What a waste of my time!!!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

This action adventure has American Lt. Commander Jeffords(James Franciscus), serving with the British Royal Army being sent on a dangerous mission to Malta. His top secret assignment is to take command of a flotilla of motor torpedo boats and use them to destroy a Nazi glider bomb depot on Sicily. Jeffords is distracted, but not totally, by a naked woman, Alison(Elizabeth Shepard), swimming in the sea. Romance will begin to flare, only to flame out, when the American finds out that the woman is the wife of his immediate commander(Ronald Allen).This movie is actually filmed in Malta; scenery is nothing to speak of. HELL BOATS seems to have no real ambition and could easily be described as both dull and unmemorable. If there is any redemption, it is Miss Shepard providing some sizzle in a wet shirt. The cast also features: Mark Hawkins, John Heller, Magda Konopka, Takis Emmanuel and Reuven Bar-Yotam.

"Attack on the Iron Coast" director Paul Wendkos stages several exciting combat scenes in "Hell Boats," but shallow characterization makes this energetic World War II thriller little more than a solid, standard-issue Navy actioneer. The story takes place against the singularly spectacular looking setting of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea in the early years of the war when the British were losing. The biggest celebrity name in a largely British cast, "Youngblood Hawke" actor James Franciscus plays a rugged American officer in the Royal Navy, Lieutenant Commander Jeffords, with a caramel tan that George Hamilton would envy. As one officer explains, our hero's mum was British, and he enlisted in 1939. The Admiralty dispatched him on special orders to the island of Malta, and Jeffords cannot malinger when it comes to disembarking from his transport plane. The German Luftwaffe likes to wait long enough for transports to land before they strafe them. Elizabeth Shepherd makes an unforgettable entrance as Alison, the lonely wife of Jefford's commanding officer on Malta, while Jeffords is out roaming the beach. She is naked, but of course we cannot see any nudity. To make herself presentable to Jeffords, she borrows his shirt. They meet once after Jeffords learns about her. Apparently, Alison's husband, Commander Ashurst, R.N. (Ronald Allen), has more of a stiff upper lip than anything else won't have her. Eventually, everything works out between them, but not before he puts his life on the line for the mildly insubordinate hero. The big mission in "Hell Boats" involves hijacking a Nazi patrol boat and gathering a flotilla of motor torpedo boats (MTBs) to blast to smithereens a Sicilian-based submarine pen that contains an arsenal of German glider bombs used to sink British shipping to Malta. These bombs have made devastating inroads on His Majesty's shipping. Happily, scenarist Anthony Spinner has more luck with the mission itself rather than the love triangle that sputters out. Before our hero can launch his attack, he must obtain information about the gun emplacements on the island. Consequently, he sneaks onto the island disguised as a native and reconnitors the place. They have a brief encounter with the Germans and a running firefight ensues. Our heroes escape, but the people who guided them die valiantly. This is good because otherwise "Hell Boats" would have been pretty dull if our hero remained at the helm of a boat during the fireworks. The behind-enemy-lines scenes bolsters the suspense. The special effects make the grade, and the action is the strongest part of the narrative. Unfortunately, one-dimensional characters abound and the talented cast does as best it can. "Hell Boats" was one of a number of World War II actioneers made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as "Mosquito Squadron" and "The Last Escape."

I've become fascinated by the small-scale war of coastal craft in WW2 - the nightly battles between allied and axis fast light craft, the buccaneering nature of some of the commanders and the stoicism and bravery of the crews on both sides fighting with grim and unrecognised heroism.When I realised Hell Boats was showing on C5 I turned it on, missing the first 20 minutes or so. Unfortunately this is a horribly creaky drama, and doesn't do any favours to realism. It's basically ridiculous, even allowing for the terrible model work, with German "E Boats" (actually called S-Boats) that don't look remotely like the real thing. The hero and his mate plus comedy partisans and eye-candy sneak into a German port and shoot their way out....{SPOILER} At the low point of three men with pistols capturing an "E Boat" I gave up.A disappointment. I'm sure there is a great film to be made about the coastal war, but this isn't it.

This movie surprised me. I enjoyed it more than I expected that I would. The film seemed older than it was—it used tropes and motives from earlier war films but they almost work here. The music and clichés simply echo another, earlier time. One almost laughs at the sex scenes and the confrontations between the two competitors. The heavy use of music, in particular, seems too studied.Yet, Franciscus brings intelligence and understatement to his roll as the protagonist. He underplays sufficiently to give an illusion of depth to his character.Elizabeth Sheppard, playing Allison, is fetching. She too underplays her part in a convincing way. Ronald Allen plays off both of them in ways that makes the interplay interesting. The director Paul Wendkos knows how to produce a creditable film narrative. Still, this is not Bergman.This is a seventies movie that looks and sounds like a black and white film from the forties.Special effects are, at best, studied (that word again) and not all that believable. One forgets how new scuba gear was at the time the movie is set.By the way, one understands how Magda Konopka married a billionaire. She looks terrific here.