use firearms, together with the luckless Maj. Baumeister as the Lockeed Hudson finally takes off with Jed Forrest getting shot at least a half dozen times and surviving with only a minor flesh wound. On their way home to England Johnny Hammond just couldn't resist, against orders, to drop the bomb destined for the Battersea Waterworks on a German gun battery aimed at Dover England knocking it out of commission. All this happens without a single Lufwaffe plane or German anti-aircraft artillery battery in sight to stop the dynamic trios escape!Within sight of the White Cliffs of Dover and freedom Flight Lt. Forbes radios in that he's looking forward to go to Australia, his home, and get a crack at the "Japs". If the "Japs" are anywhere as helpless and buffoonish as their German allies in the movie "Desperate Journey" it will be nothing more then a walk in the park, and not at all desperate, for Forbes to deal with them.

An obvious, nearly nonsensical WW2 propaganda movie about a bunch of fliers fighting their way across Nazi Germany. It's wildly inaccurate and unrepresentative of the war, has very little redeeming artistic value as a piece of cinematic art and is basically a pointless piece of filler churned out by the studio system of the nineteen forties.I enjoyed it immensely when I saw it on TV, years ago.As has been pointed out in other comments, the 'german' in this movie is hilarious to anyone with even the slightest passing acquaintance with the language. As I say, it has been a long while since I saw this film, but if I recall correctly one character utters the amazing line "Schnell! Schnell! Volkswagen!" as she points pursuing soldiers in the right direction.