It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

***SPOILERS*** The second movie- The other "Hangmen also Die"- out of Hollywood in 1943 about the massacre of the people, Men 16 and over, of the Czech town of Lidice in the spring of 1942 by the Nazis. That in retaliation for the assassination of the country's Reich Protector Reinhard "Hangman" Heydrich, John Carradine, who was fatally injured-he died a few days later- by Czech resistant fighters lead by British based local boy Karel Vavra, Alan Curtis. Heydrich for his part was really asking for it in how he treated the local Czech population with total disrespect for their men, who more or less put up with it, and especially the women whom he treated like they were street hookers. Always trying to outdo himself and get the Czechs to hate him even more then they already do, if that's at all possible, Heydrich guns down the local priest Father Cemlanek, Al Shean, who mildly protested his actions against the Catholic Church. This action by the "Hangman" finally got the Czech population to wake up and plan to do Heyderich in the first chance they got to get a crack or shot at him. This was when he was driving through the countryside in his armor plated Mercedes totally unprotected by his Gestapo goons. As he's dying from his wounds from an ambush Heydrich is promised by his boss SS chief Heinrich Himmler,Howard Freeman,that he'll have the nearest Czech village-Lidice-to his assassin site wiped off the map to show the world that he means business.****SPOILERS**** We've seen it all before as well as since with the Germans acting like the movie calls them "Madmen" in wiping out the entire village of Lidice for the death of just one man whom almost all those in the tragic village had nothing at all to do with. As for the dying Heydrich he seems to have a vision of things to come, the complete defeat of Nazi Germany,by telling Himmler that he'll soon suffer, together with Hitler & Co., the same fate he's soon to suffer. As history showed Himmler was to kill himself less the three years later on May 23, 1945 by swallowing a vile of poison hidden in his mouth while in the custody of the British Army. P.S Check out a young 21 year old Ave Gardner as one of the young Czech women who were to be sent to the Russian Front by Hydreich to "entertain" the German troops!

This film is starts with a deceptive title. Reinhart Heydrich was many things, but mad as in clinically insane was not one of them. In fact among his peers he was known as the man with an 'iron heart'. Cold blooded efficiency in some of the nastiest butchery ever seen on this planet was his stock in trade.And John Carradine played him that way. In many ways Heydrich was the archetype Aryan superman that Hitler lauded, but this guy scared Hitler and all the other top Nazis.MGM made this film and even though it is a quickie B picture hurriedly put together to take advantage of current events of the war, Hitler's Madman has that tiffany type gloss that MGM product was noted for.As was reported and at the time not reported fully, how could it have been since we had little access to the news from the Nazi point of view. But word got out about the bloody reprisals made against the Czech people whom Heydrich was governing even from behind the lines. Lidice was razed to the ground as it was the location of the assassination. If anything we could only guess how bad it was.There are three other interesting portrayals to note. First is Howard Freeman as Heydrich's superior, Heinrich Himmler. William Shirer said that he looked about as frightening as a schoolmaster and that's how Freeman does him as well. His scene with the dying Heydrich is classic as he tells Heydrich he's going out a hero for the Fatherland and Heydrich just doesn't want to go.Then there's Edgar Kennedy whom I never knew doing anything else but being the slow burn comedian. He plays a cynical hermit who shunned Czech society, but has no use for the Nazis either. But being and choosing to live alone makes him better able to adapt.My favorite however was Ludwig Stossel who plays the German mayor of Lidice who is a proud Nazi, but who also hears about the loss of his two sons in Russia. Still when Heydrich is attacked, he's arrested for not doing enough to keep the people down and appreciative of their new masters. All of Stossel's protests about what a good party man he is and how loyal to the Fuehrer he is, avail him naught.One big star is in this, but Ava Gardner is an extra somewhere in the crowd of Lidice citizens. I couldn't spot her, but you might have better luck. Despite the deceptive title Hitler's Madman does hold up well for today's audiences. A film about Heydrich's whole career would be a fascinating one for today's audience.

An interesting movie that does not do much to inspire the viewer through its portrayal of the Czech resistance, though they face a grim ending, but definitely catches the interest in the portrayal of Nazi brutality through the part played by John Carradine as Reich Protector Heydrich, who routinely had people shot in order to maintain a level of fear and control. The characterizations of the townspeople are too quaint for this subject, but they (the townspeople) do catch on as Carradine's brutality increases, with the most memorable scene being when he and his men take over a philosophy class, in a scene that manages to get fairly intense. If it were just up to Alan Curtis to carry the film as Karel Vavra, the film would fall into a dark pit of boredom, since within any resistance movement there is always collaborators within families that need to be killed. Those characters are all left out, and so the drama quotient is not very intense. Nonetheless, Carradine's Heydrich is definitely worth watching.

Although it was overshadowed by Lang's "Hangmen also die" , "Hitler's madman" seems closer to Borzage's "the mortal storm" ,with its depiction of life in an occupied town.But the finale was probably borrowed from Abel Gance's "J'accuse" (1919 and 1937) and its "wake of the dead" sequences.Great sequences: the professor of philosophy resuming his lecture in front of the Nazis (there is a similar sequence in "the mortal storm");the female student,refusing to be treated as a beast ;the admirable scene where the mayor's wife,reading that her sons are dead, and cursing the "Fuhrer" (a famous lullaby the name of which I cannot remember ,makes a very moving score, as she remembers her boys' childhood).The hangman, in his bed and begging for morphine,as he too realizes that the Third Reich means nothing when you're dying.Probably Sirk's best forties film .In the fifties,he would come back to WW2 and the Nazi barbarity with a work I consider his masterpiece : "A time to love and a time to die" (1958),from the great German pacifist writer Erich Maria Remarque's novel.