Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

bkoganbing Ten Seconds To Hell is a story about six former German soldiers who have the dirty job of defusing all the unexploded bombs that the RAF Bomber Command under Arthur 'Bomber' Harris left in Berlin post World War II. During the late hostilities these men incurred the wrath of the Nazis, but apparently not enough to warrant a concentration camp. Or maybe someone got the bright idea that a person truly expendable in the eyes of the Third Reich was just the kind you want for this work.The six who are led by Jack Palance and Jeff Chandler are working for the British Army and get a salary and extra food rations coupons, something most useful in a devastated Berlin. But this is a fatalistic group and Chandler proposes a kind of tontine with their salaries as the work has a high fatality rate, last man standing collects the pot. Of course the last two standing are Palance and Chandler as per the screen billing.These two got a rivalry going over Martine Carol who gets those tired war weary hormones into overdrive. Not clear whether she's part of the tontine, but she'll take what comes.Ten Seconds To Hell could have been a much better film and certainly the bomb defusing scenes have tension built in. But the execution seems to fall flat though the cast gives it their best shot.

MARIO GAUCI I watched this in a colorized version (shudder, I know!), but I guess it's better than nothing!! This is yet another war-themed film for Aldrich but a novel one, dealing with a six-man bomb-disposal unit in Germany after the end of World War II.As such, it's much closer in spirit to the stark (and often hysterical) ATTACK! (1956) than the sweeping blockbusters - THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967) and TOO LATE THE HRO (1970; see review above) - of the next decade. Indeed, here, Jack Palance is again given a sympathetic role - while Jeff Chandler, uncharacteristically, essays the villainous type. Interestingly, the film was made by Britain's House of Horror - Hammer Films (in association with United Artists) - with shooting taking place at Germany's celebrated UFA studios! Plot-wise, however, the film is somewhat contrived: Palance and Chandler hate each other's guts but still lodge together and, of course, fall for their attractive - and lonely - French landlady (Martine Carol); by the end, only they have survived their dangerous line of work and the two face-off in a literally explosive climax! While no classic, it's professionally handled and has undeniable moments of power (one of the deaths is filmed in a way that we never see the man's face but, when the remaining members of the group are reconvened, we realize that Wesley Addy is missing; Chandler's story about his uncle teaching him to always look out for himself first and how the latter was the first to suffer for it).

MovieDude-4 This might have been a good film, but it failed on more than one count. I have to compare it to the TV Series "Danger UXB", which, while it had much longer to develop its' story, was infinitely superior. The technical information in the TV series was much more interesting, and I kept wondering why the methods used in this film were so obviously poor, especially at the end of the war when all the methods, equipment and information should have been superior. In the finish, I came to the conclusion that this film, based on Lawrence P. Bachmann's novel "The Phoenix", used the bomb defusing merely as background, and that methods of bomb disposal were poorly understood by the writer, who probably didn't care anyway. In contrast, it is clear that someone who knew what he was talking about wrote the TV series. Although not credited in the listing here, I recall someone mentioned in the credits for the series (an Army officer) as a technical advisor, and it shows.We are left, therefore, with viewing this film as an essay on personal conflicts and relationships, and it fails badly on that count as well. The motivations of the characters are confusing and hard to believe and ultimately uninteresting. The cast are wasted in this, which is only worth watching if you are sick in bed and have nothing better to do.

jim riecken (youroldpaljim) I found this film on the shelf at the local video store in a nondescript white box which listed only the title, the two leads, and only mentioned that it was a Hammer film. I had no idea what it was about. But I was curious about a Hammer film that starred Jack Palance and Jeff Chandler, so I decided to rent it. I did not regret it. I at first thought it would be a British crime thriller. Little did I expect it to be a post WW2 drama about a group of former German soldiers in charge of a bomb disposal unit. I won't go any further into the plot since the previous reviewer says most of whats important to know. The first half of this film is a bit slow, but then picks up speed and becomes really interesting. It was also interesting to see a reversal in roles for the two leads; Jack Palance who usually played villains, plays the hero here, while Jeff Chandler, who usually played heroes,plays the heavy in this one. The one thing that intrigues me about this film, is how an American director, a mostly American cast, ended up making a film produced by a British film company with a British crew, shot on locations in Berlin, with interiors shot at Berlins UFA studios.