Hitler - Dead or Alive
             
Director: Nick Grinde
Year:  1942
Rating: 6.0

What a crazy idea. To have men go to Germany to assassinate Hitler. Who would make a film about that. Well, Tarantino of course who admits to having seen this film. His film Inglorious Basterds of course was with a much bigger budget but the inkling for at least that part of the film probably came from this film. The difference of course was that this was produced not that long after we entered the war and is nuts. It was produced by a Poverty Row company on a nickel and a dime and a lot of wishful thinking. A simple thought - wouldn't it be nice if someone would go to Germany and just kill Hitler. How hard can it be?



But in fact this idea had already been put into play with a film version of the terrific Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household titled Man Hunt directed by Fritz Lang. In Rouge Male a lone hunter goes to an unidentified European nation and tries to hunt down a dictator who remains unnamed. This was written in 1939 right before the war. In the film Hitler is named. Hitler - Dead or Alive leaves any subtlety or smart writing at the curbside. In one sense it could have been the Bowery Boys trying to do this as the film has taken on comical aspects over the years because it is so cheap and bumbling - but I would think that at the time the audience was into it - in particular when one of the characters gives one of those great rousing WWII patriotic speeches and an ending that is so beautifully absurd as if written by Ionesco that I won't mention what it is to take away the pleasure of seeing it.



A wealthy industrialist has put up a million dollar reward to anyone who will kill Hitler. There don't seem to be a lot of takers until three men - fresh out of jail - offer to do it. They figure they have killed mob bosses before - isn't that what Hitler basically is. But they speak German there the industrialist counters - no problem - we have spent lots of time in beer bars in Milwaukee. So they enlist in the Canadian army - go to England - hijack a plane and parachute into Germany with less of a plan than I do on a Sunday afternoon. Basically find out where Hitler is - get close - kill him and in the confusion escape and collect the reward. Sure why not. Seriously, the Bowery Boys. I would probably have rated this film a 2 if not for the last wonderful 10 minutes.



The three men are played by Ward Bond, Warren Hymer and Paul Fix - all three familiar faces. Bond is the lead here - not something he got to do very often and he is wonderfully gruff and in your face. Bond had a slow rise in Hollywood until be became drinking buddies with John Wayne and Wayne brought him into his films. Mainly Westerns for which Bond was a perfect fit. He and Wayne also teamed up after the War to go after leftists and Communists in the film business and outed them. Kind of a shameful act from today's perspective but back during the Red Scare a lot of that kind of thing was going on.




Paul Fix is more familiar to us from his TV days in particular for his continuing role as the Marshall on Rifleman. Hymer had a specialty of playing dopes - comical ones with his dems and dose - but he in fact was a Yale graduate. But a heavy drinker and was kicked out of the Columbia lot for showing up drunk one day and in retaliation he went into the office of the studio head Harry Cohn who was hated by about everyone and stood on his desk and peed. You know the old saying - you will never work in this town again - that is pretty much what Cohn did and Hymer was stuck in B films for most of his life and died at 42 years old. I am not sure I will be able to look at him again without the vision of his urinating on the great Harry Cohen's desk!



In the film also there is a female German sympathetic to the Allied cause who helps the boys. She is played by Dorothy Tree who had been around in the film business since the late 1920s and is credited with being Dracula's wife in the Bela Lugosi film - though I can't quite recall her - and was in small roles in many other films. I wonder if she and Bond got into some good shouting matches because she was one of those lefties that he hated so much and was blacklisted because of HUAC and never acted again. Pretty awful thing to do to Knute Rockne's mother!