Not so great escape

Rating: 4/10 (25 June 2012)

I'm a big fan of maestro Wilder's work, but have to admit to very mixed feelings about this concentration camp escape feature. Without even looking at the IMDb notes, I saw straight away the resemblance to the TV-derived "Hogan's Heroes", right down to dumbkopf Officer Schultz and found the mix of lame humour and gritty drama too much to take.
The plot, told in flashback by Willam Holden's resourceful Sefton character's pal Cookie, is naturally episodic, but I was never convinced that these soldiers were drawn from life. The humour is very dated, the episode where the inmates stage their own Christmas Dance being by far the strangest where not only do we get the unseemly sight of soldiers dancing man to man, but one even drags up to impersonate Betty Grable so his chum participates.
It does settle down in the last half-hour to a gripping finale as Holden uncovers the truth about the traitor in their midst and a (literally) killing-two-birds-with-one-stone escape plan is put into action (and turns out to be a real "mission impossible" for a young Peter Graves) but it can't make up for the uneven fare that's gone before.
Only Holden really emboldens his character with anything approaching depth, the rest have as much truth about them as Snow White's seven dwarfs.
As it boasts in the prologue, this was one of the first stories concentrating (sorry) on POW's but better takes on the subject were to follow, none that I can remember making the mistake of playing it for laughs.