Movie Review: Hornets' Nest (1970)

Genre: World War 2 Action  

Director: Phil Karlson  

Starring: Rock Hudson, Sylva Koscina  

Running Time: 110 minutes  

Synopsis: In Italy of 1944, the badly wounded Captain Turner (Rock Hudson) is the only survivor from a group of paratroopers on a mission to blow up a strategic dam. He is captured by a ragtag partisan militia of children led by teenager Aldo (Mark Colleano), who lost his family when the Nazi SS massacred local villagers. Aldo pressures a German doctor (Sylva Koscina) to heal Turner's wounds, then creates an uneasy alliance with the American: the children militia will help with the dam mission in return for Turner's help to avenge the village massacre.

What Works Well: This Italian-American production raises pointed questions about bloodlust and the impact of war on children. Aldo's sole motive is to avenge his parents, and he descends into soulless killing, desensitized to the pain he is causing. Rock Hudson, despite an unfortunate moustache, is the jaded professional soldier using every available means to complete his mission. The German Captain von Hecht (Sergio Fantoni) represents the more human side of the German occupiers.

What Does Not Work As Well: This is an underfinanced effort cluelessly leapfrogging large plot holes, including Turner's miraculous recovery from seemingly serious injuries, and jarring inattention to a sense of time and place, with the locations of the dam and Aldo's village either days or minutes apart. A group of untrained children cause large casualties among German troops, and the central mission to blow up the dam becomes an afterthought, including no indications of downstream damage caused. Indeed, Turner and the boys appear to "escape" straight into the flood zone. Ennio Morricone's music score is among his less memorable efforts.

Key Quote:

Aldo (angrily): You ever seen the Nazis put your father in front of a machine gun? You ever lie there and watch them take your mother? Your sister? Nobody's going to tell me what we are!

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