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Incredibly rich Samuel Thornton (Russell Hicks), an American patriot, puts out
a contract on Hitler (Bobby Watson), promising 1 million Dollar in cash to the
man who kills the dictator. As it happens mobsters Steve Maschik (Ward Bond),
Dutch (Warren Hymer) and Book (Paul Fix) have just been released from
Alcatraz and are looking for work that doesn't differ too much from what they
have done previously, so Thornton's offer seems just like a gift from heaven.
The trio soon enlists in the Canadian Air Force and are sent to Enlgland,
where they hijack the bomberplane of pilot Johnny Stevenson (Bruce Edwards) and
parachute over Germany.
In Germany they promptly steal a beer truck, but nevertheless they are soon
apprehended by the German police and broght to the Dachau concentration camp.
However, Steve uses his streetwise charm to convince Dachau's commander Hecht
(Felix Basch) that they have a message to deliver to Hitler personally
(carefully forgetting to mention that the message is a bullet in the head of
course), and Hecht, though throwing them in a cell all the same, can't risk
doing them any harm.
But then there's Hecht's girlfriend Else Von Brandt (Dorothy Tree), who is
really Rosebud, a woman who regularly frees British POW's from Dachau, and she helps Steve, Butch, Book
and Johnny (who only gradually grows wise to
what the gangster trio is actually up to) escape from Dachau, even if Dutch has
to give his life in the process. However, once Else has learned what they are
up to, she is reluctant to help our heroes, as she thinks one Hitler more or
less wouldn't end the war. But Steve can nevertheless con her into taking him,
Johnny, Book and Meier (Frederick Giermann) - a doctor and the only
man who knows what Hitler looks like under his mustache (so to tell him apart
from his doubles) - to a gardenparty attended by Hitler as her musicians ... and
there Steve can really grab the chance to take Hitler as hostage, however
he won't shoot him and instead wants to force the Germans to end the war,
while he ensures a safe getaway for pilot Johnny and Else. However, once they
have flown off in Hitler's private plane, and Steve has shaved Hitler, things
get out of hand, as the Germans do no longer recognize their Führer in that
shaved little man, instead mistake him for one of Steve's accomplices, and shoot not only Steve but also Hitler (the real one) like the dog he is.
The war however, doesn't stop here ...
Millionaire Thornton though has, in awe, seen Steve's act of patriotism, and
has invested the million thought for Steve into bomberplanes ...
Quite obviously this is a propaganda film, so it's about as subtle as my
synopsis might seem, and as a comedy it is - quite naturally, for a
propaganda film - not all that great. It is some fun however for the sheer
bluntness of hammering its message home, and for the very naive look onto
wartime politics and war s such.
Bobby Watson by the way, the man who portrayed Hitler, did so in a string of
propaganda movies (starting in 1942 with The Devil with Hitler by
Gordon Douglas), and even returned to the role in 1957 (The Story of
Mankind by Irwin Allen) and 1961 (the Danny Kaye-Comedy On the Double,
by Melville Shavelson).
For
those inclined, also check out the video review of Hitler - Dead or Alive
I did with filmmaker Sean Weathers, with the movie in its entirety playing
afterwards.
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