The Secret Invasion (1964) ** (out of 4)Raf Vallone, Mickey Rooney, Edd Byrnes, Henry Silva and William Campbell play convicts who are given an opportunity for parole but to do so they must cross into enemy territory and rescue an Italian general who is being held hostage during WWII. By that description you'd think this Roger Corman film was nothing more than a rip-off of THE DIRTY DOZEN but it would be important to check the dates because this one here was actually released three years before the more popular film. With that said, if THE DIRTY DOZEN was a reworking or remake of this then it was certainly needed because while this film might look good it offers very little else. I was a little surprised to see how flat this movie was but I think it lacks any real emotion and a lot of this is due to the screenplay. The screenplay gives us five characters that we're supposed to care for yet not one of them grows on the viewer to where you care about their situation or really if they live or die in the end. Going on this mission with five characters that you really don't like pretty much stops this film in its tracks. Even worse is that most of them are pretty annoying and this is especially true of the Rooney character. I'm guessing he was meant to give some comedy relief but it's never funny. Silva comes off the best out of the five convicts but it's too bad he wasn't given more screen time. Stewart Granger plays the man leading them into battle but he can't really bring any added excitement to the material. For such a low budget movie the battle scenes at least look very good with the various gunfights and explosions. I also thought the cinematography was impressive but in the end this here just isn't enough to save the film.

The movie was good for a low budget. After looking at the reviewers, I wonder if it would have been a bigger hit because the movie had some graphic scenes: 1) Henry Silva suffocating the baby and in other scene, he throws a bayonet at a German doctor or medic orderly and you see the bayonet penetrating the person's throat.2) A German sailor looking over the side of his boat and then a grappling hook is embedded in the side of his face.I don't think that William Campbell play a good imposter because he did not look like the Commandent of the Fortress plus we don't know if he knew how to speak German. I also wonder what he said on the telephone that cause the Germans to send out armed patrol to search the fortress. It seems to me that the plot was to get the Italian General out of the fortress without having the Germans stop them.I know that during World War II, some German SS officers had an German Army eagle sewn on their hats and/or on the left sleeve of their arms instead of an SS one. SS General Sepp Detrich was famous for having an Army eagle on his SS hat. However, in this case, it look like the entire German garrison had Army eagles on their left sleeves instead of the SS eagle and it looks like they were Panzer uniforms instead of field gray.Some people stated that the the characters of Henry Silva and Spela Rozin had bonded together; however, it didn't look like it to me considering the fact that Silva's character came from prison, and in prison, guys tend to want to have sex with even ugly members of the opposite sex after being in prison for awhile and the Spela Rozin's character was married.I agreed that the movie was like the Dirty Dozen, Guns of Navarrone, Were Eagles Dare, Band of Brothers, Hornets' Nest etc., where a lot of Germans get killed off and the Germans are lousy shooters. Frankly, I am surprise that some of the members were not killed by Germans when they had a gun running battle on the rooftops, and the Germans were only a few yards away from them; yet, none of the convicts and the major were hit by enemy fire when they finally fled the scene. Spela Rozin's character reminds me of Sylva Koscina's character in the movie Hornets' Nest where both ladies take a submachine gun and all of a sudden they become firearm experts at killing Germans.I also wonder Roger Corman did not write the partisans into the script in helping the Italians when they attack the Germans.

Although a low-budget film, "The Secret Invasion" earns a high score from me. It's especially good in portraying men on a mission, partisans, and events rather plainly and humanly -- without the glamour. And the filming location and scenes along the eastern Adriatic coast add to the film. This is a precursor of "The Dirty Dozen," and I agree with those reviewers who think this tops the later film considerably. "Dirty Dozen" had more "glamour" and fun with laughs in the beginning. But "Secret Invasion" was more realistic and it was the first film to use a theme with convicts selected for a special, high-risk mission. It gives but a short time to the training and preparation, but then it gets into the action. It has good doses of action interspersed with intrigue and suspense at every major turn.The plot in "Secret Invasion" is realistic – even for a fictitious war flick. The same can't be said for "The Dirty Dozen" in 1967. The small team of misfits in this film was pulled together from various prisons around the world. That list of noted prisons was interesting in itself; and, these were all men serving as civilian convicts from before the start of the war. In "Dirty Dozen," the misfits were all GIs who were in prison, mostly for brutal killings or other heinous crimes. Now, how realistic was that for the middle of WW II in Europe? Not that movies have to be realistic by any means – fiction is fiction. But a fiction story is all the more entertaining and fun to imagine if the script and plot are at least somewhat likely or possible. In this film, a small group is led by a British Army major, and they are to rescue an Italian general from a prison in Dubrovnik, Croatia (Yugoslavia during WW II and in 1964 when this film was made). It was hoped that he would then rouse the Italian troops to go against the Germans. That would weaken German defenses, stretching them out along the south of Europe, before the Allied landings in the western Mediterranean. This is much more of a realistic and high-minded plan, it seems, than the violence and carnage of "Dirty Dozen" which was just to kill as many top German officers as possible – along with anyone else who might get in the way. The script, direction and filming are very good. The cast has some wonderfully talented actors. All give very good performances. I don't think Stewart Granger gave his role the best he could, but that didn't hurt the film with all the other good roles and the action and intrigue. The shooting of the film in and around Dubrovnik also adds a touch of reality, as well as great scenery and interesting history. The port city of Dubrovnik has stood for centuries and was never once destroyed in all that time. I visited present-day Croatia and Dubrovnik in 2005. The scenes in the film of the town, surrounded by its high wall and jutting into the Adriatic, show the beauty of the place. I walked the wall around the city where one of the chase and gunfight scenes takes place. Dubrovnik became a World Heritage Site in 1979. I highly recommend "The Secret Invasion" as a very good World War II film.

Stewart Granger, Raf Vallone, Mickey Rooney, William Campbell,Edd Byrnes, and Henry Silva are part of "The Secret Invasion," directed by Roger Corman. Vallone, Rooney, Campbell and Silva are prisoners who are brought in as part of a mission to free an Italian general, who was about to turn on the Nazis and turn his army over to the allies and is now being held by the Nazis. Granger, as Major Mace, is put in charge of them. If they don't die, they will win their amnesty.The levels of commitment vary among the men. The organizer, Rocca (Vallone) is a brilliant man who is dedicated to the mission, while Simon Fell (Byrnes), a forger, is not and tries to escape. Mickey Rooney plays the munitions expert, a cheerful Irishman, and Henry Silva plays an assassin, Durrell, who, although quiet, has feelings that run very deep. Saval (Campbell) doesn't trust him.While this is a derivative movie, it's filled with action, some good characters, sadness, and violence. Corman paces it well. On a side note, because I know German, the German spoken was perfect and, unlike Das Boot, easy to understand.Corman made this on a low budget, and the actors' performances vary as a result of not being able to fill this movie with an all-star cast. Edd Byrnes leaves a lot to be desired. I remember William Campbell from my childhood in a TV series called "Canonball" - actually, his big claim to fame is that he was married to JFK-Sam Giancana girlfriend Judith Exner. Granger, Vallone, Rooney and Silva are excellent as are the members of the German cast.Good drama, good war story.