Desert Commandos (1967)

Allies versus Nazis in the sands of Sahara

German commandos are dropped behind enemy lines in the Sahara Desert tasked with getting to Casablanca in an assassination attempt on allied leaders.

Splendid plot idea, but a little more work on it might have made the difference: some scenes are just too simplistic; when they enter the house of the French officer’s mistress, it doesn’t ring “true”. The desert scenes are nice but a little more camera and light work might have made them beautiful. WW II movie directors who use modern hardware are killing me: for obvious financial reasons, he probably rented the equipment on the site from the Moroccan army: the aircraft, a Max Holste Broussard, was designed in the fifties; there wasn’t a single WWII vintage tank: they were either Creusot-Loire AMX-13 or Panhard armored vehicles, designed in the fifties.

Director: Umberto Lenzi
Stars: Ken Clark, Horst Frank, Jeanne Valérie