JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

malcolmgsw If in 1949 you were casting for a German leading part whom would you chose if it were not a German actor?Maybe Anton Walbrook or Curt Jurgens but not Mervyn Johns.It is bad enough that this escaped German POW has a Welsh accent,but he then kills an Australian doctor but still has the same voice.At a dance he meets the commander of the POW camp from where he escaped but is still not recognised.He is helped throughout by this Nazi cell which somehow exists in London despite the war having been over for 4 years.At ever twist and turn the illogicality of the plot hits you squarely in the face.The ending of course is pure irony.However at 99 minutes the film is far too long for one to give it the benefit of the doubt.Little wonder that it has not been shown on TV here.

classicsoncall The title of this film didn't come up when I typed in "Counterblast", so I used actor Robert Beatty's name who's listed at the top of the credits for this surprisingly effective mystery story. I'm not sure why he's got top billing because Mervyn Johns appears to do all the heavy lifting in his role as Dr. Bruckner, the 'Beast of Ravensbruck'. As an escaped Nazi war criminal, Bruckner assumes the identity of Australian microbiologist Dr.Richard Forrester after killing him in his London hotel room. Bruckner's mission is to develop a germ warfare concoction that can eventually be used to secure Nazi victory.For a Nazi on the lam, a couple of things puzzled me. Why for example, in his haste to leave the hotel after killing Forrester, did he stop to pay his room bill? And what conceivable purpose could there have been to lugging around a set of golf clubs other than to arouse the suspicion of his new lab assistant Rankin (Beatty)? Finally, for a world class bacteriologist himself, Bruckner should have been slick enough not to get tripped up on that little detail about his preferred lab chemical being exclusively German made.But I guess none of that really matters because the overall story is a fairly intriguing one, with Mervyn Johns donning a sinister countenance in direct contrast to the character of Bob Cratchit from my favorite version of "Scrooge", the 1951 Christmas classic. Uncharacteristically, this Nazi softens up enough over the course of the story to fall for his lab helper (Nova Pilbeam) and mingle with the aristocrats of British high society. You almost get to the point of liking the guy, but come on, he's a Nazi. So it's fittingly ironic that Bruckner meets his end in a manner suited to his profession - one could say it was a gas.

MartinHafer A Nazi scientist escapes from a British POW camp. Instead of rushing back to Germany, he oddly sets up a lab in London and assumes the identity of an Australian researcher. There, he works on a biological warfare experiment. However, when the murdered Australian guy's niece arrives, the Nazi's plans could be in jeopardy.The biggest problem I had with this film was the ill-explained lack of a German accent in the Nazi (Mervyn Johns). He sounds 100% British. Had they said he had escaped to the UK from Nazi Occupied Europe it would have made a lot more sense. On the other hand, it is odd that "Counterblast" (also known as "Devil's Plot") is included in a cheap 20 DVD pack from Mill Creek, as this film is way too competently made. The acting (aside from the missing accent) is quite good and the story isn't bad. Well worth seeing and quite original.

wes-connors "A Nazi scientist escapes Germany prior to its surrender at the end of World War II and sets up a lab in England using the identity of an Australian scientist he murdered. Hoping to complete his germ-warfare experiment, in the hopes of its use by Nazis in a future war, the scientist's agenda becomes complicated when he falls in love with his lab assistant," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.Mervyn Johns is terrific, deftly playing "Dr. Bruckner", who poses as "Dr. Anderson", to kill and take the place of "Dr. Forrester". Still, Paul L. Stein's "Counterblast" is unnecessarily slow moving, and simply refuses to get mileage out of suspenseful situations. For starters, the film should have begun with Mr. Johns' murder of "Dr. Forrester". Previous events are easily filled in during subsequent scenes; and, an air of mystery would be added to the unfolding events.