the leading man is my tpye

To me, this movie is perfection.

Instant Favorite.

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.

The Secret Invasion is directed by Roger Corman and written by R. Wright Campbell. It stars Stewart Granger, Raf Vallone, Mickey Rooney, Edd Byrnes, Henry Silva, Spela Rozin and William Campbell. Music is by Hugo Friedhofer and Eastman Color cinematography is by Arthur E. Arling.1943 and British Intelligence send Major Richard Mace (Granger) and five convicts into Yugoslavia on a dangerous mission. They are to rescue an Italian General from German captivity in the hope that he will join the fight against the Nazis.An army based reworking of Corman and Campbell's Five Guns West from 1955, The Secret Invasion is cheap on budget but rich on action. A sort of forerunner to Where Eagles Dare and Operation Cross Eagles, and a definite companion piece for the far superior The Dirty Dozen that followed three years later, it's a film that's hard to dislike. There's such a sense of fun about the whole thing and Corman still manages to create suspense and craft potent action scenes.The ensemble cast bring to life the roll call of damaged characters who are either looking for redemption, personal gain or just a crack at getting the freedom dangled in front of them. The Eastman Color is very appealing, the pic actually filmed on location in Yugoslavia, and Friedhofer provides a very effective musical score that hits the right beats for the blend of drama and sorrow that fills out the plot.Corman inevitably has to cut some corners, such as one key character is killed off screen, not all the acting is great and veers close to being second string Spaghetti Western standard, and of course the plot is bonkers. But the flaws never stop it being worth the time of the Action War film fan. 6.5/10

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.

When British Major Richard Mace (Stewart Granger of "North to Alaska") with his stiff upper lip meets the five convicts from all parts of the globe who are going to help him carry out his difficult but important mission, he informs them from the start: "You men were not my choice for this mission. Intelligence seems to think that your peculiar talents could be of some value but don't for a moment imagine that serving under me will be easier than the prisons you came from. You've all been offered pardons to undertake this mission. You've given your word to cooperate and I expect you to keep it." Roberto Rocca (Raf Vallone of "Nevada Smith") is the most literate with a college degree in psychology and he becomes the organizer of the bunch. Mickey Rooney of the famous MGM "Andy Hardy" movies is an Irishman named Terry Scanlon; his specialties including picking locks and demolitions unless he can find a good bottle of corn whiskey to distract him. Edd Byrnes of TV's "77 Sunset Strip" is the forger Simon Fell. Tough guy actor Henry Silva of "Ocean's 11" is the cold-blooded assassin John Durrell, a man of few words whose actions speak far more eloquently than his language. Finally, William Campbell is pretty boy Jean Saval who can impersonate anybody. Mace and these men are part of an overall Allied invasion of the southern Europe, principally the Balkans. Their mission is to distract the Nazis from the actual invasion by liberating a high-ranking officer General Quadri (Enzo Fiermonte of "A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die") from a Nazi prison stronghold who can unite the partisans and keep the German Army busy.Producer & director Roger Corman earned a reputation cranking out low budget, drive-in movie creature features, but "The Secret Invasion" represents a drastic departure of his usual nonsense. This above-average World War II epic is bolstered by a strong cast headed by English actor Stewart Granger and scenic locations in both Croatia and Yugoslavia that lend a sense of authenticity to this impossible mission epic. Furthermore, produced as it was in 1964, "The Secret Invasion" beat director Robert Aldritch's superior pardon the convicts for a top secret classified mission "The Dirty Dozen" (1967) by three years. Mind you, "The Secret Invasion" wasn't the top box office draw of 1964 that "The Dirty Dozen" proved it was in 1967, but this offbeat World War II movie is still pretty damned good in and of itself.Our heroes enter the Balkans by way of a fishing boat, rather like Gregory Peck and his companions in "The Guns of Navarone," but things go awry when Simon tries to escape and the others have to dive over the side and swim around behind a Nazi patrol boat to kill the enemy. Once they enter the country, they start to work on a plan, but their plans are short-lived because the Nazis capture a resistance leader and he cracks under torture. Eventually, after a running roof-top gun battle between our heroes and the Nazis, the Germans are able to capture the good guys. As Roberto observes when the Nazis demand their surrender, they had planned all along to get into the prison one way or another. Once they are prisoners, they have to put up with the former commandant's eternal interrogations, but our heroes fool him long enough for Scanlon to pick the lock of their cell with a tool devised from dinner ware while Saval impersonates him. They manage to escape with General Quadri. The first convict to bite the dust is Simon Fell. Scanlon manages to blow up a machine gun nest in a fortified battlement but Major Mace receives a nasty leg wound and opts to lead their pursuers in the wrong direction. When the remainder of the convicts reach the resistance holed up in a monastery, they are surprised to learn that General Quadri is not General Quadri but instead an imposter! Now, how do they get out of this tight spot? "The Secret Invasion" qualifies as one of the few times that director Roger Corman proved that he could make a bigger budget picture. There's nothing really outlandish in R. Wright Campbell's formulaic screenplay. One of the most memorable scenes has one of the convicts smothering an infant to keep it from crying out and alerting the Nazis about their whereabouts. The irony is that the character that smothers the child while its mother stood beside him had no idea what he was doing when he did it.Hardcore World War II movie fanatics shouldn't miss this landmark pardon the convicts spectacle.

Although producer/director Roger Corman is known for his "economical" pictures, this World War II actioner belies its $600,000 budget (small by conventional Hollywood standards, but an epic for Corman) and is a well-acted, tightly directed, enjoyable not-quite-so-little picture. The story of a group of misfit Allied soldiers sent to rescue an important Italian general who has been imprisoned by the Nazis, Corman makes good use of the Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, locations and a cast consisting of much better actors then he usually got, especially Mickey Rooney, Stewart Granger and Henry Silva (in an outstanding performance as a taciturn, deadly killer who isn't quite as cold-blooded as he seems). Even Edd Byrnes is far less annoying than usual, and turns in a good job. The action scenes are very well handled, the picture looks much more expensive than its budget would indicate, and it actually garnered some of the best reviews of Corman's career up to that time, and deservedly so. It's a good one (and compares favorably to "The Dirty Dozen," which it preceded). Check it out.