mstomaso
Peter Lee Lawrence plays a theatrical actor whose mission is to infiltrate and destroy a German flamethrower installation at Normandy Beach before the allied attack there. His mission is only partly successful, but he is able to join up with a squadron of paratroopers sent to finish the job and guides them to the installation. Hell in Normandy climaxes with fairly standard fast-paced war action.Lawrence was 23 when he starred in this film, and his promising career would be tragically cut short six years later by his suicide. The rest of the cast mixes American and continental European actors and actresses, mostly of the spaghetti western genre. The acting is generally good, though Guy Madison seems a little uncomfortable with his sad-sack paratrooper captain at times. Erica Blanc is excellent as a brave and intelligent member of the local resistance.Brescia's Hell in Normandy is a cleverly plotted and well-directed military action-adventure centered on events preceding the allied victory at Normandy during World War Two. The film is fictional and makes no pretense at engaging the realities of the battle. But it does remain mostly within the constraints of plausibility. The cinematography is very good - hardly unexpected from an Italian film. But the script is horrendous. The writer included several token American idiomatic clichés - probably at the insistence of the cast - but did way too much exposition through dialog. The version I saw was dubbed. Perhaps the dialog is better in Italian? Recommended for war film fans only.
Desiree1954
Poor Guy Madison was reduced to picking up "coffee and dough-nut" money making second rate Itailian stinkers during the 1960s and early 1970s. I saw this film in Italy and it was the non-dubbed version. Surpringly, I thought Guy came across very well dubbed in! I'm joking! Seriously, Guy looked stiff and unhappy here. He plays a Captain in the U.S. Army who leads a group of doomed paratroopers on a "deadly" mission. Nothing much to the whole thing. Nice uniforms, some stock black and white film on World War II, a bit of action, and really nothing else. If you look hard enough, you can find "cult" actor William Conroy playing a German soldier in yet another of his countless uncredited roles in Italian made 1960s films.
MARIO GAUCI
This is yet another tolerable low-budget Italian war film, which also happens to be the most satisfying effort I've watched from this director. As the title suggests, the narrative centers around the D-Day landings: the Nazis have prepared a booby trap for the Allies about to 'invade' Europe from the sea, so a select band of paratroopers is flown over beforehand to nip their plan in the bud! While I wasn't familiar with any members of the cast other than Guy Madison and Erika Blanc, the film emerges as a fairly engaging actioner which also features a couple of stage actors assigned to impersonate the distinguished professor who invented the Nazi's latest gadget and the young German officer accompanying him. An unusual subplot involves an old French peasant who informs on the whereabouts of the commando outfit (they're being sheltered by his partisan daughter Blanc) because he's afraid of what the Nazis might do to him if they get wind of the situation.Though the film ends with the D-Day operation itself (shown through black-and-white stock footage), the downbeat climax sees the majority of the Allied squad perish trying to destroy the Nazi's Normandy beach outpost. Nevertheless, there's a healthy dose of comedy throughout – with Madison as perhaps one of the most cynical soldiers ever depicted on the screen; my favorite bit, however, was in a scene where a German officer rebukes the guard dogs for failing to detect any trace of the Americans' presence in a barn – whereupon one of his underlings (off the screen) quips sarcastically, "You should be glad they didn't die from all the stench!" The film has probably been out of circulation since its release, as the print I watched was in extremely poor shape: scratched, grainy and excessively dark (yet faded enough at times to expose the day-for-night shooting!).
SgtSlaughter
The king of average, mediocre Italian action movies, Alfonso Brescia, does his best work in this action-packed, anti-war commando story, released in 1967. "Hell in Normandy" may not be the best of a slew of Italian "commando" movies, but it's somewhere near the top of the pile, simply because Brescia manages to pack so much into a 90-minute running time.American commandos, led by Captain Murphy (Guy Madison), parachute into occupied Normandy, where Lt. Strobel (Peter Lee Lawrence), a German spy, helps them penetrate a flamethrower installations which threatens the landings on Omaha Beach. Murphy is skeptical of his mission's practicality, but Strobel is fanatically dedicated to destroying the base, and the two butt heads several times before the film's bullet-ridden climax.This was an Italian-French co-production, and was quite possibly shot in France – this is noticeable in the first few shots. For once, an Italian war films opens with the landscape actually looking like the country it represents. I can't count the times I've seen semi-arid climates and rock quarries passed off for "southern France", so Brescia's choice of shooting locations earns him major points in my book. The movie looks just as real throughout – uniforms, weapons, vehicles and sets all look very authentic. Many Italian directors, such as Leon Klimovsky and Umberto Lenzi, disregarded accuracy in favor of action, and that damaged their credibility. Here, one can respect the time and money Brescia puts into making his film look credible.This was Guy Madison's first Italian war movie, and he hasn't grown comfortable yet in a part which he would eventually own in the genre – he's starred in several similarly-themed films, each helmed by a different director. Man, does this guy get around! That said, he seems a bit unsure of himself as Captain Murphy, quite possibly because the role has its limitations. Murphy is cynical and critical of the way his mission was planned by superiors and how he's been ordered to execute it, but that's about all he gets to say – and he says it so many times that his dialog gets old and worn out very fast.In direct contrast, Peter Lee Lawrence seems to be enjoying himself as Lt. Strobel, and has plenty of good dialog as well as some physically active scenes to be involved in. From the moment we meet him, Strobel is obsessed with the success of his mission, even if it means killing anyone who gets in his way. But he also has a tender side, demonstrated in his love for the French partisan girl Denise (Erika Blanc), a relationship which never gets the full development it deserves.Brescia then loads his supporting cast with familiar names and faces, most notably, Max Tarilli ("Hornet's Nest"), an always under-used and under-appreciated actor. Here, Tarilli is a vicious German Corporal who is hot on the trail of Murphy's commandos, and never ceases in his search. It's refreshing to see what talent Tarilli has, and he never appears less than fully convincing as the vicious-Nazi-type. Massimo Carocci, Pierre Richard, Giuseppe Castellano, Luciano Catenacci, Gianni Pulone, and Giovanni Ivan Scratuglia all have small parts, too, which give a necessary boost.When stacked up against similar films, such as "Where Eagles Dare", "Attack and Retreat" or "Tobruk", this little action story doesn't hold up as well. But Brescia takes his craft seriously, and earnestly tries to make everything look and sound as good as possible given the circumstances. "Hell in Normandy" is a well-meaning war film with a good premise and enough good acting, suspense and violent action to keep it entertaining, even if it is all clichéd.SGT. SLAUGHTER'S RATING: 3 Bullets
