Unless you're Hal Roach spoofing the ridiculousness of dictators with a complete farce that shows them as cowardly buffoons or Mel Brooks ridiculing their complete existence or even the character comics of "Hogan's Heroes", you can't really make a serious film or TV show about the Nazis if you don't have a proper structure to revolve a script around. this film is comedy for the first 15 minutes, boring war propaganda for the next 45, another five minutes of farce and then the message summed up in a way that sends this Z grade bunch of nonsense straight to the compost. I couldn't believe what I was hearing in dialogue from the very beginning, and at least I thought I would have something to laugh at for the next seventy minutes. What results from the rest of the movie is perplexing in every way. It is a film with 10 different personalities and everything seems out of place once it is all jumbled together.
Poor Bobby Watson, having to go through life being told that he looked like the most hated man in the world in the 1930's and 40's. but he took it all in stride, crying all the way to the bank as he made a living playing Hitler, sometimes comically as in "The Devil with Hitler", or seriously as in "The Hitler Gang". The fault here is not his, nor is it Ward Bond's or Roscoe Karns, as they are playing what is in the script. Certainly a story about an assassination plot against Hitler makes for good drama, and that has been done several times. But the mood in which this is written is inconsistent, and the audience will feel guilty about laughing earlier when they see the horrific things that happened towards the end.
The basic premise of the film is an offer of a million dollars for someone to kill Hitler. Where does the alive part come in then? To be honest, it doesn't, and that makes the title rather inappropriate. Karns of course plays his typically dumb crook, and he delivers his idiotic lines with his usual gusto. Bond is the heart and soul of the story, delivering his lines as if he was reciting Shakespeare. obviously, he's taking apart seriously even if he realize how horrible it was.
However, it is the performance of Dorothy Tree that ends up being the embarrassment of the film, an over-the-top, melodramatic performance as a German countess who secretly hates the Nazis even though she's dating one. She seems to be a precursor of the Bullwinkle bad girl Natasha. the color shade performances of the actors playing the Germans are so outlandish that they best not even mention by name. This is a one-time viewing necessity for those who are interested in wartime propaganda through Hollywood, and it is definitely one of the great humiliating moments of the film industry in an era that's all many classics released that seriously told a good story or provided worthwhile entertainment.
Poor Bobby Watson, having to go through life being told that he looked like the most hated man in the world in the 1930's and 40's. but he took it all in stride, crying all the way to the bank as he made a living playing Hitler, sometimes comically as in "The Devil with Hitler", or seriously as in "The Hitler Gang". The fault here is not his, nor is it Ward Bond's or Roscoe Karns, as they are playing what is in the script. Certainly a story about an assassination plot against Hitler makes for good drama, and that has been done several times. But the mood in which this is written is inconsistent, and the audience will feel guilty about laughing earlier when they see the horrific things that happened towards the end.
The basic premise of the film is an offer of a million dollars for someone to kill Hitler. Where does the alive part come in then? To be honest, it doesn't, and that makes the title rather inappropriate. Karns of course plays his typically dumb crook, and he delivers his idiotic lines with his usual gusto. Bond is the heart and soul of the story, delivering his lines as if he was reciting Shakespeare. obviously, he's taking apart seriously even if he realize how horrible it was.
However, it is the performance of Dorothy Tree that ends up being the embarrassment of the film, an over-the-top, melodramatic performance as a German countess who secretly hates the Nazis even though she's dating one. She seems to be a precursor of the Bullwinkle bad girl Natasha. the color shade performances of the actors playing the Germans are so outlandish that they best not even mention by name. This is a one-time viewing necessity for those who are interested in wartime propaganda through Hollywood, and it is definitely one of the great humiliating moments of the film industry in an era that's all many classics released that seriously told a good story or provided worthwhile entertainment.